State Sen. Aaron Osmond’s disdain for an educated public shines through in his recent essay “A Practical Argument for Ending Compulsory Education in Utah.” With Americans coming to the stark realization that our students are trailing behind in key subjects, the issue of education has become a hotbed of discussion with more radical opinions coming to the forefront. The good senator from South Jordan joined their ranks July 12, releasing the aforementioned Internet essay, detailing his grievances against the current public education system and articulating a new, albeit extreme, solution. It is similar to many other supposed solutions articulated by fringe elements of conservatism — however, this proposition seems to be devoid of reason, and is based on fallacious assumptions.
Sen. Osmond begins his exposition by invoking the imagery of a pre-1890 society. The year 1890 is important to him — it’s when the vile government swooped in with its undeserved power to strip parents of their freedoms, forcing their children to participate in public education. This utopian interpretation of the pre-1890 golden age could be completely justified were it not for the fact that illiteracy dropped from 13.3 percent in 1890 to below 1 percent in 1979, according to the Institute of Educational Sciences. I therefore wholly understand Sen. Osmond’s position — what is more disastrous to people’s liberties than forcing them to be able to read the very documents that give them those freedoms?
The senator then proceeds to explain his initial grievance, one on which I stand firmly with him.
“Some parents completely disengage themselves from their obligation to oversee and ensure the successful education of their children,” Sen. Osmond said, but he then asserts that by placing the educational responsibility primarily on parents they would somehow automatically re-engage, because negligent parents are simply waiting for the opportunity to prove themselves.
Furthermore, Sen. Osmond fails to acknowledge that parents also have the obligation to be the breadwinners, the house providers and carry a lengthy list of other responsibilities towards their children. I suspect that Sen. Osmond’s concept of reality consists of all homes having two parents, one of whom — presumably the man — with a well-paying job and the other, a homemaker who has the time to educate their children.
Continuing along this same delusory line of reasoning, our good friend asserts that if a child consistently misbehaves, it’s the teacher’s right to “send that child home to their parent until he or she is ready to respect and appreciate their opportunity to be educated.” This concept seems to be based on two fantastic assumptions, the first one being that children actually have parents to go home to during the day — an assumption that demonstrates evidence of Sen. Osmond’s phantasmic grip on reality. The second assumption being behavioral misconduct is not symptomatic of a less-than-ideal home life — probably a home life involving those same disengaged parents who are so eager to be given the chance to shine.
Sen. Osmond clearly doesn’t care for the welfare of children. He claims that education is an opportunity, not an obligation. He is disgusted at the waste of taxpayer money providing children with adequate nutrition, college and career preparation, behavioral counseling, etc. It is a parent’s right to starve and neglect their children, allow them behave in a destructive manner and be ill equipped for the job market, but ultimately it is the children who suffer.
Without the threat of fines or jail time, how many children would go uneducated? How many more children would go without an opportunity to become well-informed, contributing members of society? Education isn’t simply the obligation of a parent to a child, but rather the obligation of society at large to each individual in order to ensure an employed public and an informed electorate capable of making reasoned decisions. But an educated populace might not help him win elections, now would it?