Compulsory education violates human rights
Compulsory mass education is nothing less than a violation of human rights. The current system, according to educational expert Roland Meighan, condemns children to incarceration without them having broken the law. Their only offense is their age. A plea for individualized learning.
While I was waiting for my copies to be ready, I noticed a sign on the wall of the copy shop. We are here for the customer: we listen to you, understand you, and find the solution that suits you. Don’t worry, this isn’t an advertisement for my corner store. The slogan on the poster seemed to me to be the motto for a new educational model. It must replace the current system of compulsory education, followed by a hurdle-filled career in the form of boring university courses. The motto of the current educational model seems to be: Adapt: you listen, we decide what happens, and you accept our solution. While the text in the copy shop assumes that every person deserves not standardized treatment, but rather a personal approach.
Question: If state-mandated education is so good, why are adults exempt? How would they react to a law that obligates them to spend another twelve years of their lives learning in an overcrowded school building? Recent research shows that most adults are willing to learn something new, as long as it’s not done in a school-like manner. Memories of their school days seem to be still open wounds. Compulsory mass education constitutes an implicit violation of human rights because it sentences someone to imprisonment without breaking the law. In a democracy, this is prohibited. Yet, children are sentenced to spend 15,000 hours of their young lives in a building called “school.” Their only offense is their age. I once tried to explain the system to a group of “homeschoolers.” Children who study at home, not in a school. They don’t understand it. They see the fact that children don’t go to school of their own free will, but are forced to do so, as a direct indictment of our democratic society. In a country that is supposed to be a democracy, this approach to children should fill us with shame.
A second violation of human rights lies in the imposition of compulsory curriculum. Providing education in a democracy means working with people who have choices. Schools should offer modules from which children can choose for themselves. People have the right to determine for themselves what information they want to consume. An example of how this right is protected is the prohibition of surreptitious advertising. When the human right to choose information for themselves is violated, we speak of indoctrination or brainwashing. Indoctrination is the manipulation of people who have no choice. Any imposed study program or textbook is a form of manipulation. It denies people the right to choose for themselves and to map out their own education, their own development. Support, advice, and the provision of the necessary information are the appropriate means to shape that self-chosen education. Prescribing compulsory curriculum, on the other hand, is an approach that belongs in a totalitarian regime. Stalin and Hitler both dictated what was taught in school, with all the accompanying rhetoric. In a religious society, state education is based on theological principles. But in a democracy, this should be different. There, difference should be tolerated, and diversity and choice offered—on the condition, of course, that the rights of every person are respected. This right entails an inversely proportional responsibility: the combination of behavior and actions necessary to protect the rights of all people. Then there is age discrimination in education. It is indefensible to force an individual to spend 15,000 hours in groups consisting exclusively of peers. It is absurd to think that prolonged exposure to immature peers will lead to adulthood. In fact, it leads to tyranny within the group, in which one child coercively imposes norms regarding behavior, dress, drug use, and attitudes toward other groups on another.
People who are active in the current education system? People who want to impose their norms and values on others? They always argue that it’s for their own good. The misunderstandings surrounding this argument have already been extensively discussed by others, and my suggestion to them would be to read the work of Alice Miller (For Your Own Good), Chris Shute (Compulsory Education Disease), Rosalind Miles (The Children We Deserve), and John Holt’s articles (Freedom and Beyond and Escape From Childhood).
Furthermore, it’s rather ironic that proponents of compulsory education believe children should have the right to this legally mandated obligation. Wait a minute, a right to a duty? I have a better idea: let’s enshrine in law the right to be treated as human beings with rights.
In fact, a school based on the compulsory attendance model is nothing less than a totalitarian institution, operating according to a state-mandated curriculum. This education is offered according to generally accepted pedagogical insights, in a learning process dominated by teachers who, in turn, are monitored through a series of mandatory tests. This regulated package of educational measures requires an overarching, overseeing institution like the Education Inspectorate.
The unwritten, yet powerful, message of this legal pact is that adults get their way through oppression. American author Jerry Mintz comments on the consequences of this approach: Children enjoy watching violence on television and in films because they experience violence themselves, both at school and at home. An enormous amount of anger builds up. Violence on television isn’t so much the problem as a symptom. The real problem is the daily violence of a loveless home environment and the violence of an uninspiring, deadly dull school environment. Violence inflicted on them by people who seem to enjoy it.
At least three types of people emerge from these kinds of schools. A number of “successful students” grow into professional bullies in dominant professions: politicians, doctors, teachers, civil servants, journalists. A majority of “less successful” students learn to accept this mentality. They become indulgent, dependent people who need someone else to tell them what to think and do at work. At home, they copy the bullies’ intimidating behavior, “for example, in their role as parents.” A third group grows into notorious bullies who repeatedly get into trouble because of this behavior. According to Alice Miller, every bully was once a victim themselves. That is precisely how this “plague” spreads.
I hereby open the discussion about ways to replace the unhealthy, outdated system of mass education with an alternative system of individual learning, in which the democratic values of choice and diversity are respected. This should take into account the results of recent research, such as the existence of multiple types of intelligence, multiple forms of learning, accelerated learning processes, insights into brain function, and the experiences of families where children are homeschooled.
The next Minister of Education should begin by making the following two decisions:
Close the Ministry of Education and abolish the entire education program and its associated supervisory bodies. This means that employment will once again fall under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, where it belongs. It has distorted the way we think about education for long enough.
Relocate all schools and their staff to public libraries, which will further develop their existing, attractive reading and information services into a comprehensive range of education and courses in local centers for individual learning. We will move from compulsory mass education to an open school for all ages in local knowledge centers (libraries), where people can develop as employees, citizens, parents, and individuals. Ultimately, the library’s approach is already a good, client-focused one. At least two types of teachers will be needed: the “thinker” who presents the topics and the personal coach along the way.
This transition from mass education to individual learning will naturally require further research and support. I propose hiring people from independent learning institutes, such as the Open University, for this purpose, as they are already implementing the most innovative and successful forms of learning of the past twenty-five years. In the meantime, all we can do is treat children as human beings, even if the school system fails them.
Roland Meighan
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