The latest installment of a multi-part series. Read Part 2 here.
9. Mass Men, mass production, minimum Standards and human capital.
If you’ve ever made homemade bread, you realize it takes time and loving attention. One searches out the best ingredients, reads all the labels, and hones appropriate proportions and rise times that depend on factors such as humidity, room and oven temperature, and other variations that occur in real ingredients and in real life. Making good bread, like artisan cheeses, or any handcrafted piece is an art.
Nurturing minds, your own child’s mind is like that as well. One cannot separate the mind from the body or the spirit. Nor can one ignore the emotions, the setting factors, and the variances of talent, temperament, interest or heart in each unique individual. Children are a gift from God to be handled with His guidance, time and loving attention.
Mass produced bread gets shoved here and there and is trashed with very little concern. Homemade bread is crafted with care, anticipated with its attending aroma, appreciated for its taste, texture, nutrient value, extra efforts, shared with family and friends, and savored to the last crumb.
When the Third-Party payers took over education, outsourcing the designated transmitters, the parents accountable to God, they needed student-testing outcomes on dictated minimum standards to report metrics to third party investors.
Now, we all know what “minimum standards” have done for any industry.
Houses were far better constructed when the builder and homeowner worked together, eye-to-eye to design and build a house that would become a home enjoyed for generations, packed with friends and remarked upon as representative of the excellent craftsmanship of the builder.
Medical care was far better when the patient-doctor relationship had no third party middlemen dictating minimum and maximum allowable fees, appointment times, procedure frequency, record documentation, services, interventions, medications, reimbursements, surgeons, stays, providers, co-pays, information transportability, diagnosis codes and insurance processing.
Food was far more nutritious when the farmer raised foods he, his family and neighbors would eat; food that was not genetically modified to kill bugs, weeds and consumers. Nor was the food government subsidized to control market prices and pawned off on government aligned institutions, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, food banks and impoverished countries.
When men are educated in mass, conditioned for obedience to a minimum ‘standard’, and viewed only as human capital to be regimented in rank and file for labor and consumption purposes, then human life is devalued to that of day old commercial bread. In contrast to proposed theories of humanitarian benevolence, the socialist humanist models result in very little respect for human life, individual distinction, or individual liberty. 
10. Liberty requires that education be privately funded, parent directed.
“A general education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.” ~ J.S. Mill, On Liberty 1859
Even political economist, parliamentarian, Utilitarian John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), dubbed as “the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century,” rallied against standardized government subsidized education. Mill himself was educated at home by his parents.
J. S. Mill was a great advocate of education for all, as he sought to see the people of England equipped with the abilities to vote and participate in governance. Yet, the locale of education was not to be dictated and “there would be no official pressure to supply people with teachers previously instructed in government training colleges. In the words of Adam Smith: ‘They would soon find better teachers than any whom the state could provide for them.” Educator, Philosopher, Economist Adam Smith (1723-1790), the author of “Wealth of Nations”, noted for the division of labor, had himself been a college professor and witnessed the realities of government subsidized education.
“In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching.” ~ Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations (1776)
To be continued.
Dr. Dawn Kazmierzak has over twenty years in private practice Optometry. Academic stickers include majors in biology, neurobiology, neuroscience, visual science, doctorate of Optometry; post-graduate work for SUNY and West Point (USMC) in developmental and hospital-based Optometry; cognitive science Feuerstein trained in Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) and FIE (Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment). Having been transmitted a love of learning and commitment to discerning the truth from her parents, she and her husband labor to model this transmission to their daughter.
It was (and is), the anchors of faith in Christ and Biblical study that shielded Dawn from the operant conditioning that accompanies academic “successes.” These studies and stickers (degrees, certifications) were chosen in preparation for participation in third-world medical missions. If individuals lack the abilities to see, it is very difficult to teach themselves, grow in their faith, or provide for their families. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 This applies to physical, cognitive(mental) and spiritual ‘sight.’
You, as a homeschool parent, do not need all these stickers to transmit truth to and equip your child for their future; but, in her opinion, one does need a relationship with The Author, who defines what is true, right and just. Genesis 18:19. This relationship will provide all you need.
Blessings on your transmissions of your culture!