(at a now-defunct blog of homeschool defense lawyer Scott Somerville)was the analogy of driver regulation -- coincidence or conscious framing, you decide!

Rob:
On regulation and the role of state authority over children, JJ thinks it is a non sequitur to value A as desirable and ethical, and say that A should be regulated by law. All regulations should be subject to various tests and checks. . .

Think about regulations on obtaining a driver's licese and for operating an automobile. We seek to prevent incompetent people from driving (in part because they can harm themselves, in part because they can harm others), so we set up regulations that will not guarantee success but that manage to address at least some of the concern. . .

"The real issue is the extent of state authority over education. About this, Scott and I disagree. To put it provocatively, he's concerned about state despotism over children; I'm concerned with parental despotism over children."

Whereupon I responded to the conservative lawyer and the liberal philosopher with this:
You're Both Wrong Then!

Provocative for sure - you're both wrong then, about what we need to be debating. I am concerned about actual children, and thankfully despotism (in 21st century America) doesn't even make the Top 100 on my list of immediate, real-life, daily concerns for them or their survival or their souls.

I know that you both are fathers who thus are responsible for addressing all those direct, real-child concerns too, so having had this same esoteric and intensively divorced-from-reality debate with you both before, I suggest this time you respond the way we mothers do instead.

Let's stop debating who has more right to teach them NOT to think for themselves -- my answer is no one, case closed -- and be more concerned about finding ways to help them learn to think critically without any despotism whatsoever! Then they can protect themselves from despotism, without being "ethically servile" to their parents OR the State. (Not to mention a biased press, propaganda from any source or their own peers and fellows, at any age.)

I just read a scholarly review of a new book in this regard (see below) making the point that most classroom teaching and learning is "non-thinking practice" rather than critical thinking -- comprised as it is of commonplace "defining, telling and believing."

From the review:
"Boostrom believes that students can benefit from inquiring into the
distinctions between learning to 'receive truths' and to 'seek meanings
in our lives.'

In this frame, 'Thinking does not settle anything; it unsettles' (p.137), which is a part of the reason that non-thinking is so difficult to
disrupt. . ."

I think this intentional unsettling of commonplace classroom defining,telling,and believing is precisely what's desired and required by us all, to avoid despotism from ANY source.

JJ Ross, Ed.D.

*Thinking: The Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning in the Classroom* by Robert E. Boostrom
Teachers College Press, New York
ISBN: 0807745693, 175 pages, Year: 2005

Reviewed by Anne Slonaker -- August 30, 2005
for www.tcrecord.org