Public Education

Possibly it would be best to begin a test of his new definition of communism—previously defined as a belief in the use of organized force as a means to attain social performance—against a reasonably familiar and generally accepted idea. So he took a critical look at perhaps the least challenged of all American institutions—public education.

How did government education stand up when squared with this new definition of the “isms”? There was force involved, all right—compulsory attendance, compulsory curricula in many respects, and in all respects compulsory payment therefor. Even so, was this anything to worry about, since no institution has ever had more respectable and conservative support than public education? In fact, in early times, most of the leading conservatives of America, including one of the most respected occupants of the White House, had much to do with popularizing the idea in the United States. But, he could not escape a deep concern by reason of his new definition; that regardless of the prestige of its forebears, and irrespective of the talents and high reputations of subsequent supporters, public education is still a denial of freedom of choice in vast areas. He could not logically deny that it is the communalization of the product of all, by force. He even recalled how, as a freshman in college, he had learned that public education was one of the primary objectives which Karl Marx set forth in his Communist Manifesto. However, maybe he ought to believe in some communism.

But why, he asked, in this “great nation of freedom,” had not his teachers in the several schools he had attended, raised questions about the use of force in “education”? Was it possible that they themselves had never thought of it?