How Do We Know

25

ONE WAY TO ASSESS THE FUTURE

Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.

—EDMUND BURKE

Edmund Burke was a statesman, not a politician. He was one of the outstanding spokesmen and exponents of liberty. Burke, more than anyone else, opposed the Crown in its behavior toward the Colonies. Were Burke a present-day American, we would invite him to be a member of FEE’s Board. I say this because I quote him more than any person past or present.

I have argued for years that prognostication—trying to predict the future—is nonsense. We have ever so many high IQers who are prophets of doom. They see the devolution of the past eight decades and conclude that that is IT! Such “prophets” are blind to the fact that evolution inevitably follows devolution. We have all history to demonstrate that this is part and parcel of the Cosmic Design. Actually, no one knows what is going to happen in the next minute.

We must not, however, overlook the fact that there is a rule of life which seems like prognostication, but is something quite different. It is an acknowledgment of the workings of cause and effect in human affairs; we reap what we have sown. Wrote Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, “The first years of men must make provision for the last.” This squares with Burke’s wisdom.

The above suggests that the future of our country rests on what present-day children will be like when advancing into adulthood and old age. Two samples of the very few who saw the light as did Burke and Johnson:

Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.

—John Milton

The child is father of the man.

—William Wordsworth

What is the “problem” we face? Appropriate education of our youngsters! Education falls into two opposite categories: (1) coercive, be it private or public; and (2) voluntary, with three major points which I shall attempt to explain.

Here are the two opposite philosophies, the first by that famous dictator, Napoleon: “Public instruction should be the first object of government.” He, more than anyone, was responsible for government “education” in the U.S.A.1

Here is the second, the opposite of the dictator’s nonsense and by a young lad, Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland who had hardly any formal schooling: “Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is probably the dark horse you had better watch.” Hard work was Carnegie’s schooling. Did it succeed? This man founded the Carnegie Steel Company, the world’s largest at the time, and became one of the world’s wealthiest men and philanthropists.

What are the three major points we should understand and have the ability to explain? They are: (1) the locus of responsibility for the child’s education; (2) the fallacy of government education; and (3) the efficacy of private education when understood and properly directed.

The responsibility for the education of children rests with the parents. For how long? Until the child matures into self-responsibility. If never, the problem is not educational but custodial. In brief, avoid present trends in “education.” Wrote Tryon Edwards: “Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal as if you alone had done the wrong.”

Parents may hire a tutor as an educational aide. The right to hire has its counterpart: the right to fire. Bear in mind that authority and responsibility are commensurate. They are twin behaviors in all successful organization.

The second part is intended as a critique of government education, not as a criticism of all who teach in government schools, many of whom are committed to freedom. How do we know this? Over the past 35 years we have had many hundreds of teachers at FEE Seminars, and they are teaching the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life—liberty for one and all. Shall FEE take the credit? No, for our efforts would have been futile had we not been working with the seekers of Truth!

The three characteristics of government education? They are:

(1) Compulsory attendance.

(2) Government prescribed curricula.

(3) Forcible collection of the wherewithal to defray costs.

Compulsion is freedom’s most antagonistic behavior! Instruction cannot be forced into another’s head. Good ideas are to be attained by freely searching for the thoughts of superior mentors, past and present.

As to government-prescribed curricula: this is indoctrination, not education, and presupposes that those in political office think of themselves as know-it-alls. Wrote the English divine, Robert South: “Nothing is so haughty and assuming as ignorance where self-conceit sets up to be infallible.”

The English poet and satirist, Samuel Butler, phrased this nonsense better:

Authority intoxicates,

And makes sots of magistrates;

The fumes of it invade the brain,

And make men giddy, proud, and vain.

The forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay for government education compels freedom devotees to subsidize their opponents.

My conclusion is intended to suggest free market education as the appropriate alternative to government education.

Government is organized police force; its appropriate and limited function is to keep the peace and invoke a common justice. Were government to step aside in education, as it has in religion, education would be left to the free market where the wisdom is.

Would the elimination of government from education mean that children would go unschooled? Not at all! Time after time I have asked individuals, from taxi drivers to corporate presidents, “Would you let your children go uneducated were all government compulsions removed?” Answer: “Do you think I am a fool? I would no more let my children go without an education than let them go without food.”

The belief in freedom in education is in the form of an achievement in understanding (1) the nature of government, (2) its uniqueness as police force, and (3) the limited competence of, as well as the absolute necessity for, police force—an understanding to be learned, mastered, and remembered by at least enough persons to form an effective leadership in each new generation. This achievement is a personal, day-in and day-out requirement, meaning that it cannot be delegated to others, much less to our forefathers; it can never be relegated to the past tense; it is a continuing imperative of each new moment, without end.

The dilemma is this: The understanding of police-force-as-guard will, obviously, never be advanced but only retarded when the police-force-as-boss is put in the educational driver’s seat. Thus, unless a breakthrough is achieved by an individual here and there, capable of independent analysis and unafraid of parting company with the masses, the most important aspect of education for responsible citizenship will go unattended.

The myth of government education, in our country today, is an article of general faith. To question the myth is to tamper with the faith, a business that few will read about or listen to or calmly tolerate. In short, for those who would make the case for educational freedom as they would for freedom in religion, let them be warned that this is a first-rate obstacle course. But heart can be taken in the fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. And becoming is life’s prime purpose; becoming is, in fact, enlightenment—self-education its own reward!

• 1See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950), pp. 63-64.