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Scotland keeps cracking down

I reported previously on Scotland's "named person" law, which assigns a non-parental busybody to monitor the well-being of every single child in Scotland until age eighteen.

Not only is that plan going forward, but schools and "named persons" in Scotland are going to start using questions and interrogations in the form of games to gather information about children's homes. That information will then be entered into a large database and used to evaluate children's well-being.

There aren't a lot of details available yet (that I could find) but here's what we have so far:

Younger children will be encouraged to divulge information about their home life in lessons which include prompt cards, games and songs to familiarise them with the Scottish Government’s definition of well-being.

Older children will face a series of questions, on areas ranging from home life to sexual health, which ask them to rate experiences on a scale from zero to ten.

Teachers across the country are now being trained to transfer the children’s answers into the database. One of the tests, a Scottish Government-endorsed tool called ‘What I Think’, is designed to tease out details of pupils’ family lives with leading questions, even in nursery schools.

A number of sample scenarios involving children are given to teachers to help them with filling in online sections correctly. Examples include a male child, ‘J’ mentioning that he did not miss his mother when staying overnight with his grandmother.

Another describes how he ‘burst his lip at the park’ when he was there by himself but when he went home his father shouted at him, telling him he was ‘a big boy and I shouldn’t cry like a big baby’.

Others refer to him telling feeling scared in his room sometimes and, while his mother allows him to keep the light on sometimes, ‘if I’m not good she puts it off’.

In Angus, pupils are being given prompt cards which include questions such as: ‘Who cleans your house? Is it cosy? Who makes the tea? What does your bedroom look like?’

Prompt cards have also been produced for parents, encouraging them to ‘behave in a way that sets a good example to your child’ and ‘participate in community activities’.

Named Persons must judge each youngster’s well-being against a government checklist that includes indicators such as a pupil needing fillings at the dentist, being disruptive in class or failing to carry out voluntary work.

An investigation involving social workers could follow if a youngster is not ‘generally optimistic’, fails to display ‘positive attitudes to others’ sexuality’ or is injured playing sport.

Each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities is already given software to keep track of pupils’ attendance, performance and behaviour on a system called SEEMiS, with information shared with the Scottish Government and the NHS.

But the system was upgraded last Thursday to include a section with a ‘Well-being Application’ which will act as a repository for data which will be accessible only to designated state guardians.

Well.

Now, here's an interesting question: Scotland does allow home schooling. In fact, I seem to remember reading some years ago that some home schoolers in England actually moved to Scotland because the home schooling laws in Scotland were more free than those in England. I'm afraid they must now regret that decision! Home schoolers cannot escape the Named Person intrusion (including compulsory home visits), but what about these questionnaires and prompt cards? Will it be more difficult for the government to collect this data on home schoolers, since most children will be questioned at school?

As I said in the previous post about this insanity in Scotland, I don't see the U.S. going to a Named Person system soon, though that might happen eventually. Here are some things I do think are likely in the U.S., and I see these as accentuating the difference between home schooling and virtually all bricks and mortar schooling as far as privacy is concerned:

1) Databases will rev up tremendously via Common Core for centralized educational tracking of children in the school systems, including all private schools that accept public funds. This is already happening.

2) My crystal ball predicts that within ten to fifteen years some kind of individual well-being indicator will be added to those databases without parents' knowledge or consent. During that same time period, however, I predict that there will be no way to gather that data for home schoolers. (Because the U.S. doesn't have a "Named Person" system.)

3) I predict that nearly all private schools will be roped into the data-tracking system, either by tempting with public funds or, if that fails, by direct regulation. The last to succumb will be the tiny, little private schools that take no public funds and do not accredit their teachers for reasons of independence from government interference. They will have to be brow-beaten into compliance with tracking their students or driven out of business.

4) Eventually all of this tracking of children, including their well-being, will be accepted (I predict). At first there will be an outcry when it comes out how much data your child's school is collecting and how it is being used, but people will feel a combination of helplessness and a desire not to look like wacky conspiracy theorists, and little will be done. Gradually having strangers hundreds of miles away have access to your child's information and evaluate "how he's doing" via computer will come to seem normal.

5) Once this happens, the calls will go out to rope home schoolers into this system. We see already how the leftists are shocked, shocked to find that home schoolers' educational progress is not monitored more carefully by the state. That will only take on more urgency as more monitoring for other children becomes the norm. The general totalitarian opposition to home schooling will find a handle and a focus once it is the norm for other children's well-being to be "objectively" evaluated according to "common standards" and "norms" which are not being applied to those pesky home schoolers.

What happens after that depends entirely on how much political clout home schoolers retain both in Washington and in their own states.

When I originally wrote about the Scotland Named Person fiasco, I said this in comments:

The instinct against totalitarianism is surprisingly easy to lull into somnolence. Cliches like "child safety" and "not letting children slip through the net," especially coming after a couple of decades during which people have become accustomed to Nanny statism and to giving up their privacy, and you end up with a surprising number of droids who don't yell, "What??? The hell you say!!" when they hear of a plan like this. The love of freedom is not actually an unquenchable burning in the heart of every man. A surprising number are willing to sell that birthright for a mess of pottage in the form of "safety for the children" or what-not.

The point should be especially instructive to those on the slightly more traditionalist right. We should be careful about "dissing" freedom, talking like freedom is the bad guy, and accustoming people to think that authoritarianism is really a good thing. That just softens them up for collectivism.

In my opinion, while libertarianism is poor as a totalizing Philosophy of All Politics, every conservative should have a strong libertarian streak in him. There should be seen to be something valuable about freedom and privacy from government intrusion. Americans have had, in the past, that sense of independence, that "Get off my land" instinct, and I think we should keep it, not try to stamp it out as some sort of "bad individualism" or "liberalism."

It is worth noting that Quebec, a long-lived, self-consciously Catholic province, is one of the worst for educational freedom and parental freedom in all of Canada. Even home schoolers are supposed to use a curriculum on moral and religious matters dictated by the state. And the bishops were hardly helpful in fighting it.

By sheer empirical observation, we should note that the "individualistic" country of America has retained a more vibrant Christianity than many a confessional state, including the freedom of Christians to raise their children.

The fact of the matter is that an approach that generally opposes governmental intervention in the raising and education of children has served Christians well, again and again. Yes, that means that there are going to be Wiccan parents who raise their children to do spells. Yes, that means that there are going to be negligent parents who don't give their kids enough education. But I maintain that the cost of giving the government the power to oversee and prevent those abuses is too high and that freedom is the better way. Is this a prudential judgement? Yes, in part. But it's a prudential judgement with a principled basis in the natural family and its rightful sphere sovereignty, which shouldn't be easily tampered with.

I therefore suggest to anybody with an authoritarian impulse on the right that he should consider the lessons of history and ask himself whether, after all, it turns out that there is something to be said for freedom as a value. And something to be said for Acton's dictum. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

The power to take away your children, and the power to threaten to do so as a means of controlling your behavior, is right up there on the scale in the direction of "absolute power."

Comments (46)

As a somewhat authoritarian conservative, I would respond that the problem with this scheme is not so much that it violates "freedom" but rather that it is wicked. It violates the natural law by displacing parents in favor of strangers and faceless bureaucrats and undermines subsidiarity by handing to the government what should be the job of extended family, neighbors, and intermediate institutions.

But because natural law has virtually no currency in modern policy-making, we have to resort to leftist-friendly language about freedom. A Named Person advocate would respond that he is defending the child's freedom not to be called a wuss, or his freedom to have a night light. The questions "whose freedom?" and "free to do what?" can't be avoided.

we have to resort to leftist-friendly language about freedom.

I do not consider that leftist-friendly.

The questions "whose freedom?" and "free to do what?" can't be avoided.

I agree with you.

I submit, however, that the concept of freedom can be rightly wielded to oppose plans of this kind, and that doing so is not compromising in any way. Whether a somewhat authoritarian conservative likes it or not, it's a sociological fact that many extremely good instincts, including instincts for subsidiarity and against collectivism and totalitarianism, are called up by both the term and the concept of freedom.

This scheme violates rightful freedom, which is what we should mean by "freedom." To be sure, that isn't what everybody means by "freedom," but it's what a lot of people mean by "freedom," at least in particular cases.

what should be the job of extended family, neighbors, and intermediate institutions.

Maybe, maybe not. It shouldn't really be the job of anybody else to keep a constant lookout over the child's vague "well-being" *and to intervene with or without the parents' consent* if any aspect of the child's "well-being" is not being addressed.

All of those others are going to need to stand aside even in _some_ cases where a child's perfect well-being is not being maintained.

In fact, I would be inclined to doubt that there are _any_ circumstances in which neighbors, extended family, and intermediate institutions should have the power to intervene *against the parents' wishes* where the government (the local government, preferably) should *not* have power.

For example, consider diet: Suppose that I look on with a head shake at some situation where parents are putting their kids on a vegan diet for non-medical reasons. I'm concerned about whether or not the kids are going to get enough protein, B-12, and iron, especially because maybe I know that the parents aren't being all that careful about researching and making sure of that. Suppose I'm a neighbor. If there ends up being credible evidence that the children are objectively malnourished, then that would be a time when the authorities would have a right at least to make inquiries. But I seriously doubt that there is a gray area in between where some "intermediate institution" or neighbors, or anyone other than the parents has the rightful authority to feed the children things forbidden by their parents, against the parents' wishes, but where there is not grounds for investigation of actual, serious, dietary neglect. In short, I doubt that I should be secretly inviting the kids over to my house for steak dinner behind their parents' back if I don't think the situation is serious enough to call CPS.

So we need to maintain a very robust notion of the authority of the nuclear family, to be set aside only in extreme situations. Certainly such extreme situations can and do arise with depressing frequency. But that's what forcible intervention is for, and I see no daylight between "mediating institutions" and local government at that point. The most that the neighbors, mediating institutions, etc., can do is present an alternative perspective to the extent that the parents are willing to listen to it or have their children exposed to it.

Lydia - It's funny you mentioned the vegan example since I just had a relevant conversation with my wife. She's friends with a woman at our church whose sister is vegan and constantly adds new restrictions to her family's diet. They were all thin to begin with and the adults have lost 10-15 lbs in the last month. I held their 3 year old this weekend he weighed nothing. My wife's friend expressed some concern to her sister and the sister told her to stick it where the sun don't shine. That was the end of it. I think it was right for my wife's friend to express her concern, and she was also right to back off when the sister told her to shove it. IMHO, the role of the intermediate institutions is at best persuasive or collaborative. I would not support giving the kid a cheeseburger behind mom's back. So I think we agree that if you think it's gotten to the point where that kind of intervention is necessary, it's within the state's coercive authority.

CJ, let's hope that your wife's friend's sister will retreat from the stuff that would imperil the 3-year old to any serious extent. But, in my experience, having her sister "express some concern" (and, good chance it really was concern and not a verbal beating), the recipient (already uncomfortable with whether they had chosen the right path) sometimes becomes so defensive that they become hardened into defending their action (or idea) in a much more insistent way than they would have had she never been "attacked". Which means that in a certain number of cases my hope might be a forlorn one. Do you think, when this woman's sister perceives not merely that the child is very light, but positively ill and diminishing in health, that she has a positive role NOT to back down, to insist firmly and with emphasis "you are making your child ill, this theory is not working"?

Lydia, the very idea of what Scotland is doing, jumping the pond and being done here, is enough to make me ill. Seriously. Talk about totalitarianism! That's not a nanny state, that's a nanny on amphetamines, PCP, and steroids. What kind of people CHOOSE this sort of insanity for themselves?

The Scottish law needs to be put into a proper context. Perhaps parenting has collapsed in large sections of the populace and needs support.

I dissent strongly against the notion that the State has no legitimate notion in education of the young. A state that lets education entirely alone is not going to remain a state for long.
European states were intermixed with the Church and the Church had the primary role in education.

That Christians talk of freedom from the State implies that they are alienated from the State. You won't find these complaints from the Leftists

Western freedom was born in Athens in the atmosphere that it was the task of the City collectively to educate the young. There was no notion of parental autonomy or priority.

The State is the organ of the City charged with its preservation over long times. This task demands careful attention to the education of the young. However, in a plural society, the task can be taken up by the intermediate organs, like particular Churches. Let Catholics teach their own, Mormons their own and Moslems their own. This might work provided there is an undisputed authority over these pluralisms and the young need to be educated into obeying this authority as well. More than obedience, the young need to identify themselves with the authority. This task is impossible given the rhetoric of parental priority.

Thus, the talk of freedom is leftism, undiluted. It may, however, serve to address, for a while, particular concerns of an alienated and disaffected minority, similar to protestations made by the Catholic Church over religious freedom which, when closely read, She defines in a
manner that does not preclude suppression of freedom of error if and when the Church comes into power again.

Yes, that means that there are going to be Wiccan parents who raise their children to do spells. Yes, that means that there are going to be negligent parents who don't give their kids enough education. But I maintain that the cost of giving the government the power to oversee and prevent those abuses is too high and that freedom is the better way.

And it is not as though public schools are any shield from malicious parenting. True story... my mother used to tutor a black kid when I was in 3rd grade in South Carolina. He went from Ds to As and showed his mother his progress. Did she celebrate? No, ma'am... She all but spat in the little boy's face and told him to stop actin white.

That's what the boy told my mother. She said the look on face his was absolutely crushed resignation. What school system can undo that? None. You'd have to empower the state to call that behavior a form of criminal negligence. Morally, it certainly is criminal negligence. However, I am not confident that you could articulate a policy that safely covers such parents without covering also parents that are evolution skeptics, among other things.

We have to remember that the vast majority of people who are skeptics of homeschooling are middle and upper class. It would never occur to them to not prioritize the well-being of their children. It is alien to them to even contemplate a parent saying "boyyyy you think you're better than me" or "stop actin white" in response to academic success. Yet it is a common pathology in the white and black lower class. Probably less in the white, but not by too terribly much.

Bedarz illustrates exactly the sort of totalitarian-enabling rhetoric on the right against which I was writing. Thanks, Bedarz. I won't bother arguing with you. I know from past experience that it is merely a time waster. Nor will I wish for you and/or your loved ones that you get nabbed by the sort of thing I am writing about in the main post and have your children taken away by the government for frivolous, ideologically charged reasons. But if, God forbid, it should happen, as has happened to so many people all over the Western world, remember that you heard it here--no, freedom from state coercion over how you raise your children is not a pernicious, leftist notion. Quite the contrary.

Homeschooling in the US actually bears a much closer resemblance to education in ancient Greece, BI. The Greeks would be absolutely horrified at our model and would denounce it as a breeding ground for mediocrity and disloyalty to the City, hatred of excellence and a den of vice.

Do you think, when this woman's sister perceives not merely that the child is very light, but positively ill and diminishing in health, that she has a positive role NOT to back down, to insist firmly and with emphasis "you are making your child ill, this theory is not working"
?

Yes, and if the kid develops beri beri or rickets or something, it's proper for the state to move in with its coercive power. I think that threshold for state involvement should be extraordinarily high, but I do believe that it is necessary in some cases.

One of the many problems we have is the assumption that if there's a problem that state must have the solution. The kind of traditional, moral authority wielded by intermediate institutions has been hollowed out.

CJ, I think that one thing that you may be getting at that is correct is this: There is a place for neighbors, friends, and intermediate institutions (churches, for example) to look out for children in an _informal_ way and to _influence_ families informally. The "looking out" may eventually take the form of having to call in the government, but prior to that it should have a characteristic that (at the risk of sounding like a hippie) I can only call organic. Sometimes it will seem nosy and annoying. In a small town I imagine people get very tired of having everybody know if a couple has had an argument, for example. But that organic sense of connection with other people and even a sense that people might have a negative opinion of what you are doing, though backed up by no coercive force, has social force.

What the government of Scotland, and leftists generally, are trying to do is to formalize that organic notion of social opinion and peer pressure, to wrest it to serve their own ends, and to corrupt it into outright spying on one another and the worst kind of busy-body-ish behavior and collectivist bullying.

What the government of Scotland, and leftists generally, are trying to do is to formalize that organic notion of social opinion and peer pressure, to wrest it to serve their own ends, and to corrupt it into outright spying on one another and the worst kind of busy-body-ish behavior and collectivist bullying.

Right. What's more, the actual busybodies aren't people with "organic" connections to the kids. They're just hirelings. If someone is going to look over my mom's shoulder, I'd rather it be my grandparents, aunts, and uncles than my personal kiddie probation officer.

Bedarz illustrates exactly the sort of totalitarian-enabling rhetoric on the right against which I was writing.

Lydia, Bedarz's comments are some of the most pernicious, grotesque, and heinous remarks I have seen in some time:

similar to protestations made by the Catholic Church over religious freedom which, when closely read, She defines in a manner that does not preclude suppression of freedom of error if and when the Church comes into power again.

So he tries to cover his repulsive theories with a pretense of similarity with what the Catholic Church teaches. He claims

and the Church had the primary role in education.
More than obedience, the young need to identify themselves with the authority. This task is impossible given the rhetoric of parental priority.

But the Church utterly contradicts this:

Pius XI in Representanti In Terra #12: "In the first place comes the family, instituted directly by God for its peculiar purpose, the generation and formation of offspring. For this reason it has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society."
Catechism #2223: "Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children." #2221 "The right and duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable."

Bedarz makes out that his civil authority being the undisputed authority controlling everything is compatible with the Church's and family's roles:

The State is the organ of the City charged with its preservation over long times. This task demands careful attention to the education of the young. However, in a plural society, the task can be taken up by the intermediate organs, like particular Churches. Let Catholics teach their own, Mormons their own and Moslems their own. This might work provided there is an undisputed authority over these pluralisms and the young need to be educated into obeying this authority as well. More than obedience, the young need to identify themselves with the authority. This task is impossible given the rhetoric of parental priority.

But this is utterly repudiated by what the Church says herself:

Pius XI, Representati in Terra #48: "...the state should respect the inherent rights of the Church and of the family concerning Christian education, and moreover have regard for distributive justice. Accordingly, unjust and unlawful is any monopoly, educational or scholastic, which, physically or morally, forces families to make use of government schools...contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience, or contrary to even to their legitimate preferences."
Paul VI, On Christian Education #6: "Parents who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to educate their children must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools.
Canon Law. 794 §1. The duty and right of educating belongs in a special way to the Church, to which has been divinely entrusted the mission of assisting persons so that they are able to reach the fullness of the Christian life.

Bedarz pretends that Scotland's interference into the family is acceptable on the basis of the family failing:

The Scottish law needs to be put into a proper context. Perhaps parenting has collapsed in large sections of the populace and needs support.

But this is pure BS. (Notice, too, that he hides his smear of families behind the weasel word "perhaps".)

Catechism 1883 Socialization also presents dangers. Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative. The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions. 1894 In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, neither the state nor any larger society should substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies. 2209 The family must be helped and defended by appropriate social measures. Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family. Following the principle of subsidiarity, larger communities should take care not to usurp the family's prerogatives or interfere in its life.

The first principle of subsidiarity is to leave the lower order to its own proper function. The SECOND principle is that when the lower order community is failing, intervention must primarily be directed to repairing the defect which is causing it to fail of its function. Whenever the community of the lower order is unable to fulfill its role, the proper role of the higher order is to step in and temporarily help fulfill the function the lower order is missing, and to repair the defect in the lower order so that the higher can CEASE to so intervene and return to its own proper sphere.

Nobody in the right minds thinks that this is what Scotland is proposing to do, that this is what they understand themselves to be doing, that their plan is temporary, that they will help repair families so they don't have to perform these functions any more. There is no widespread, general failure of Scots parents in taking care of their children going on here, it is shear interference without shred of basis, and Bedarz's defense of it is contemptible.

Western freedom was born in Athens in the atmosphere that it was the task of the City collectively to educate the young. There was no notion of parental autonomy or priority.

Even Bedarz's merely historical claim is utter hogwash, balderdash, and deceitfulness:

In their young years, Athenian children were taught at home, sometimes under the guidance of a master or pedagogue. They were taught basic morals, until they began elementary education at approximately seven years of age. Children were taught how to read and write, as well as how to count and draw. which involves music,reading and gynasium, "Education and Training," Ancient Greece Children were taught letters and then syllables, followed by words and sentences. Reading and writing were taught at the same time. Students would write using a stylus, with which they would etch onto a wax-covered board. When children were ready to begin reading whole works, they would often be given poetry to memorize and recite.[4] An elementary education was the only education available to most people, especially the poor.[5] Children belonging to the upper social classes would receive formal elementary education since their parents would be able to afford to hire a tutor or to send them to a public school.[6] Children coming from poor families, however, would only be offered informal education, and the extent of their exposure to the above subjects would be directly linked to the knowledge of their parents

His comments are full of ignorance, error, defamation, and malignancy.

I am no opponent of homeschooling, quite on contrary, I defend it as a proper response of an alienated minority. Tony apparently did not read what he quoted:

Let Catholics teach their own, Mormons their own and Moslems their own.

Is this a defense of compulsory government education?
But homeschooling must be structured within the parameters of a defined community such as Catholic, Mormons etc. A family can not be a rule onto itself but must adapt to a rule bigger than itself. Though, it is upto a family to choose whose unit it wants to be.

The homeschooling, unrestrained from any authority whatsoever, purely on the parental will, would it have assimilated millions of immigrants and built the nation?

The Athenians, even the poor ones, were not alienated from the State. Even if they taught their young on their own, they would teach them to love the City and its gods. The City could rely upon them.

The Scottish people are Left enough by themselves, by all I hear. Why would a Govt. need to indoctrinate their children?

The homeschooling, unrestrained from any authority whatsoever, purely on the parental will, would it have assimilated millions of immigrants and built the nation?

Allowing a large influx of immigrants (a migration, not really immigration) is not a policy that any traditional state would have suffered in the first place. It's precisely the sort of liberalism you decry that allowed that to happen in the first place. Do you think a city state of 100k like Athens would have tolerated 15k barbarians moving into their city to find jobs?

The homeschooling, unrestrained from any authority whatsoever, purely on the parental will, would it have assimilated millions of immigrants and built the nation?

To a considerable extent - in the context of colonial America - yes. It did. Because the immigrants were largely British.

Public school systems existed only in New England, which also had a strong private and collegiate system. From the individual's viewpoint how much education a person received depended on a person's social and family status. Families did most of the educating, and boys were generally favored. Basic education in literacy and numeracy was widely available, especially to whites residing in the northern and middle colonies, and the literacy rate was relatively high in world perspective. Educational opportunities were much sparser in the rural South.
In the New England colonies, parents believed that their children should learn about Christianity. To that end, parents taught their children to read so they could read the Bible. And once those kids knew how to read, they could read school books as well. New England villages having more than 100 families set up grammar schools, which taught boys Latin and math and other subjects needed to get into college. And although girls could read, they weren't allowed to go to grammar school or to college.

Middle Colonies schools were also largely religious but taught the teachings of one religion. If you were a Catholic, you learned about the Catholic religion. Most schools were private. Students also learned other subjects so they could get into college. Again, girls weren't allowed to attend, unless they were Quakers.

School-age kids in the Southern Colonies were taught at home, for the most part, by their parents or by private tutors. When these kids became teenagers, they would then go off to college or to Europe. As in the other colonies, Southern girls did not go to school.

Bedarz:

Tony apparently did not read what he quoted:
Let Catholics teach their own, Mormons their own and Moslems their own.

It was the implication that it is up to the civil government to decide whether to "let" Catholics or Mormons to teach their own, that the primacy of authority and responsibility for this is with the government, that I refuted.

The Scottish people are Left enough by themselves, by all I hear. Why would a Govt. need to indoctrinate their children?

What kind of imbecility is this? The answer is clear to those who have eyes to see, ears to hear: TOTALitarianism brooks no limits. It requires totality. The leftward march, however far it has already gone, has still farther to go if the family still has any authority of its own. Scottish parents will find themselves constrained to avoiding certain perfectly healthy, normal, upright things, out of fear for what it will look like to the busybodies, out of fear for how the nosy bureaucrats will choose to write it down for the databases. Parents will find themselves avoiding teaching the fullness of their own Christian faith because they fear the nameless and irreligious civil servants will write it up as extremism. And it just goes on from there. We know how it progresses, we saw its end result in Communist Russia.

Thus, the talk of freedom is leftism, undiluted. It may, however, serve to address, for a while, particular concerns of an alienated and disaffected minority,
That Christians talk of freedom from the State implies that they are alienated from the State. You won't find these complaints from the Leftists
The Athenians, even the poor ones, were not alienated from the State.
Though, it is upto a family to choose whose unit it wants to be.

As Bedarz would have it, If a Christian country has anti-Christians agitate to repudiate Christianity from the life of the civitas, the only recourse of Christians who as a result “are alienated” from their own polis is to leave the polis and go find one that is more congenial. There is no room, in his book, for trying to turn the tables and return the country to its Christian roots. There is no room, in his book, for even so much as trying to LIMIT the damage from the anti-Christian left and just living with a less-than-perfect deal. You don’t like the anti-Christian polity that the haters of Christianity are TRYING to build? Then get out. That’s your choice. And don’t grumble about it, either.

The Scottish people are Left enough by themselves, by all I hear. Why would a Govt. need to indoctrinate their children?

That's hilarious. So if you hear a rumor that some country is full of lefties, then you hear of a news story that the government of said country is engaging in totalitarian overreach to interfere with all the families and indoctrinate all the children, you conclude that it *must not be that bad*, since the country is full of lefties anyway, so the govt. couldn't be trying to indoctrinate all the children for _that_ reason. What a joke of an argument.

since the country is full of lefties anyway, so the govt. couldn't be trying to indoctrinate all the children for _that_ reason.

Because Mensheviks are fungible with Bolsheviks. Just ask the Mensheviks.

The Papal States were never mistaken for a libertian utopia. Clearly the Papal writings must be read in the çommunitarian sense of Freedom and not exclusively the libertian sense.
They probably mean like "If you are a Jew, you could teach your child in the Jewish ways, provided the education isn't actively contrary to the State."

To repeat, I do affirm homeschooling as a proper response to Left indoctrination in public schools. I do not recommend fleeing in all circumstances.
I just offer an alternative çommunitarian justification as CJ suggested above.

provided the education isn't actively contrary to the State

The state is only owed obedience to the extent that it is trying to fulfill its natural mission. What Scotland is doing here is very much outside of that.

To repeat, I do affirm homeschooling as a proper response to Left indoctrination in public schools.

According to the Popes, homeschooling is a proper response to the duty to educate in ALL circumstances in which the parents decide that homeschool is a good option. Even if there is no Left indoctrination in public schools:

Accordingly, unjust and unlawful is any monopoly, educational or scholastic, which, physically or morally, forces families to make use of government schools...contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience, or contrary to even to their legitimate preferences.

If parents merely _prefer_ to homeschool even though the public or private schools are GOOD, the parents have that prerogative. For their rights over education are "primordial and inalienable".

Clearly the Papal writings must be read in the çommunitarian sense of Freedom and not exclusively the libertian sense. (sic)... I just offer an alternative çommunitarian justification as CJ suggested above.

Libertarianism gets little support from the contributors here. A certain sort of "communitarian" ideas get a lot of support - as long as they put the community in the proper place. There are TWO distinct natural communities which receive authority from God, each authority having primacy within its own proper sphere: the family, and the state. Necessarily, then, there are matters in which the state has no authority to tell the family what to do. (One of the classic ones is on telling a man or a woman to marry a specific person i.e. in the formation of a family.)

But even more fundamentally, BOTH of these communities are circumscribed by limits on their authority, for man is intended for the Eternal City, whereas each of these natural communities are intended only for the earthly pilgrimage. Man does not exist for the City, the City exists for the sake of man. Even that common good which is the purpose of the City does not subsist in "the City" separately from its men, it subsists in the men which make it up, collectively - and those men have a still greater good besides, of which the City is not the arbiter. The City's authority is therefore limited.

And in Sirach (15:14), "God left man in the hand of his own counsel", the Church sees a clear sign that "the good of man" to which the City is directed is, in very significant part, ensuring a free field of opportunity of deliberation and choice in which each man, individually, can find and make his own contribution to the good of the many communities to which he belongs. His very act of freely choosing so is a fulfillment of his nature, which implies important limits on the role of the City in ruling him. IT IS IN THIS SENSE that the Church rightly speaks of human freedom and civil rights as positive goods in ordering society.

CJ and I agreed that the community does not have authority. It just serves in an organic, informal, and advisory role. It can't force its preferences upon the family contrary to the parents' wishes. So Bedarz's idea that the family is morally bound and apparently should be legally bound (!!) to place itself under the authority of some religious community, which apparently means agreeing to be bound by some kind of oversight, does not agree with the kind of thing CJ and I discussed and, apparently, agreed on.

Suppose there arises a sort of anti-patritotic currriculam in a particular homeschooling segment. They have history books that grossly misrepresent American history. They openly write that Americans are occupying their ancestral lands which need to be liberated and so on. Suppose this curriculam captures hearts and minds of large numbers of the target susceptible parents.

Would one still be willing to stand for absolute parental authority to teach their children what they will?

BI, you just described the curriculum in a large number of state schools. Did you miss the recent controversies over schools having students perform the Shahda as part of their curriculum? In the real world, the people you are talking about seek out the public schools, not homeschooling.

Would one still be willing to stand for absolute parental authority to teach their children what they will?

To paraphrase another great line: "absolute" is the bugaboo of small minds.

It is a fallacy to contrapose "absolute" with "primacy" of authority, as in "parents have primacy of authority within the family". Since God gives parents authority directly and not as delegates of civil authority, parents exercise that authority within its proper sphere not by permission of the civil authority by of their own right.

But just as parents can be brought up short in their exercise of authority within the family with respect to activity that exceeds the bounds of their authority (such as: real child abuse, or parents seeking to forbid marriage to adult children), so also in education if parents are engaging in real abuse. That parents have authority isn't a claim that they have absolute authority. It isn't a claim that there are no limits to their authority.

But the issue works the other way, too: that the state has real authority from God doesn't mean that it has absolute authority. If the government of the state abuses its authority it can be dealt with: people can morally refuse to obey, and (if it is grave enough) people can topple the government and replace it. (If enough people refuse to obey, at the same time, then the government IS toppled, because being a government in actuality requires the cooperation of many agents together - without the many acting together, no government persists).

The dividing line between state authority and familial authority is not always a clear, bright line. But that there ARE distinct spheres of authority is part of the natural law, and also part of revealed truth.

BI, you just described the curriculum in a large number of state schools.

Right on, Mike.

Canon Law # 795: "... a true education must strive for the integral formation of the human person, a formation which looks toward the person's final end,
Catechism #2223 "The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self denial, sound judgement, and self mastery the preconditions of all true freedom."
Pius XI, Representanti in Terra #57: "This norm of a just freedom in things scientific, serves also as an inviolable norm of a just freedom in things didactic, or for rightly understood liberty in teaching...every Christian child or youth has a strict right to instruction in harmony with the teachings of the Church, the pillar and ground of truth."

(#60): "Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism which in any way excludes or weakens supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound."

#79 "From this it follows that the so called 'neutral' or 'lay' school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education."

So in the western world practically every public school system is engaging in educational abuse to the 80% to 99.9% of the kids in their countries that attend these schools, and BI is worried about the possibility that some _very_small_ percentage of the 4% of kids homeschooled might be subject to educational abuse.

Absolute authority does not exist on Earth for a number of reasons, one of which is that is just how God delegated authority to all spheres of authority. The overlap is by design, not a messiness to be overcome and limited. It is a natural system of checks and balances.

But the issue works the other way, too: that the state has real authority from God doesn't mean that it has absolute authority. If the government of the state abuses its authority it can be dealt with: people can morally refuse to obey, and (if it is grave enough) people can topple the government and replace it. (If enough people refuse to obey, at the same time, then the government IS toppled, because being a government in actuality requires the cooperation of many agents together - without the many acting together, no government persists).

The USSR was the first major modern proof of this. When the peoples of the various federal states and most of the Warsaw Pact declared secession, the Union realized it could not rule anymore. The people had reached a point where they just would not consent to it. So the choice was clear. Disband peacefully, or start a civil war with no winners.

Liberals can't accept that the consent of the governed does not legitimize authority. Quite a few non-liberals refuse to realize that it is, however, a necessary requirement for any actual sustained exercise of authority.

Hah - Mike, I was going to use the USSR as exactly my example. I was going to suggest that (after the Warsaw pact countries told the USSR to get lost), when Boris Yeltsin and a large bunch of people basically said "we will not", they had enough of the rest of the people agree, and that convinced enough of the police and the army, and that finally convinced enough of the commissars that they could not achieve obedience anymore. Which meant, whether they liked it or not, they didn't actually have a government. But I just didn't have enough details at this point (it's been 25 years!!!) to be confident I had it right.

Suppose there arises a sort of anti-patritotic currriculam in a particular homeschooling segment. They have history books that grossly misrepresent American history. They openly write that Americans are occupying their ancestral lands which need to be liberated and so on. Suppose this curriculam captures hearts and minds of large numbers of the target susceptible parents.

Would one still be willing to stand for absolute parental authority to teach their children what they will?

As long as parents have the opportunity to communicate with their children at all, they could do this! Home schooling merely leaves them at home for more hours during which the parents _might_ be teaching them to be "unpatriotic." But they could be using such a curriculum, or just teaching them "unpatriotic" ideas, in the evenings or on weekends! What then? Shall the government perhaps interrogate all children on a regular basis--regardless of what sort of schooling they have--and ask them what ideas their parents are conveying at home (whether over the dinner table or more formally) on a wide variety of subjects, and take the children away from their parents altogether, blocking all communication for the rest of their lives, if the ideas being taught are unpatriotic??

I say no.

If the parents literally make the children part of a criminal ring, make them part of a plot to blow up bombs or something, that crosses a line. If the parents sexually abuse children, that crosses a line. There are a variety of things that cross a line. But it is utter totalitarianism to be monitoring children and considering taking them from their parents to prevent their being taught--yes, even systematically--ideas that are unpatriotic and even false ideas about history.

By the way, there are many Muslim parents that send their children to madrassas which are breeding grounds of non-assimilation and unpatriotic ideas. These are bricks and mortar schools. It doesn't appear that home schooling has caught on that well in the Muslim community.

Maybe we should take all children away from Muslim parents if they won't stop teaching their kids anti-American ideas.

If you're going to raise those kinds of issues, such as what if the parents teach their kids bad or false ideas of some sort or another, this is not restricted to home schooling by any means. It becomes a general question of whether the state ought to have the prerogative to monitor what sort of culture parents hand down to their children and take the children away if it's the "wrong" culture.

What if parents sit across from their kids at the dinner table and teach them crazy views about history? What if they sit across from them on long car rides and teach them to hate people of other races? What if, what if. The what ifs go on forever, and if you use those what ifs to justify generalized state oversight of all ideas communicated, you are a totalitarian, plain and simple.

But don't pretend this is about home schooling per se. This is about distrusting parents generally and wanting Someone Else to be continually looking over their shoulders to make sure they teach their kids the right ideas.

Tony,

I think the GOP is moving toward Trump and Cruz because they know that on present course the USA may not be that far behind the USSR on losing the support of much of the governed. It won't be for precisely the same reason, but the outcome won't be terribly different.

Tony,
If a country can justly call upon its youth to sacrifice themselves for her, she can, with more justice, dictate how the young may be educated.

To reduce a society to a collection of individuals, is just libertarianism. There is then no sense of continuity among generations and no sense how a country differs another country. Countries are just administrative conveniences. This goes together with your insistence on the sacred and inviolable nature of the boundaries between countries and refusal to appreciate why these particular boundaries came to exist in this very particular ways.

If a country can justly call upon its youth to sacrifice themselves for her, she can, with more justice, dictate how the young may be educated.

She can, except to the extent that natural law provides that she has no authority to do so. For example, she has no authority to dictate that the parents put the child in a school if their legitimate preference is to homeschool. What part of

"For this reason it has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society."

and

"The right and duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable."

do you reject? All of it? Do you just repudiate the popes' teachings, then?

Another example of "dictating how the young may be educated" that the state has no authority to do is to dictate that they be educated WITHOUT REGARD TO THEIR FINAL END that finds fulfillment after this life. As almost the entirety of the public school education establishment in the US tries to do.

To reduce a society to a collection of individuals, is just libertarianism.

To insinuate, here, in this thread, even a HINT that I (or any of us) have said something that "reduces society to a collection of individuals" is effectively a lie. And I won't tolerate lying like that. If you read through the post and comments, it's all about the rights of FAMILIES, not of "individuals". Families are a community, they are a natural community as is the state, and they are in one sense PRIOR TO the state, though not in every sense. The state isn't made simply of individuals, but the state IS MADE OF FAMILIES:

The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society. Catechism 2207

It is the totalitarians who want to eradicate the communities that rest between the state and individuals. They SAY that they do it for "communitarian" reasons, but the only community they tolerate, in the end, is the state. All other communities get in the way of "efficiency" and "safety" and such, and have to be controlled right out of existence. Oh, they will pretend to tolerate some communities - to the extent they can dictate terms to them completely and eradicate them as DISTINCT from the state - they will become nothing more than tools by which the state speaks to the individual. the other entities may remain "in existence" on paper, but will have lost all substance.

There is then no sense of continuity among generations and no sense how a country differs another country. Countries are just administrative conveniences. This goes together with your insistence on the sacred and inviolable nature of the boundaries between countries and refusal to appreciate why these particular boundaries came to exist in this very particular ways.

There you go, again, insinuating what amounts to little better than lies about me. Cut the nonsense, Bedarz. This is a complete fabrication, a total mis-characterization of what I have said. Never have I said anything like "countries are just administrative conveniences", and if you remotely imagine that I have implied it you have not fairly attended to what I actually wrote. You have NO EXCUSE for mis-representing me this badly.

If you think that some people say these things, then produce the people and the their sayings. And don't attribute them to me, or to the other contributors here, without direct quotes. If you think that what I say logically leads to saying these ridiculous things, then provide the quotes AND THE LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS from them, so your basis for making the claim is in front of us and not hidden in the mists of your twisted, revolting mind.

I don't think it even occurs to BI that homeschooling is a thoroughly non-libertarian way of raising your kids since it almost invariably requires a strongly traditional distribution of labor in the family. That is one of the reasons why the left actually fears it so much. I have never seen or heard of a homeschooling family in which the father stays home to teach the kids while the wife works. I'm sure it exists somewhere, but it is a statistical aberration.

And you know what tends to follow from traditional family organization? A basic sense of community in a real sense, patriotism and even nationalism. It is actually the industrial model of education that tends to breed the isolated, autonomous worker-superman that BI fears.

If a country can justly call upon its youth to sacrifice themselves for her, she can, with more justice, dictate how the young may be educated.


"...for her"?
You could possibly have a point if one could regard country as a separate entity disconnected from its youth, its middle aged, its children and old…its past…its boundaries…

The papal documents take the political nature of man as granted. That is, they do not reduce the City to collections of individuals and families but as an entity in its own right.

I am aware that familism you favor, is not individualist libertarianism. But I am trying to make the point that familism is not unproblematic. Families are simply not self-sufficient to carry and transmit the cultural traditions, the Way of a people.
Families are naturally embedded in a City in such a way, normally, that their is no opposition between the State and the Families. This is normal and this is what the papal documents assume.

Unless one assumes that the City, the Family and the Individuals are all irreducible, one will try to reduce one to others, and will fall into either the libertarian or collectivistic error.

Families are simply not self-sufficient to carry and transmit the cultural traditions, the Way of a people.

Agreed. Nobody here was claiming otherwise. One of the hallmarks of the polity (as compared to lower-level communities) is that it does have a sort of self-sufficiency.

I am aware that familism you favor, is not individualist libertarianism. But I am trying to make the point that familism is not unproblematic.

We are not asserting this mythical "familism". It is you imagining it. I showed forth a bunch of quotes from papal documents to show that the family is NOT reducible, and you just hied off into the wild blue yonder assuming what we neither said nor implied.

Families are naturally embedded in a City in such a way, normally, that their is no opposition between the State and the Families. This is normal and this is what the papal documents assume.

There no opposition between the state and families by nature. That's what we have been saying. There is an opposition between them when ONE of them oversteps its natural limits. As with Scotland.

Unless one assumes that the City, the Family and the Individuals are all irreducible, one will try to reduce one to others, and will fall into either the libertarian or collectivistic error.

Unless these are properly understood as belonging in a hierarchical framework of goods, it is inevitable that people push one or the other to excess. Libertarianism in its native state pushes the individual too far. Totalitarianism in its native condition pushes the state to excess. Other errors push the family (or other small communities) too far, as happens in blood feuds for example. Making the point that Scotland was pushing out family with state excess was in no way pushing family too far. It just so happens that with regard to education and raising of children, the family's NATURAL place is very extensive and fulsome.

Tony,
I apologize for drawing unwarranted extrapolations from your remarks.

Apology accepted. Kindly said.

BI,

One thing to bear in mind is that libertarianism is less destructive than collectivism on these things. It may be wrong, but it is not as wrong and dangerous. Libertarianism at least maintains the possibility of some sense of spheres of authority and the authority of families in particular as they are compatible with the libertarian vision for adults and their rights.

That's why on these issues, libertarians are not the enemy. Libertarians balk at the state overreach into other areas of public life. They may go too far, but as a practical matter a libertarian education policy is still nowhere near as destructive as a more collectivist alternative. Case in point, look at Germany today. A kid cannot get an education that fundamentally disagrees with the reigning political orthodoxy. So German parents are at the mercy of the elites to represent good values because if they don't the German state precludes the possibility of alternative education that teaches contrary values (even if those values are actually good for "the City" whereas those of the state are not).

Another thing BI, you would be well served to view all of these critiques through the lens of the "Long March through the Institutions." The state has been largely captured by the center-left in the West. In most cases, all of the actual hostility between families and the state within "the City" actually comes from the state today because the state has been captured by people who do not actually share the values of the society in a meaningful way. Many of them don't even believe that the children belong to the family first before they belong to the society; they regard the family as merely a collection of caretakers of the future citizens of the state.

Mike T
Libertarianism and collectivism are merely two forms of denial of the political nature of man. Neither is libertarianism any less deadly. I note that abortion in the West IS always justified on the ground of self-ownership and that the community has no right to intervene in intimate decisions of an individual.

It is true that abortion is claimed to be justified by self-ownership. That justification FAILS, even on its own self-ownership terms, but it is claimed nonetheless. A woman, even if she owns herself, does not own another person who resides within her. The baby owns himself, (if anyone does, assuming the ownership standard). To claim the right to kill the baby within because of "self-ownership" is just bad logic.

Libertarianism, like collectivism, contradicts human nature and contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, for its incoherence means that it cannot last too long. Libertarianism implies the eradication of the very social forms which PROTECT libertarianism, and the eradication of the social acceptance of any principle or basis for interacting, but "me first, last, and only". It will always end in some other result, such as a despot taking over.

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