Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
In recent years, schools have tried to portray themselves as the best tool available to keep authoritarians out of office. As proof, they frequently mention how the first thing that oppressive governments do is to tear down schools. I have yet to see them provide a single example of this supposedly common tactic.
When I first heard this argument, it caught me completely off guard. Most communist and fascist governments have actually shown support for strong schools. These are the most common types of oppressive governments in recent history.
Communists in particular have shown a great deal of support for strong schools. These governments typically believe in a large government as a means of equality (which clearly doesn't work in practice), and they believe that giving everyone equal access to strong schools is the ideal approach.
Fascists and national socialists have not typically supported schooling at the same level, but their support is still strong. This is one of many areas in which they overlap with communism. These government types all believe that schooling is a valuable tool to maintain power. This can be seen with the quotes below.
Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
-Joseph Stalin
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
-Vladimir Lenin
Whoever has the youth has the future.
-Adolf Hitler (I have seen variants on this one. This could be an issue with translations.)
I haven't done as well with finding quotes from Benito Mussolini, but his views were clearly in the same realm. He believed in schools as a means of pushing propaganda. He also expanded the mandatory age range for attendance.
Even here in the United States, our schools reek of oppressive government control. I went through the system. I had first-hand exposure to government workers training citizens from a young age to show obedience to authoritarian figures. We were forced to pledge our allegiance on a daily basis. Judging from the online presence of the teachers unions, things have only gotten worse. They are openly promoting the use of propaganda from definitively skewed sources such as Black Lives Matter at Schools and Learning for Justice that align themselves with the more oppressive of our two major parties.
Schooling has become one of the most valuable tools for oppressive governments. I have seen plenty of examples of oppressive governments promoting strong government-run schools. By contrast, I have seriously struggled to find any examples of this supposed tearing down of schools. I believe some have replaced the schools of others with schools of their own. Ultimately, the evidence I have seen is overwhelming. Oppressive governments are among the biggest backers of government-run schools.
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