Adapted from my S9 speech, delivered to Capital Toastmasters on Wednesday.  Feedback and criticism is welcomed, as well as advice, links to resources etc, as I’m currently writing a new transitional education policy.

Compulsory schooling is taken for granted today, yet it has been around for less than 200 years, and few people know how it came about. Compulsory schooling actually originated in Prussia, following military defeats, and its first priority was to produce obedient soldiers for the army, as well as obedient workers for the mines and well-subordinated civil servants and clerks.

I hold a minority viewpoint – that schooling and education are not the same thing, and that schools should not be compulsory. As the education spokesman for the Libertarianz Party, I am responsible for writing our policy about how to get the government out of education, giving parents and students the freedom to control their own learning. I believe that the existing education system is fundamentally flawed. It is a one-size-fits-all educational straitjacket. All children go to school eager to learn, so why do a quarter of them leave after 10-13 years with no qualifications, and a fifth leave unable to read or write properly?

Something is wrong with our schools.

John Taylor Gatto is a former American schoolteacher. He won the New York State Teacher of the Year award immediately before quitting teaching to become an activist against compulsory schooling. His classic essay “The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher” explains his view of what most schools really teach:

1. “Stay in the class where you belong.”
2. “…turn on and off like a light switch,” Focus on work for an hour and then suddenly abandon it when the bell rings.
3. “…surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal”
4. “…only I determine what curriculum you will study… Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.”
5. “…your self-respect should depend on an observer’s measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.”
6. You are being watched. “I keep each student under constant surveillance… There are no private spaces for children… The lesson of constant surveillance is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate.”

Gatto concludes: “School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.”

We should also heed the warnings of the world’s most successful college dropout, Bill Gates, who runs a multi-billion dollar foundation devoted to improving education. According to Gates:

[Our] high schools are obsolete… I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded. … By obsolete, I mean that our high schools - even when they are working exactly as designed - cannot teach our kids what they need to know today… Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age.

Our schools are fine if you want to encourage conformity, and many students benefit from them. The problem is that not all kids are the same. Students who learn at a slower rate, who need a different style of instruction, or who suffer problems like dyslexia, are left behind and made to feel stupid. On the other hand, academically gifted students are held back, and often become bored with school, unable to reach their full potential. Teachers suffer too, under such a system. They have little incentive to improve, and their career has a low status in the eyes of the public, because their performance has absolutely no effect on either their salary or their job security.

So whats the alternative? Genuine choice in education. Schools should be controlled by parents and teachers - by local communities, rather than bureaucrats and politicians in Wellington. Almost all parents care about their children, and value their education. We can safely entrust them with responsibility for their own kids. Currently, only the richest parents have any choice in which school their children must attend – those who can afford private school fees or the extra cost of buying a house in the right zone. Most parents have no choice at all. Students themselves cannot choose what to study, or when to study, and the curriculum is written by the government.

I believe that this must change in order for students to be motivated to learn, schools to have an incentive to attract students, and for innovation and diversity in education to develop. A truly free market for education would see a wide range of schools develop, all offering different teaching styles, specialty subjects – sport, dance, science or literature, for example – and with distinct characters. Good schools would be rewarded, poor schools would have to raise their standards to attract more students, and better staff. And the kids who currently fall through the cracks would have options.

That is why I believe that the government must have nothing to do with education. Compulsory schooling teaches students to conform. Educational freedom would allow students to grow into confident, creative individuals.

Posted by Phil on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 5:47 pm.