Ban Compulsory Education 1 AC
|
for H.S. debate, 1999-2000 season For ages we have lamented the problems with our education system. We have dispatched numerous "solutions," but they have all been piecemeal; the problems still persist. However, the one real problem --public schools themselves -- has never really been addressed. We cite this in: Observation I: Inherency A) ACADEMIC STANDARDS ENTRENCH SCHOOLS AND UNDERMINE TRUE LEARNING Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, p.35, 1971. "The institutionalized values school instills are quantified ones. School initiates young people into a world where everything can be measured, including their imaginations, and, indeed, man himself. But personal growth is not a measurable entity. It is growth in disciplined dissidence, which cannot be measured against any rod, or any curriculum not compared to someone else's achievement. In such learning one can emulate others only in imaginative endeavor, and follow in their footsteps rather than mimic their gait. The learning I prize is immeasurable re-creation." B) THE PUBLIC IS INTIMIDATED INTO CONTINUING PUBLIC EDUCATION. Llewellyn, Grace Janet. English teacher. The Teenage Liberation Handbook, p.60, 1996. "Why do we stand for it? Why do most people believe unquestioningly in compulsory education? Because they are mystified, shamed and intimidated into believing in it, that's why. Schoolpeople often talk in a specialized, complicated language, as if learning were a specialized, complicated process. 'Mastery learning', they say. 'Criterion-referenced testing, multicultural education, prosocial behavior, expository teaching and stanine scores. So there.' They pretend and believe that what they do is all very tricky and difficult." C) SCHOOLING DEVALUES LEARNING OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, p.35, 1971. "The very existence of obligatory schools divides any society into two realms: some time spans and processes and treatments and professions are "academic" or "pedagogic", and others are not. The power of school thus to divide social reality has no boundaries: education becomes unworldly and the world becomes noneducational." D) SCHOOLING UNDERMINES SELF-EDUCATION Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, p.35, 1971. "Rich and poor alike depend on schools and hospitals, which guide their lives, form their worldview, and define for them what is legitimate and what is not. Both view doctoring oneself as irresponsible, learning on one's own as unreliable, and community organization, when not paid for by those in authority, as a form of aggression or subversion. For both groups the reliance on institutional treatment renders independent accomplishment suspect. The progressive underdevelopment of self-and community-reliance is even more typical in Westchester than it is in the northeast of Brazil." PLAN In order to significantly increase academic achievement in secondary schools in the United States, we advocate the following plan: Plank I: The federal government will establish the Free-Thinking Initiative, which is composed of the following acts: a) All secondary compulsory education laws-both federal and state-will be declared unconstitutional. b) Every student who chooses not to attend public school may have the per-pupil expenditure allocated to their parent[s] for home learning, provided they account for the funds monthly. Plank II: No funding is necessary Plank III: Enforcement will be an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act mandating the implementation of this initiative in all states. States that do not immediately comply will suffer the penalties found in said act. We reserve the right to clarify. All terms are operationally defined as of the 1AC, meaning we have the right to define. If you have any questions please ask. ADVANTAGE I: ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT A) Forcing uninterested kids into school hurts motivated ones Filley, Dwight. Fellow at the Independence Institute. "Are Schools Prisons or Centers of Learning?" http://www.i2i.org/SuptDocs/OpEdArcv/op011796.htm. 17 Jan. 1996. "One of the reasons public schools don't educate our children is that teachers spend so much time with discipline problems that they have little time left to teach. By simply not forcing the bad apples into school, those disruptive types will gladly stay away, and the learning atmosphere will improve overnight. Everyone agrees that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Yet the present law ignores this wisdom and tries not just to lead, but force kids into school AND make them learn. A horse that isn't thirsty won't drink, and a kid that isn't' interested won't learn. What he will do is get so mad at being cooped up all day that he will make trouble all day. So much trouble that other children, who want to learn, are kept from learning. This is profoundly unfair to the good students. In fact, the bad students are driving out the good ones. A recent study, reported in both Denver newspapers indicated that in high-crime neighborhoods, one out of three students had cut classes or stayed away from school because of fear of crime. Yet advocates of the status quo want the bad ones shut up with the good ones. B) School destroys our ability to think and challenge the world Priesnitz, Wendy. Editor of Natural Life and Author of 8 books. "If we're going to create a truly democratic, egalitarian, socially just and environmentally sustainable society, we must deinstitutionalize learning." http://www.life.ca. May, 1998. "As author and schooling critic John Taylor Gatto explains, after we fall into the habit of having other people do things for us, we lose the power to think for ourselves. Maybe that's why so few of us challenge the premises of nursing homes, television, day-care centers, schools and the global economy. These things are received ideas, not the result of individuals thinking about what would make their own lives-and those of their families and communities-better on a day-to-day basis. School measures a student's mastery of a prefabricated curriculum on a standardized scale. When we submit to others' standards to measure our own growth, we put ourselves and others into assigned slots. When everything fits together, there's no need to look for an underlying agenda." ADVANTAGE II: TYRANNY AND INCULCATION A) Schools are tools of inculcation Burchman, David W. Associate Professor of law at Loyola Law School. Albany Law Review, v. 59, p. 218, 1995. "Since their inception in the colonial era, public schools in the United States have viewed their mission as embracing the inculcation of certain values and morals in children. This focus on the moral development of children traces back to early attempts to use the public schools as vehicles to promote religious beliefs. The general understanding that public schools are instruments of value inculcation has continued to the present, and the Supreme Court has expressly recognized value inculcation as a necessary and important function of the schools." B) Inculcation is equal to totalitarianism Sherry, Suzanna. Professor of law at University of Minnesota. University of Chicago Law Review. v. 62, p. 172, 1995. "An education that merely inculcated cultural norms might be suitable for a totalitarian state, where the citizen's major responsibility is to conform. But in a diverse republic, where citizenship consists in rational deliberation and dialogue about the good life for individuals and the nation as a whole, and where citizens disagree about both, cultural literacy is not enough. Mature citizens must "develop a certain degree of autonomy and capacity for independent judgement while still appreciating the value to be gained from the wisdom and experiences of prior generations." C) Inculcation is insidious tyranny Ingber, Stanley. Professor of law at Drake University. St. John's Law Review, v. 69, p. 424-425, 1995. "Our suspicion is understandable. If through processes of socialization the state can predispose individuals to accept some perspectives rather than others, government can inculcate ideas that tend to protect interests, values, or attitudes consistent with governmental policy. Once so empowered, government would have transformed "popular sovereignty" into little more than a ruse to legitimate an insidious tyrannical rule." MORAL IMPERATIVE: FREEDOM A) Schooling's paternalism is a dangerous restriction on freedom Llewellyn, Grace Janet. English teacher. The Teenage Liberation Handbook, p.61, 1996. "If you take a look at the history of 'freedom', you notice that the most frightening thing about people who are not free is that they learn to take their bondage for granted, and to believe that this bondage is 'normal' and natural. Right now, a lot of you are helping history to repeat itself; you don't believe you should be free. Of course you want to be free -- in various ways, not just free of school. However, society gives you so many condescending, false and harmful messages about yourselves that most of you wouldn't trust yourselves with freedom. It's all complicated by the fact that the people who infringe most dangerously and inescapably on your freedom are those who say they are helping you, those who are convinced you need their help: teachers, school counselors, perhaps your parents. B) Deschooling is critical to human liberation Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, p. 35, 1971. "School either keeps people for life or makes sure that they will fit into some institution. The New World Church is the knowledge industry, both purveyor of opium and the workbench during an increasing number of the years of an individual's life. Deschooling is, therefore, at the root of any movement for human liberation. C) Rejecting conservative institutions such as schools is critical to freedom Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, p. 35, 1971. "At stake in the choice between the institutional right and left is the very nature of human life. Man must choose whether to be rich in things or in the freedom to use them. He must choose between alternate styles of life and related production schedules. OBSERVATION III: SOLVENCY A) Banning compulsory education solves for achievement McGhan, Barry. Retired teacher/administrator. Phi Delta Kappa. p. 612, April, 1998. "Making public education voluntary at all levels will give all involved an opportunity to exercise more responsibility for their own behavior. Students and parents will be responsible from the first day of school for respecting the education rights of others. Teachers and other educators will be more responsible for setting and enforcing reasonable standards of performance and behavior. Educators would also be motivated to look for good alternatives for students with problems before giving up the funding that each student bring to school. B) It is necessary to disestablish education Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, p. 35, 1971. "Two centuries ago the United States led the world in a movement to disestablish the monopoly of a single church. Now we need the constitutional disestablishment of the monopoly of the school, and thereby of a system which legally combines prejudice with discrimination. The first article of a bill of rights for a modern, humanist society would correspond to the First Amendment to the US Constitution: 'The State shall make no law with respect to the establishment of education'. There shall be no ritual obligatory for all." C) Voluntary education brings people back to real education McGhan, Barry. Retired teacher/administrator. Phi Delta Kappa. p. 612, April, 1998. "Other benefits are likely to flow from a voluntary public education system. The role of the public schools in society would be clarified. People would know that the main business of a school is to educate children. Under the compulsory system we have now, all sorts of noneducational problems of children are served in schools simply because that's where the children are required to be. Schools in effect 'cover' for parents and other social institutions that might be suited to handle the problems." END OF 1AC |
 |
Essays |