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When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia. Mark Steyn
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March 7, 2010

Hayek, Dr. Helen, and homeschooling

Words of wisdom from Dr. Helen, inspired by Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Hayek:

By attempting to control [the growth of the mind], we are merely setting bounds to its development and must sooner or later produce a stagnation of thought and a decline of reason.

The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends.
Dr. Helen:
When I think of the suppression of free thought in areas like global warming or children who are suspended for their political beliefs, I wonder how future generations will ever learn how to figure out truth from fiction, or learn critical thought and reason. If science, truth and reason lead to progress and our society suppresses it, will we stagnate both economically and in terms of our progress as a society? I am going to assume that the answer is "yes."
Judging from some of the horror stories my young adult children tell me of co-workers and co-students who seem incapable of basic reasoning, I think "stagnation of thought" is well underway.

If Dr. Helen and Hayek make sense to you, as they do to me, isn't it folly to entrust your children's intellectual formation to Big Education, undeniably a purveyor of "collectivist thought"? It should come as no surprise that schools run by government bureaucracies will tend to serve up politically filtered content and look askance at students who color outside those lines, and at teachers who allow or encourage them to do so. What are public schools but institutions which seek, in Hayek's words, "to 'plan' or 'organize' the growth of mind"?

Caveat: I haven't read Hayek (yet) and I'm probably misunderstanding his point taken our of context. But to me this sounds like another argument for the flexibility and freedom of home education.

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Posted by jill at 2:36 PM
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3 comments:

  1. jill,

    Thanks for the link! And I agree that homeschooling is a good way to keep kids from being indoctrinated by state run schools.
    ReplyDelete
  2. We homeschool and have been enjoying the last three years with Classical Conversations, which is full of thousands of children nationwide, although it's still in its infancy. There is an association of brick-and-mortar Classical schools, but this is help for the homeschool.

    The Classical model sprung up from an essay by Dorothy Sayers called, "The Lost Tools of Learning." It's a must-read for every person concerned about education.

    http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html

    Knowledge-Understanding-Wisdom
    Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric

    My children are still in elementary school and at this stage we are acquiring knowledge, but I can't wait to break out the logic books. I am so grateful that my older children love to read at ages 8 and 10. Lately they have been enjoying Susan Wise Bauer's series on the 'History of the World' as well as their literature books. They are required to read a chapter a day, but they often get caught up and read much more.
    ReplyDelete
  3. I homeschool both my children. My wife and I talked about it when we couldn't afford to send both to private christian school (my daughter was around eight, my son was six). As a street cop dealing with other people's public school educated children who were basically uninterested and illiterate I told my wife this "Honey, our daughter is special. She is bright, focused and full of potential. If we let her go to public school, we might as well stick a crack pipe in her mouth now."

    It was not always easy, but my daughter is now fifteen, focused, brilliant, full of laughter and dreams. She is taking Latin, geometry, Constitutional classes, world history, and is a natural born nature photograph. I set up a website for her work off my main site. Here is the link-

    http://kaleyann.truthandcommonsense.com/

    Her photography was done with a 450.00 off the shelf camera with no special equipment other than her eye. I'm very proud of her.

    I worry that Obama and his crew will eventually outlaw homeschooling. It is a threat to their "collective thought" theory of creating drones to serve the elite.

    Like I said read my book. www.revoltthebook.com
    ReplyDelete

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