No wonder the NYT and PBS consider him “conservative.” David Brooks insists that it’s the government’s job to “assimilate” people, not in the manner of Tocqueville but of Big Brother.
Some thoughts: Like Horace Mann and John Dewey, John Swett, California superintendent of Public Instruction in the 1860s, insisted that children belong not to the family but to the state, and should be educated accordingly (H/T to Dr. Rousas Rushdoony)
And what does that require? Here are two candid assessments:
“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” — Hannah Arendt
“The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common sense.” — G.K. Chesterton
2:14 pm on March 13, 2011
