Anarchy in Public Education

Education: Surviving Public School

Robert Uhls May 11, 2014 at 9:22 am

I grew up in South Central Kentucky. My entire education prior to University was in the public school system in my home town. Anarchy wasn’t something that was covered in depth. The few times we did “learn” about it was generally completely different from what I know anarchism to be now.

In public schools I learn that anarchy is the lack of government. It is an unrealistic society that would only lead to chaos, death, looting, etc.

What were you guys taught about anarchy in your education curriculum?

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Rollo McFloogle May 11, 2014 at 9:40 am

I went to Catholic school my entire life and my experience with exposure to anarchy was essentially the same as yours. I didn’t realize what anarchy really was until after I graduated college.

Being from Pennsylvania, our fourth grade Social Studies class was about the history of the state. I don’t remember learning about how Pennsylvania existed as a stateless society for several years (despite William Penn’s attempts at organizing a government).

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Toni Sopocko May 11, 2014 at 2:03 pm

Ditto. Catholic school: Government is necessary and good. Anarchy is chaos and bad. But then, Catholicism itself is all about the hierarchy, which is why I’m now a Christian, but NOT a Catholic.

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  Kathy Grable May 29, 2014 at 4:52 pm
  
  Hierarchy isn’t bad in itself. There is a natural meritcracy. Some folks just want to be led. The problem is that the hierarchy must be CHOSEN, which will make them accountable.
  
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Jp Cortez May 19, 2014 at 12:38 am

I got real upset, caused a scene, and stormed out my first day at Auburn in my Political Theory class because the professor said “without government, there would be chaos”.

Oops.

http://jcortez.liberty.me/2014/04/08/communism-isnt-that-bad-in-fact-its-probably-great/

I wrote this piece about a month ago. Just felt really compelled to write it because of what I was experiencing in classrooms.

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Micah Christensen May 19, 2014 at 5:10 am

I wasn’t taught anything about anarchism; it never came to my consciousness as anything but a synonym for general chaos and for people who liked awesome music until I came across bitcoin. Then I realized, for the first time in my life, that it was an actual political philosophy. Perhaps this is more effective than explicitly mentioning it and calling it bad, similarly to the effect of putting a “Do not touch” label over a big red button; it’s weird thinking about my blue-piller pre-philosophy days.

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Danny Chadwick May 19, 2014 at 8:02 pm

I don’t think I ever saw a chapter in any text book labeled “Anarchy.” And I don’t think the subject was ever directly addressed. Anarchy was always used as an adjective that carried the same weight of the word “apocalypse”

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Cameron T. Belt May 20, 2014 at 12:42 pm

I never encountered the word, and if I did it was probably in the context of some form of chaos, not real anarchy. I never was introduced to it until i started listening to stefan molyneaux, and I read For A New Liberty, which lays the ground work for a free society (anarchy).

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Robert Uhls May 21, 2014 at 3:14 pm

I’m sure most of you have either said or heard someone else say, “communism would work in a perfect society, but this isn’t a perfect society.” Wouldn’t the same idea be applied to anarchy? Like, to you guys, what makes anarchism more realistic?

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  Micah Christensen May 30, 2014 at 5:22 am
  
  Since there is no standard to perfection, thereby making it unattainable, that’s a clever way of saying “Communism is impossible”, which is not a logical argument, but a statement; I don’t believe there was any intention for communism to work with a perfect society. Its pitfall was in misunderstanding just how important the price mechanism is, which communists (originally AFAIK) sought to abolish privately and only allow it to be dictated publicly. This is an example of a reasoned argument as to why communism has troubles functioning.
  
  Now, to immediately take the aforementioned statement from an economic system and to paste it onto a political philosophy is very far-reaching; not only is the statement baseless, but it’s being derived from something completely different, to the point where we can only assume the individual making this assertion has already made a value judgment as to the validity of the projected concept (in this case being, “Anarchism is impossible.”) If it is you who has done so, then the more accurate way you would’ve phrased your message is, “Communism is impossible, and anarchism is viewed (by popular opinion/by me specifically) as being similar to communism: therefore, anarchism is impossible. Ergo, anarchists are wrong/utopians/enemies of liberty (etc.)” Which isn’t very much to go off of, but I will do my best!
  
  We must first separate the two concepts: communism is a completely separate ideology from anarchism, so the negative connotations applied to communism must likewise be separated. Now, with our concept by itself, we can define it plainly: anarchism is the political philosophy wherein individuals participate voluntarily (thereby stateless, since the state’s compulsory quality is inherit), sometimes defined as within hierarchical structures, sometimes defined without: there are many different schools of thought within Anarchism; you’ll generally find the voluntaryist philosophy within libertarian circles, sometimes called Anarcho-Capitalists or “AnCaps”, which aren’t necessarily against hierarchy, merely involuntary participation; in contrast, “anarchists”, or anarcho-socialists (sometimes called “classical anarchists”) are against hierarchical structures, which is perhaps where one would conceive the notion that the communist and the anarchist are similar.
  
  Anyhow, voluntaryists (i.e. libertarian anarchists) perceive stateless societies as the logical extension of the Non-Aggression Principle, which is itself an extension of a complete respect for one’s property, due to the fact that the state requires the violation of one’s property to function: a state is defined as a geographical monopoly over the use of force, and to do so necessitates claiming ownership over individual property (otherwise the state couldn’t do anything it’s supposed to do); a state which asks permission to take over an individual’s property cannot be defined as a state because it’s not compulsory, through the same distinction one would make between voluntary intercourse and forced intercourse (we generally call one rape but not the other.)
  
  This leaves the question of how society would be organized without the state, which is no longer a matter of political philosophy, but of economics: because the market–defined as rational actors participating in trade–already provides most everything we already need, it is difficult to assert that there would be no businesses willing to fill the gap that the state leaves; if there is a desire, there is a provider, and if people want roads, they will get them, for in capitalism, the consumer is king, which just so happens to fall into the idea of individual sovereignty, thus tying the knot between the Austrian school and voluntaryist thought.
  
  This leaves the question: can men handle total liberty? This is a very personal question that everyone answers differently (and unfortunately, the answer is negative.) But no matter what the answer, there is always a positive: if anarchism manages to fail, there will be a new government to fill the void very quickly; this can occur only if people truly wish it to happen. The good thing about anarchy is that we can always go straight back to statism if things don’t work out. However, if anarchism does work, then we have a much more humane and productive way to organize and we can continue human advancement boundlessly. There’s no real negative to anarchism, only fear and prejudice (mostly propagated by popular media as being chaos and evil and whatnot; we’ve all heard the “Somalia” line by fear-mongers, but that’s an entirely different explanation.)
  
  So to answer the question, I don’t see anarchism as “more realistic”; I see it as the logical end and necessary state (for lack of a better term) of society to usher mankind’s final steps into liberty, which is the entire point of the liberty movement if I do say so: to maximize liberty. If we sell ourselves short in self-defeat by assuming man cannot ever be free, but “mostly free”, then our enemies have already won; the state must always run our lives and the liberty movement is lost.
  
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Brad L. Farr May 29, 2014 at 4:43 pm

I’m in the public system in the UK right now, and we have never been taught about anarchy. It’s almost as though we haven’t had to be taught, which shows how ingrained statism is into British culture (with the exception of Scotland it seems), and come to that we have never truly been taught about political or economic systems, public education here genuinely teaches nothing. It’s not even designed to propagandise really, just keep as many people as possible stupid, and as many public sector employees as possible in employment.

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Christo Hattingh May 30, 2014 at 5:32 am

I went to a ‘private’ school here in South Africa, but much of the subject matter in subjects such as history was focused on the collective ‘achievements’ of the ANC in ending Apartheid. Not a whole lot of discussion about how much better South Africans would be doing if we really were free. Then again, I didn’t attend a public school so I don’t know whether I got off better than others.

A lot of academics, politicians and the social higher-ups admonish everyone to get involved in education and to help fund schools – however, the focus is definitely on public schools.

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Amber Moon June 21, 2014 at 11:19 am

I was allowed to homeschool myself by 9th grade.

Of course they changed the meaning of anarchy

“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”

– H.L. Mencken
“…the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:

1. Obedient soldiers to the army;
2. Obedient workers to the mines;
3. Well subordinated civil servants to government;
4. Well subordinated clerks to industry
5. Citizens who thought alike about major issues.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.”
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Educate/public_school_nightmare.htm

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Connor Johnston June 21, 2014 at 12:09 pm

Every characteristic statists subscribe to anarchy- chaos, lawlessness, hierarchy, dog eat dog, every man for his/herself- can be found in recess at a public school.

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Thomas Bogle June 25, 2014 at 4:42 am

I am a public school teacher (business, entrepreneurship, economics, technology) and I often talk about anarchy as a social order, but I know that I am the exception to the rule.

For the last two years, in a Business Management course, I have spent a significant amount of time in the class discussing the difference between what is legal and what is ethical, laws versus social norms, and the worthlessness of regulation in achieving its stated objectives.

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Mike Trapp June 25, 2014 at 5:04 am

I agree with Ludwig von Mises in this regard:

State and government are the social apparatus of violent coercion and repression. Such an apparatus, the police power, is indispensable in order to prevent anti-social individuals and bands from destroying social co-operation. Violent prevention and suppression of anti-social activities benefit the whole of society and each of its members. But violence and oppression are none the less evils and corrupt those in charge of their application. It is necessary to restrict the power of those in office lest they become absolute despots. Society cannot exist without an apparatus of violent coercion. But neither can it exist if the office holders are irresponsible tyrants free to inflict harm upon those they dislike.

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Anonymous June 25, 2014 at 9:55 am

Anarchy is human nature, not sitting a desk for 6 hours a day listening to broken machines spew out non-sensical propaganda just because they don’t want to get a REAL job.

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