What do you mean by
regulatory and social work bureaucracies?
Alphabet-soup regulatory agencies like the FTC, FCC, SEC, EPA, and so on, as well as state-level regulatory bodies like medical boards, Departments of Public Health, and the like, all have substantial autonomous power to frame and to enforce legally binding rules, independently of elected office-holders, and have the power to impose fines or criminal punishments for violating their rules. Similarly for case workers from the social work, public health, and child welfare bureaucracies, like DCFS, Departments of Public Health, and Departments of Mental Health, who can, on their own authority, forcibly abduct children, commit parents to prison, or force clients
into a locked psychiatric ward.
(The main difference between the two kinds of bureaucracy, for whatever it’s worth, is that the regulatory bodies typically govern by inflicting general rules on everyone, whereas social work and child welfare bureaucrats typically govern by edict in particular cases.)
]]>I think I understand your point. But for some people, it does work out that the K-12 system is easier to escape from than the university system. Although this freedom is under attack, if a child’s parents are willing (yes, a big if), it is still relatively easy to opt out of K-12 and take the GED later to satisfy any legal requirements. The university system, on the other hand, doesn’t have any simple alternatives. Want to go into a career that has some bullshit credential requirement? Too bad, you have to go to school. Want to get a well-paying job? Odds are, your potential employers don’t care at all about your K-12 schooling or lack thereof. But they do expect a four-year university degree, because, hey, it matters so much and everybody has one anyway, right? The result of this is more and more young people facing enormous pressure to attend four years of university, and probably load up on debt in the process. It’s generally much more difficult to make up for the lack of a college degree than it is to take the GED.
I do agree that K-12 schools are more prison-like than universities, but I don’t think we can say with absolute confidence that, for any given person, K-12 caused more damage than the university system.
]]>In the context of schools and universities, what do you mean by this? High schools and universities seem to have much more in common than McDonald’s jobs and prison labor, even if we’re only talking about their relationships to the direct exercise of State power.
Well, the salient point of analogy has to do with whether you can leave if you choose to, or whether trying to leave will get you arrested, shackled or beaten up by a heavily-armed Enforcer type.
People who would otherwise prefer not to work at minimum-wage hellholes, or who continue to slog through high school and college, and who aren’t getting much out of it, often choose to do so anyway, because they feel they don’t have a lot of viable options — and, as it happens, although they may not realize it, the constraints on their economic options have a lot to do with the ripple-effects of background government constraints on alternatives to the economic status quo.
On the other hand, people who would otherwise prefer not to do prison labor, or to go to classes at an elementary school, middle school, or high school, do so anyway because the know that if they did not go a cop or a prison guard would come around to beat them up for their impudence and force them to do it against their will.
Being financially pressured into being somewhere you’d rather not have to be sucks, and if it’s the indirect ripple-effect of background state coercion then the Revolution repudiates it, but it is importantly different from being physically forced into being somewhere you’d rather not have to be by the direct threat or use of physical violence. It’s importantly different for the students, and also importantly different for the teachers (=) who then have to teach under such conditions. The institutional environments that result from the former will have certain things in common with, but many important differences of, institutional environments that result from the latter.
(=) Which is why I quit substitute teaching in government schools, which I did for a while back in Michigan, but continue to teach kids at CTY. The important difference has nothing really to do with performance on academic tests and everything to do with the fact that my students at CTY aren’t forced to take my class against their will.
]]>I think there’s an important difference between those schools that handle students under the age of 16 and those that handle students over the age of 16.
I agree, although it seems to be a difference in degree and not in kind, as libertarians are fond of saying when we discuss slavery and taxation.
Both are objectionable and both would be undermined or eliminated in anarchy,
Agreed.
but there is an important difference between the two, which is closely connected with their different relationships to the direct exercise of State power.
In the context of schools and universities, what do you mean by this? High schools and universities seem to have much more in common than McDonald’s jobs and prison labor, even if we’re only talking about their relationships to the direct exercise of State power.
I don’t disagree with your very negative evaluation of minimum-security prisons for younger children, as you called them. I guess, when it comes to the university system, my view is even more negative than yours?
]]>I absolutely agree with this. It applies to universities as well — perhaps to a lesser extent, though, since the coercion used is more subtle and the students are older.
I think there’s an important difference between those schools that handle students under the age of 16 and those that handle students over the age of 16. The reason is because, while it’s true that a lot of students are pressured into finishing high school and going to college who might not otherwise choose it by (among other things) state-sponsored credentialism, they can’t send a cop to arrest you if you choose not to go to class, and they don’t presume to have the right to physically prevent you from leaving campus if you choose not to go. (Even upper-level high school tends to be a lot better, in various ways, from the first couple years, in spite of sharing an institutional structure with those lower years — simply because students do have the option to drop out.)
I could spend a long time complaining about all the problems I have with the American University as it currently exists, and the ways in which state funding and state control have burdened, co-opted, corrupted, brutalized and distorted it. But it’s a very different sort of thing from, and it’s really got nothing on, the sort of minimum-security prisons (or not even minimum, if you happen to live in poor neighborhoods in, say, Detroit or New York) into which younger children are marched and corralled.
The difference is a lot like the difference between, say, working for some state-capitalist minimum-wage hell like McDonald’s or Taco Bell, and working prison labor at 25 cents an hour. Both are objectionable and both would be undermined or eliminated in anarchy, but there is an important difference between the two, which is closely connected with their different relationships to the direct exercise of State power.
]]>(imagine that some random government school-bus driver tells plays “I’m Proud To Be An American” on the PA every morning; that may propagandize the kids in favor of the state, but it’s hard for me to see how that bus driver would count as significantly more a part of the process of governing than any random private person on the street who indulged in the same kind of patriotically-correct propagandizing.)
The difference here seems obvious to me. The bus driver is funded by the government, and is afforded a captive audience by the government.
Of course, that’s dependent on, among other things, the University system preserving a certain amount of cultural autonomy and academic freedom. If we were in a social context without that kind of autonomy and intellectual freedom, my attitude towards the position of University professors and researchers would be correspondingly different.
Ah, I think this is the source of our disagreement. It is true that, in theory, the university system is meant to have academic freedom, and there are plenty of examples of professors loudly proclaiming anti-statist views without being fired. However, as in any rigidly hierarchical system, those who parrot establishment views are at an advantage.
Thanks to the university system’s ties to the State, self-selection causes universities to fill up with people who sincerely believe in the benevolent power of the government. Again, there are many exceptions, but the prevailing ideology in universities is overwhelmingly statist.
The modern university system is now far, far removed from the ideal of a free center of learning and research. As I said, universities have been so corrupted by State incentives that the truth is now stifled even in the natural sciences.
The uniformity of thought seen in today’s universities is striking. The university system today plays the same role the Catholic Church once did. Professors (again, with some exceptions) form the priesthood, and they use State power to spread lies which not coincidentally lead to increases in State power. And again, malicious intent is not even required.
Not all of this speaks directly to your point, but I wanted to emphasize just how severe the damage has been.
I definitely agree with you about that, and I think it’ll be a damn shame if the right-wingers (what with their home-schooling movement connections) end up being more credible on alternatives to institutionalized mass education than left-libertarians do.
Hear, hear. Opposition to institutionalized mass education is about as left – libertarian a position as can be.
Most kids would be better served by spending all day eating Cheetos playing Wii than they are by the government schools that they are forced to attend; Wii, at least, does no real harm, whereas elementary, middle and secondary school do active damage to kid’s ideas, attitudes, habits, and reasoning capacities; subjects them to constant prison-yard terror; and typically leaves most kids actively worse off than they would be if they were just left the hell alone.
I absolutely agree with this. It applies to universities as well — perhaps to a lesser extent, though, since the coercion used is more subtle and the students are older.
]]>