As readers of my weblog may know, this past year I purchased a condo. Just the other day, I just received my first direct bill for property taxes. Taxes were to be paid both to Harris County and to the Houston Independent School District. I use some of the County services such as their toll roads, but since I have no children I have no real idea why it is that HISD should have any coercive power to sucker punch me for tax money. The notion that I may benefit from working with HISD educated people, ergo I must pay seems laughable considering how many people are upset at the level of education HISD provides. Also, it just isn't my problem. If one proclaims that education is a public good, then let the entitles that will benefit from such an political proposition, such as businesses, pay for such compulsion.
Moreover, the more I read history, the more I have become convinced that there is a difference between education and compulsory public schooling. The other day, I stumbled across an article in City Journal magazine online,whose subject was about the matter of classical literature and culture which was enjoyed by the working classes of Great Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries. The article starts off by making a mockery of a statement by Barbara Herstein Smith, one time president of the Modern Language Association, in which she stated that classical culture was irrelevant to those poor souls who were underprivileged to have not received a classical education. In other words, the works of Shakespeare, Dante, and all of the rest of the Dead White Males of the ages gone by don't factor much in the lives of those dreary factory workers. Ergo, it is time to give the Western Civ claptrap stuff the 'ol heave ho and give them the Communist Manifesto. That'll speak to them!
Well Well Well. It appears that in the U.K. there is a private organization called the Workers Educational Association whose purpose was (and is) to achieve exactly what Ms. Smith so derided - adult education for the masses. It also seems that the poor slobs who ended up working in jobs which were not so prestigeous were quite the consumers of the works of those Dead White Males. It seems that the works of those DWM's were quite capable of liberating the minds of the ordinary everyday Joe's, thank you very much.
Moreover the WEA offered no degrees, no certificates, no grades, nor any vocational paths. This was all done just out of a love of learning something new.
The article goes on to say that some of the WEA's funding was from workers themselves. Somehow these ideas want to lead me towards dovetailing towards homeschooling, but that would take quite a bit of writing and that is something I am not in the mood to do at the moment.
Ciao for now.
TMW
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at January 16, 2005 07:47 PM