This is part 2 in a multi-part series. You can read Part 1 here.

Education is wonderful and necessary. Schools can be excellent places to receive education. I do not object to schools, per se. What I object to is the compulsion factor of conventional state provisioned schooling.

I object to the forcible removal of children from their families and communities for most of their waking lives.

I know from experience and observation that children learn best when they feel secure, loved, and that they are an integral part of a family unit. It is true, of course, that not all children are fortunate enough to have a strong, secure, and loving family or a safe community to live in. But just because some don't, is not a good reason to punish those who do through removal and isolation.

I object to western society's little-acknowledged but often demonstrated collective belief that children are somehow inferior to adults.

As we covered in Part 1, forcible inclusion in a full-time, unpaid education program is something that we would not tolerate our governments doing to adults. We would view it as tyrannical, as an abuse of power, and as indoctrination. Why then is it seen as acceptable to do this to children, who are innocent and vulnerable? Why are school children the only class of citizens in the United States (besides perhaps criminals) who are denied freedom of speech and due process? How does this make any sense, and how can anyone defend it morally?

I object to the idea that there is some one-size-fits-all curriculum that will work for individuals of widely disparate interests, capabilities, learning styles, and circumstances.

There are individuals for whom the conventional schooling model--groups of students sitting in desks, being lectured by teachers, and completing assignments from textbooks--is beneficial. There are people whose learn well, who flourish, even, in this type of environment. But I believe they are in the minority. Most school children suffer greatly at the hands of modern education. They are denied opportunities. They are classified into groups according to academic ability, athletic ability, and even social status. They miss their callings because they are too consumed with never-ending busywork. They are discouraged from thinking for themselves. They are taught how to memorize and regurgitate facts, instead of being taught how to learn. And even for those people whose learning style fits with the conventional schooling methods, I believe that the compulsion factor damages their educational outcomes. In other words, even people who do well in a compulsory school environment would probably do even better if they had the freedom to choose when and where to attend school, what subjects to study, and how.

For most children in the west, there are few alternatives to state-provisioned schooling. And the alternatives that do exist are usually controlled to some extent by the government. In many countries, parents can choose to send their children to private schools, but these are so highly regulated that they tend to look like facsimiles of the public schools, with perhaps slightly better test scores. Also due to the strict regulations these schools must meet in order to operate, they often are very expensively priced, and therefore only available to families in the upper economic strata.

And then there is homeschooling.

Fortunately, in the United States, where I live, it is legal in every state for families to homeschool their children. However, the burden of constraints and barriers and hoops to jump through varies widely from state to state. In some states, parents must have a teaching degree to home educate their high school children. In others, it is necessary to register under a state-approved "umbrella school" to legally homeschool. Some must follow state-approved curricula and submit to surprise surveillance visits from local school representatives. And outside of the U.S., there are surprisingly few countries in which attempting to educate your children is not a jailable offense.

Steemit's own @markwhittam and his family are currently fleeing their home country of Sweden because the Swedish government has deemed their decision to home educate their children illegal. Imagine--the government threatening to take your children away from you because you love them so much that you want to provide them an education customized to their own needs in the loving and nurturing environment of your own home. It's truly insane, but that is the reality of the individual's relation to the state in almost any conceivable instance. Which brings me to my next objection.

I object to the idea that the state knows what is best for the lives and futures of individual children and families.

How can an institution with no knowledge of individual needs create a solution to address the educational needs of all children? It can't, and, if we're giving an honest assessment of the state of public schools worldwide, it doesn't.

The thing is, people are conditioned to accept what has already been normalized. Many people never question whether the way things are done is necessarily the best way to do them (and I have a feeling this unquestioning attitude comes in large part due to long days and weeks sitting in hard school desks and being fed information by an authority figure in a public school.) So when it's time for little Joey or Katie to get signed up for kindergarten, a large proportion of parents never even consider that there might be a better alternative. Most parents never will consider alternatives, until their own child is victimized by child imprisonment to the point that they can no longer ignore it. And even then, many of them will elect to keep the child in school because they either lack confidence in their own ability to educate them, or because they believe their circumstances necessitate a full time job, and they treat public school more or less as a daycare service.

What is the solution to this one-size-fits-all compulsory schooling problem? Well, private schools are a decent alternative if you can afford them, and homeschooling is an excellent idea. But those are not enough. There could be so many more alternatives, but we are prevented from seeing that reality come to fruition because of the fact that schooling is compulsory. If governments were barred from placing constraints on the educational choices of children and families, the market would produce a veritable smorgasbord of exciting options.

Schools that meet only a couple hours a day so that parents can provide the majority of the education, with help in the areas they're not confident in. Or schools that focus in on arts, or athletics, or sciences. And I mean really focus--not the public "arts school" and "maths school" version of that--where it's just the same as a regular public school but with a bigger art or math department. Or how about traveling schools, where children go off in groups for a month or two at a time to learn in the context of foreign lands and cultures? There would be a wide range of remote schooling options on the Internet, of course, and students would be able to specially design a curriculum that they could get personally excited about, and that would serve them in their future endeavors. We could see a return to apprenticeships and trade schools for preteens and teens. Autodidacts could just be dropped off at the library to read books about whatever subject lights their fire while parents are at work. More parents might start family businesses to enable them to be at home with their children to provide educational help, and workplaces might start to offer accommodations to homeschooling parents.

These alternatives and many more could be a reality in a world in which schooling was not compulsory. We are denied these options by virtue of the fact that the state has a near monopoly on the daytime rearing of our children.

It's time to remove the compulsion factor from our methods of education.

Read my refutation of the most common objection to a voluntary education system in Part 3.

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Hi! I'm Leslie Starr O'Hara, but my friends call me Starr. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and I am a FULL TIME WRITER who doesn't wait for the muse to show up before getting to work! I write humor, essays, and fiction here on Steemit and elsewhere.

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