guest post: Christine Fulcher on schools

Below is a post by my colleague Christine Fulcher, giving some of her views on education.

The headmaster of my primary school made great play of the fact that he was in loco parentis. He told us that this was how his legal position vis-à-vis the pupils of the school was described, and that this was Latin for ‘in place of the parent’. In other words, he was acting as a substitute parent during the hours we were attending that school. Well, if parents were responsible people, they would not be willing to let other people act in loco parentis in this way.

The fact that education is compulsory is an indictment of parents who want an easy life for themselves with their children out of their hair, rather than what is best for their children. If so-called education were not compulsory and supposedly ‘free’ at point of delivery (but not really free, being paid for out of taxation) then people might be more cautious about bringing children into the world.

As for the so-called ‘right’ of children to be educated: those who create ‘rights’ have their own agendas, which are not necessarily in the interests of those to whom they are giving these ‘rights’. The fact that it is generally in the interests of people to be able to read, write and do basic arithmetic is expanded into the idea of compulsory education, then forced upon children, who have no choice.

If education were not compulsory, a certain number of people might grow up unable to read, write or do basic arithmetic. But this is a lesser evil than that created by making ‘education’ compulsory. Much of modern education does not consist of ‘stuffing children’s minds with facts’, but of stuffing their minds with propaganda. This is not a modern phenomenon. Those who wish to spread any sort of propaganda, religious or atheist, have always been interested in using compulsory education of the young as a means of doing this.

Christine Fulcher