By Fred McArdle, West Brunswick

The school system is designed to produce citizens, not individual thinkers, despite the rhetoric of most educational authorities.

If we are to make sense of our society, what we need are thinkers who see things from the outside. But we are all born into our particular environment, and that is what usually sets our perspective, whether it be Catholic rather than Muslim, or Protestant rather than Catholic, or Israeli rather than Palestinian, or white rather than black, or even “civilised” rather than “native” or “primitive”, or even for some of the more simple-minded, born in one Australian state rather than another. Each particular environment has inherent values, prejudices, modes of behaviour, and, naturally enough, we assume that these are “normal”. The word “normal” comes from the word “norm” and automatically implies some standard, or “rightness”. So, we always begin by assuming that our inherited way is “right”, and most commonly, in fact, the only right way.

If we really want to know what our world is like, we must ask those who do not have a particular mind-set, because they are not born into a culture or particular set of circumstances – but such people do not exist, and there does not seem to be much hope of having visiting Martians to give us an unbiased view.

What would they see if they did come? Israelis and Palestinians killing each other over land they could easily share, while other Israeli and Palestinian individuals actually love each other enough even to marry; or Irish folk killing each other because of the actions of people hundreds of years ago; or rich Americans dropping huge and obscene bombs on Afghanistan instead of building hospitals and giving food, which would be cheaper and much more rewarding, and would pull the carpet out from under the feet of oppressive regimes; or terrorists, who believe they are more martyr than terrorist, and can therefore legitimately slaughter many innocent people; or African neighbors slaughtering each other for pseudo-religious reasons; India and Pakistan contemplating a degree of mutual annihilation over some territory; some people squandering millions on frivolities while others die of starvation; and, of course, many other insanities. And all the while, people who are usually not members of governments or running big corporations are trying to help their fellow human beings amid the chaos, giving food, shelter and respect. We even have the term NGO for groups of people who are not tainted with power – non-government organisations!

Does this being born, accidentally, into a particular perspective perhaps account for all the wars we have, and is war inevitable? Can there be any such thing as an unbiased person? Do any of us see all other persons and races and nations as equally valuable and worthwhile and “correct” as ourselves? If we want to test ourselves on our lack of bias, we can perhaps try looking at severely disabled persons, or the homeless, or abandoned refugees, and seeing if their lives seem equally as worthwhile as our own.

I suspect that the education system is designed to produce citizens, homogenised ‘units’, who can be relied on by the government to work, produce and consume, who are trained to look down on anyone not doing “productive” work, and who will not question the status quo unduly. Moreover, some governments keep trying to introduce legislation to further marginalise or demonise those who think differently from themselves, and legitimise spying on such citizens, which is rather scary.

Are the governments, and thus the school systems, and thus the people, really run by economists and corporations, who need a constant supply of consumers to keep themselves rich? Note the train disasters that keep happening in the privatised rail systems in Britain. Note the rising prices for services in Australia because services which should be provided by government are now committed to producing profits for shareholders. Isn’t it inevitable that such governments will want to “educate” students to become consumers?

Are not dissenters, and individual, original thinkers the ones who try to keep checks in place, to stop runaway greed, to observe, and think, and aren’t these the ones the system doesn’t tolerate, the “naughty” ones, the “cheeky” ones? Into what, exactly, do people want their children “socialised”? If it means making friends, I can think of much better ways than sending them into schools. If it means becoming like the majority, I would rather protect them from that fate.

I think it is delightful that our children would be puzzled to be asked by anyone, “Who do you barrack for?” But this question is almost compulsory in the Melbourne school system; it is your “badge of membership”. Even many teachers go along with it. Why? Because the AFL corporation dominates the media, especially the TV, which in turn dominates the conversation of children at school – but not our children, thank goodness, even though we do watch a fair bit of TV. And I think it is rather sad that so many people cannot think of any more interesting question to ask!

Does globalisation mean faster and faster communication systems and selling systems, and if so, will these systems be controlled by the clever [= greedy] among us, by the ones with the energy that is inspired by greed or ambition rather than the ones who are generous and unassuming and feel no need to control and be powerful? It seems likely.

What I see home education as offering is at least a chance that our children will be able to see with their own eyes instead of those of McDonalds or Coca Cola or Nestle or Cadbury or Nike. They will not, I hope, be slaves to self-seeking governments who protect the interests of the corporations, who sell off what should be government -supplied services to the people, such as electricity, gas and water, or transport and health services, and who offer promises that they know they cannot meet, which doesn’t upset them at all, because they only have one goal – stay in power !

We hope our children will learn to see immediately the tremendous lie in most advertising, which endeavours to convince us that we absolutely cannot exist without some product of which we have never heard before and without which we have lived very happily thus far.

Of course, we cannot live as home educators outside ‘society’, but I hope that our children grow up to be healthily sceptical and very positive citizens, who do not easily accept rubbish from anybody, especially those who have actively sought to be in authority [and whose motives are therefore immediately suspect!] and who are supposed to be educated and intelligent and looking after our welfare. I hope our children will have learned that the best way to achieve happiness is to try to spread happiness, through good cheer, generosity and tolerance, and a sense of wonder at all the amazing things in our universe. I hope that they will learn to set their own questions and try to answer them honestly and intelligently, rather than accept passively the “answers” given to questions that they haven’t even been allowed to ask. I hope that they will not blindly accept views like those of mine expressed here, but will use intelligence and reasoned debate to sort things out for themselves.

I read an article once, written in England, suggesting that an integral part of every school should be an astronomical observatory, so that children can wonder at the universe. This makes sense to me. At least we have several sets of binoculars at our place.