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Comment by charonn0 | Hacker News Reader

As a counterpoint, compulsory free education for all children is a public good that couldn't be accomplished or sustained for decades without the state intruding upon the personal autonomy of the child and the parent (and childless taxpayers.)

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...compulsory free education...

I'm not sure what aspect of this situation this comment is meant to address. We're not absolutists; we just want the State to do less evil shit. Perhaps there have been lots of egregious abuses by, I don't know (sorry but I'm not exactly sure what we're talking about), truant officers? Nevertheless those pale in comparison to the harms of Drug War enforcement.

It's a counterpoint to the drug war: a durable, decades-long intrusion on personal autonomy by the state that produces tangible benefits and improves the quality of life for society and the individual.

Free mass education is a requirement in a democratic society. It would be national suicide for a government to give people the vote without giving them any competence to go with it.

I wonder if the American electorate has that level of competence given the quality of elected leadership in the US.

Except that the free mass schools provided by the government do little more than dumb people down to a compliant level required for a quiet electorate.

See "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_Us_Down

It needs to change, but don't forget that without it our illiteracy rates were ridiculous.

Is it really as much of a necessity? In my opinion most people learn the bare minimum required for exams, and then regurgitate it. I only remember tidbits of history and a little Shakespeare from my school days. Even in college most of my professors just read off powerpoints and I was forced to learn anything useful at all for my career on my own time. Schools force people to learn things they aren't interested in like STEM over useful life skills like personal finance or cooking. I think homeschooling or self-directed education [0] could be much more effective at stimulating learners and equipping them with necessary knowledge. In my opinion the only benefit of school was the social aspect, but thats to be expected since thats where everyone else is, not to mention the drawbacks such as bullying.

Education really isn't as much of a virtue as people think; do I really need a degree to talk to people, to appreciate literature or art, to vote? (And even with the prevalence of education, people still end up misinformed or lead by personal bias) Most people are capable of learning what they need, especially when all the resources are out there and not just in schools. All the different levels of education that are established just serve as poor markers for employers to differentiate people and time-and-time again I've read about educations being ill-suited in preparing people for careers.

Like the parent commenter, I think people are quite capable of organizing and preparing themselves just as well without a state, and many communities and generations have been doing this for centuries.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling (just one interesting example)

I have to disagree in the most strenuous possible terms.

> do I really need a degree to talk to people, to appreciate literature or art, to vote?

No, you don't need a college degree, but you do need an elementary education, which is what I'm talking about since that's what's compulsory and free.

There is no technology industry without an educated workforce. There is no effective democracy where the electorate is ignorant of history, math, and science. We can argue the relative merits of specific authors that could be covered in English/literature class, but only because we both were taught how to read.

Yeah but my argument is that you don't need a state for that. There are tons of self-taught people in IT and many people on HN can testify to that. And people can be ignorant in spite of education, just look at America itself which has groups that believe vaccines cause autism or that the moon landings were faked, among other strange beliefs perpetuated by the media. (which is really where people get their political education) And as to your last point, again, people can learn to read at home too. Maybe we just had different experiences with education, but I honestly don't believe any of it couldn't be done with different methods or groups.

> There are tons of self-taught people in IT

What I'm getting at is that they still needed to be taught reading, math, etc. just to get to the point where they could teach themselves how to use technology. I don't think that piecemeal homeschooling can prepare most people to do that sort of thing. A quick glance at historic literacy rates in the US[1], particularly the meteoric rise in all demographics starting in the late 1800s, speaks volumes about the effectiveness of formal schooling. Illiteracy dropped from 20% to 7.7% in one generation (and even more dramatically within unprivileged demographics.)

This doesn't imply that only state-run systems can work, but I think it's clear that state-run systems do work (which is my original point: contrasting state-operated free schools to the war on drugs.)

> I honestly don't believe any of it couldn't be done with different methods or groups.

Absolutely it could, no argument there. The Prussian-style classroom is not the only one, even if it's the only one in widespread use, and there are some legitimate problems with it. That being said I don't see how 90%+ literacy could be accomplished without state involvement. It certainly hadn't happened before, and writing has been around for a long time.

Sorry if I took us way off-topic (war on drugs). My point isn't really about what sorts of schooling we should have, but rather to point out that the schooling we do have provides an interesting counterpoint to the harm caused by the state in pursuing the war on drugs, and is something for anarchists to chew on when railing against the depredations of the state.

[1]: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy

Anarchism is about questioning the legitimacy of any system based on power, with a tendency to be critical of authority. It is also a constructive tradition of discussing alternative ways based on voluntary association and freedom.

I doubt many anarchists see it as strategically useful to dismantle systems of public education—but those systems certainly deserve critique, and anarchist perspectives are well-suited.

Every kid knows that school sucks. A prison for their minds and bodies.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-toward-the...

You are also ignoring the social aspect of education and just focusing on the learning part.

I did mention it, and when most people speak of education they are usually referring to the learning aspect.

Compelling whom?

Compelling the government/state/local authority is right but whilst parents should be compelled provide educational opportunity for their children I find it an imposition to require schooling per se.

Schooling is a very narrow segment of possible educational methods and one that doesn't suit all children.

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