On January 24th, in his State of the Union Speech, President Barack Obama told the states to raise the compulsory age of schooling to 18. State Senator Kimberly Lightford (D-Chicago) went right to work. On February 1st she introduced a bill to raise the mandatory age for school attendance in Illinois from 17 to 18 years of age. The President said in his speech, “We … know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every state to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.”
Sen. Lightford’s bill, SB 3259, will be heard in the Education Committee in Springfield on Friday, February 25, 2012 at 9:30 a.m. A companion bill, HB 4621, sponsored by State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) has not yet been posted for a hearing.
“Children walk away from education the minute they step foot into a government indoctrination center, otherwise known as a public school,” said David E. Smith, IFI Director, in response to the President. “We all need to wake up and realize that there isn’t much education going on in our public schools. Moreover, there is absolutely no reason for the government to usurp the God-given authority of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. ”
Smith isn’t impressed with the idea that the government is going to fix what’s wrong with education by forcing kids to stay in school for another year. Fixing schools isn’t about more seat time for kids. Smith says education will be fixed when we spend more time on the truth.
Veteran and prize winning public school educator John Taylor Gatto asks, “Do we really need school? I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine necessary?” Gatto goes on to list Americans who were spared the public school routine and nevertheless managed to achieve some modest success in life: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. He concludes they were, “Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.”
The truth may be that public schools aren’t about education at all.
John Taylor Gatto again, “What if there is no ‘problem’ with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would ‘leave no child behind?’ Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?”
Samuel Blumenfeld wrote in 1991, “The purpose of compulsory attendance is not to provide an education for all, but merely to fill classrooms with children for the convenience of the education establishment whose financial benefits depend on deluding the public into believing that education is taking place.”
Parental concern with schools is fueling the homeschool movement. Illinois’ own homeschooling advocates David & Kim d’Escoto point out in their book Big Reasons to Homeschool, “Prior to compulsory education, findings show that the literacy rate in America was as high as 90 to 98 percent, a remarkable level that has never been attained since the establishment of our current state-controlled education system. A recent survey revealed the drastic decline in U.S. literacy: 21 to 23 percent, or some 40 to 44 million of the 191 million adults in the United States, demonstrated incompetence in the lowest level of reading, writing, and mathematical skill.”
Smith promised to work with friends at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) in opposition to this proposal. He said, however, that he views the debate as helpful. It focuses our attention on what is best for our young people. They don’t need more seat time in failed schools. Truth be told they need to be set free to learn and grow.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay Against School, “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.”
The decision to leave children in public schools — which increasingly serve the political and moral ends of liberals — until age 18 rests with parents, not President Obama and Senator Lightford.
Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state senator to ask him/her to vote against SB 3259 and the expanding role of government in the lives of Illinois families. You can also call your state senator through the Springfield switchboard at (217) 782-2000.
