Plutarch, the Roman historian, was once the standard fare of any well-bred boy’s education. He was forced on boys for hundreds of years because he instilled important moral lessons in his biographies of figures such as Pompey, Alexander and Julius Caesar. But, it was more than that. Boys liked Plutarch. Here is history filled with conquest, intrigue and political machinations.

My 15-year-old son is reading Plutarch this summer. At first he strongly objected to this assignment. I was destroying his summer. I was ruining his life. Once again.

 But, last night, at midnight, he was busy tapping out written commentary. I may be wrong but he looked like he was having a good time. He wrote the following for a writing assignment on Plutarch’s Julius Caesar:

   Caesar’s extraordinary valor from a very young age paved the road for future success. One story that is most striking from Caesar’s life is his time being held for ransom by pirates.  During his passage back from a long period on the run from Sylla, Caesar was captured and held for ransom by pirates off of the island of Pharmacusa. What is most striking about the tale is his time and behavior during captivity. The boy was far from the timid and submissive nature of most who are kidnapped. He instead was commanding and aloof, a small young man calling a set of burly pirates illiterate and barbarous. He even went as far as to claim that he would one day hang or crucify them (which to the shock of the pirates came true). It was this unconditional valor that led him to be so loved by those he led. From his time in captivity as a boy to moments before he crossed the Rubicon he never once showed true fear. Even after he achieved the title of “dictator for life,” amidst rumors of assignation, not once did he break form. In the words of Plutarch, “When his friends advised him to have a guard, and several offered their services, he would not hear of it, he would not hear of it; but said it was better to suffer death once than to always live in fear of it.” It was through Caesar’s undying courage that a strong foundation for unimaginable heights was obtained.

Lawrence Auster writes:

You assigned him to read Plutarch and gave him a writing assignment? Is he being home-schooled? Maybe you could spell this out a little further.
 
Laura responds:

He is homeschooled. I wanted to do Plutarch myself with him this year, but we didn’t get to it. I found a five-week online seminar for high school students by a classics scholar. I was overjoyed. It’s a great opportunity and I couldn’t pass it up even though he does deserve some time off.

Philip Marshall writes from England:

Think yourselves lucky (or blessed). Over here in the UK the government is using the U.N. ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’ and their own commissioned report into homeschooling as a way to try and monitor, control, and ultimately (I imagine) banish homeschooling in Britain. The thought that there could be a few thousand young minds across the country not getting their daily dose of multiculturalism and gay rights literally drives them crazy.

The absolute, overweening power of the state to control every aspect of our minds and thought used to be called Fascism…now it’s just normality.  Here’s the story, if you’re interested, Laura (or Mrs Wood if you prefer, I know you Americans are still rightly big on formality, ma’am).

Laura writes:

You could call me Senator Wood. President Wood also has a nice ring to it. But, nix to ma’am and plain old Mrs. Wood.

Seriously, please call me Laura. You have no idea how grateful I am for those people who fought so hard to make homeschooling in America possible. Interestingly, those mavericks who campaigned to make it legal in my state of Pennsylvania actually wanted to do away with compulsory schooling altogether and failed. That’s the next frontier.  Compulsory schooling as we know it  is likely to disappear, replaced by something much less controlled by the state. The system as it is makes no sense. The homeschooling movement is leading to the reinvention of school. All across the country, small co-ops and quasi-schools are opening in response to homeschoolers. And, the Internet – well, that changes the whole ball game. This is all in its infancy, but mass schooling as it is is doomed.

Philip writes:

Your prediction seems counter-intuitive. I had to read it a few times to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. I’m suprised that in the era of Obama and the general direction of the West you think such a bold anarcho-Capitalist-type change of direction is not only possible, but inevitable. But you must have your reasons, and it is refreshing to hear someone of a traditionalist persuasion with optimism for the future.

Laura writes:

Actually, I made it sound more radical than it is. I don’t mean all will be swept away. The future belongs to a new form of school – and to far less state control. It’s already happening here. The importance of the homeschooling movement is that it’s reinventing school. People just need to gain confidence that it’s okay to cut loose from  government.

 Philip writes:

You say, “The system as it is makes no sense.”
 
That’s never stopped them before. Throwing more money at it and introducing more legislation and targets is the way we approach the whole not-making-sense issue on this side of the pond. Over here we have a whole government and a whole way of life devoted to things not making sense. You’d be suprised how well it doesn’t work. As in the Soviet Union, you learn to live with the contradictions–or, if you really want to keep your job, not to notice them at all.

Become the un-thinking housewife, Laura, learn to accept that 2+2=5 and I promise you that your irrational fears concerning big government and third-rate mass education will vanish. It’s the way to go.  Join us. Take your medication…if not, I’m sure you’ll get into the swing of it after a few more years of Obama…(diabolical laughter as Laura realises there is no escape from the scholastic meat-grinder.)

Seriously, (and I understand you may not want to get into a big debate) the demographic situation in America as described in books like ‘The Bell Curve’, the millions of third-worlders in your country with their penchant for welfarism, would suggest to me that the state-run-everything seems far more likely.

America is becoming more left-wing, and they do not like home schooling for the reasons I have described. They are control freaks. They are scared of people thinking non-legislated thoughts. Even the internet is coming more under their control (see moves by the EU to force political websites to have a licence*) so this may not be the salvation you hope for.

Sorry if I’m putting you on a downer…we Brits love a miserable ending (see virtually every British film made after 1950). I hope your Yank optimism wins out in the end, I really do.
 
*Not a typo.That’s how we spell it, mad fools that we are.

Laura writes:

There is one big hole in the passion of American liberals. And, that is their concern for their children’s education. I think this interest will triumph in the end. I don’t mean it will happen tomorrow or the next day.
 
Government surveillance of education is here to stay. We do have large numbers of people who are not naturally motivated to provide for their children, or are not able to provide for them. State schools are here to stay. The power and influence of government schooling, however, will be greatly reduced as Americans see workable models developed and as they lose their paranoid fear of stepping outside overweening government control.
 
I am well aware of how bleak the situation is with homeschooling in Europe, the arrests in Germany and the EU’s totalitarian efforts to get rid of any stirrings of a movement. When Americans first fought for homeschooling they encountered steep government resistance. It wasn’t anywhere on the level of the resistance in Europe, but it was significant. Why was there resistance? School officials knew what it all meant. Their Achilles’ heel is any form of vibrant competition.
 
Homeschoolers won. They won in America. There is no going back. The amount of outcry to any proposed weakening of homeschooling laws is consistently stunning. Legislators and courts instantly back down when they see the strength and conviction of the homeschool organizations. There was a recent proposal in California to require teacher certification of anyone who taught children, even homeschool parents. The hue and cry was deafening.
 
Here’s the deal. Now that homeschooling is here, it is proving there are affordable alternatives to public school in the form of small, parent-supervised schools. It is proving good schools can be cheap and efficient. It is proving school can actually be democratic, truly democratic in that it represents the interests and world views of different groups, such as Christians or hippies or atheists. Already, there are some school districts that let homeschoolers come in for whatever classes they want to take. In the future, I believe this will be standard. Once a parent has proven he is educating his child, he will have wider latitude in using a range of existing schools, including government schools.
 
I recently read that 75 percent of former homeschoolers who are now adults are homeschooling their children. They also have larger families. They have more children not simply because they are more religious but because homeschooling mothers are among the happiest mothers in America. The family has been weakened by many forces. One of those forces is school. It has nearly destroyed family autonomy and intimacy, and turned parents into de facto state employees.

Laura adds:

I was once a liberal and one of the structural supports of my liberalism was a belief in school. I thought school was beautiful, a sacred public enterprise. Boy, did I learn my lesson. My real-life encounter with school as a parent changed me. It helped bring the whole system crashing to the ground.

Kristor writes:

Same thing happened to me. When my kids were in pre-school, an econ teacher at Berkeley (Public) High – which has a large supply of smart kids whose parents teach at Cal or work in San Francisco, kids who go on to the Ivy League – asked me to come give a talk about the financial system to her class. I gladly agreed, because I Believed in Public Education. Only one kid in the class showed the slightest interest in anything I was saying. I realized quickly that I would have to confine myself to explaining things like checking accounts and how they work. Then, about 15 minutes into the class, an alarm bell rang and the squawkbox on the wall sputtered to life: an assistant principal instructed the teachers to lock their classroom doors instantly, and to let no one either in or out until further notice; shots had been fired on campus, and the school was in lock down until Berkeley SWAT dealt with the situation.  

Despite my astonishment I proceeded with my talk. But I had already decided that my kids would never, ever go to public school in this town.  

I do hope that you are right in thinking that homeschooling and the Internet have let the genie out of the bottle (or, from the perspective of the teachers’ unions, opened Pandora’s Box). The liberal gestalt – or, as they call it these days, the liberal meme set – reproduces itself via the public schools. All the liberal myths are propagated there: Christianity killed Rome, the Church hates science, the Crusades were unprovoked imperialist aggression, business is evil, banks and evil Republicans caused the Depression, the Democrats won the war against slavery, etc.

Philip writes: 

Thank you for your comprehensive answer. You have convinced me.

Has the homeschooling movement ever been accused of racism? If I was of the Barack Obama left, I would say that homeschooling was a reaction to intergrated schooling, and that its proponents were all closet racists (I imagine most homeschoolers are white). Use the sledgehammer of race to crack the homeschool movement. It is the charge against which there can be no answer but capitulation.

But, that is just speculation…you have given me an insight onto America I did not have before. I hope the movement continues to prosper.

Laura writes:

No, I’ve never heard the racism charge. The fact is there’s more homeschooling in districts that are mostly white. Private schools are the more common alternative in cities, where there’s more money to spend on tuition and where mothers generally are less inclined to giving up careers altogether.

Homeschoolers are sometimes accused of selfishness in depriving schools of their children. Bizarre. They also encounter a variety of other objections from family, friends and community. It used to be people dismissed them as a bunch of “fundamentalists,” a term often used to refer to any practicing Christian. Now, given the impressive performance of homeschoolers in colleges and other activities, this bigotry has lessened.

Don’t get me wrong. All is not bliss in the homeschool world. There’s some weak education there too. But, even at its worst, leaving aside the cases of criminal neglect, there’s an emphasis on character and virtue. That serves a student well later.

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