John Holt: in his book, "Instead of Education"

"Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means, the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons’ experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives. Whoever takes that right away from us, as the educators do, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience, has no value.

Education, with its supporting system of compulsory and competitive schooling, all its carrots and sticks, its grades, diplomas, and credentials, now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind’ It is the deepest foundation of the modern and worldwide slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and “fans,” driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve “education” but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and let people shape them selves.

This does not mean that no one should ever influence or try to influence what others think and feel. We all touch and change (and are changed by) those we live and work with. We are by instinct talkative and social creatures, and naturally share with those around us our view of reality. Both in my work as writer and lecturer, and among my friends, I do this all the time. But I refuse to put these others in a position where they feel they have no choice but to agree with me, or seem to agree. I want them to have the right, if they wish, to reject absolutely any and all of my ideas, as I would want and demand for myself the right to reject theirs. Also, I have learned that no one can truly say Yes to an idea, mine or anyone else’s, unless he can freely say No to it.

I do not mean to say, either, that no one should ever have the right to ask another to show what he knows or can do. Clearly, if someone wants to drive a car, fly a plane, or
do something that might directly affect the lives or health of other people, then society, through some agent, has the right to demand that he show that he is able to do what he wants to be allowed to do. Indeed, even where health and safety are not involved, a person can often rightly be asked to show his competence. If he wants to play in an orchestra, sing in a chorus, act in a play, or join other people in any work they are doing, whether for money, pleasure, or other reasons, they have a right to ask him to show that he can do it well enough to help and not hinder them. But these demands are specific in time and place. They are not at all the same thing as saying to someone that just to be allowed to live in the world at all he must be able to show that he knows this or that.

In this book I feel myself speaking mostly to that minority of people, including parents, teachers, would-be teachers, and students themselves, who believe that children (like all people) will live better, learn more, and grow more able to cope with the world if they are not constantly bribed, wheedled, bullied, threatened, humiliated, and hurt; if they are not set endlessly against each other in a race which all but a few must lose; if they are not constantly made to feel incompetent, stupid, untrustworthy, guilty, fearful, and ashamed; if their interests, concerns, and enthusiasms are not ignored or scorned; and if instead they are allowed, encouraged, and (if they wish) helped to work with and help each other, to learn from each other, and to think, talk, write, and read about the things that most excite and interest them. In short, if they are able to explore the world in their own way,
and in as many areas as possible direct and control their own lives.

For the time being, my message to this minority is this: The chances are we will have universal compulsory education and compulsory schools for at least another generation. Do not waste your energy trying to reform all these schools. They cannot be reformed. It may be possible for a few of you, in a few places, to make a place called a school which will be a humane and useful doing place for the young. If so, by all means do it. In most places, not even this much will be possible. The most we will be able to do may be to find ways to help some children escape education and schooling, and to help some others, who cannot escape, to be less damaged by it than they are now. That is, we may be able to help some children to find ways to prevent school from killing the curiosity, energy, resourcefulness, and confidence with which they explore the world, and to find ways outside of school to nourish and encourage these qualities, so that even if they learn little or nothing worthwhile in school, they can continue the learning they were doing so well before they went to school.

Along with this, what we can do and should do right now is attack the legitimacy of compulsory education and schooling. As the CIA would put it, we need to “destroy its cover.” That is, as we are beginning to do for the CIA, we need to show what education and schooling really do. We need to reveal as untrue—as myths, illusions, and ties—the stories and alibis the schools and the educators tell us (and often themselves) to justify themselves and explain their repeated failures. We need to say to people, “If you want to have compulsory education and compulsory schooling, you can have them. But don’t be fooled by the advertising and the label on the package! Understand what it is you’re getting. Perhaps within a generation or so most people will indeed understand, and decide they want no more of it.

But perhaps not. In that case, this book might be considered as a warning to any people or society which takes human freedom and dignity seriously- and values them highly. You cannot have human liberty, and the sense of all persons’ uniqueness, dignity, and worth on which it must rest, if you give to some people the right to tell other people what they must learn or know, or the right to say officially and “objectively” that some people are more able and worthy than others. Let any who want to make such judgments make them privately and in the understanding that such judgments can only be personal and subjective. But do not give them any permanent or official sanction, or the liberty and dignity of your citizens will soon be gone."