Education, Free & Compulsory (1999) by Murray N. Rothbard, Book Review

 Education, Free & Compulsory (1999) by Murray N. Rothbard, audiobook

Murray N. Rothbard, an influential American historian, natural law theorist, and economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern libertarianism*, in this short book (66 pages only and audiobook 2 hours 35 minutes), explores the history of compulsory schooling in Europe and especially in the United States. I find that the main ideas and concerns in this book are interesting although I have to keep in mind that my context is Asia or Malaysia in particular not Western countries. But it seems that, in terms of education, we almost always facing the same problem: our educational system, if not seriously reformed, is doomed to fail. For the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to an excellent podcast series by BFM radio called Malaysia’s Education Challenges with a focus on Malaysia’s Education Blueprint (MEB). As I reflect on what has been discussed in this series and Rothbard’s thoughts in this book, I cannot help but agree that we should seriously rethink public schooling. More than ever I observe that our educational system, instead of for the betterment of individuals and communities, has become very burdensome for the students, parents, and teachers and continues to be used to impose political, racial, and religious agendas or ideologies. Through the misuse of formal education, dictatorship can be disguised as democracy. Beware!

There are three (3) short but powerful chapters in this book, namely, 1) The Individual’s Education; 2) Compulsory Education in Europe; 3) Compulsory Education in the United States. There are half-a-dozen ideas that are worth considering such as the importance of individual or homeschooling, the function of the parents and the state (government) in child education, the history and philosophy of compulsory education, the shadow of ‘citizen control’, the influence of religious (particularly by Calvinism in Europe) reformation, the demons of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. There are things that I don’t agree with, don’t understand, and don’t care much about. The most essential read, in my opinion, is the first half of Chapter 1: The Individual’s Education because regardless of our context and background, race and nationality, it deals with our universal human need and uniqueness. Rothbard writes:

“[The] entire process of growing up, of developing all the facets of a man’s personality, is his education. It is obvious that a person acquires his education in all activities of his childhood; all his waking hours are spent in learning in one form or another. It is clearly absurd to limit the term ‘education’ to a person’s formal schooling. He is learning all the time. He learns and forms ideas about other people, their desires, and actions to achieve them, the world and the natural laws that govern it; and his own ends, and how to achieve them. He formulates ideas on the nature of man, and what his own and others’ ends should be in light of this nature. This is a continual process, and it is obvious that formal schooling constitutes only an item in this process. In a fundamental sense, as a matter of fact, everyone is ‘self-educated.’ A person’s environment, physical or social, does not ‘determine’ the ideas and knowledge with which he will emerge as an adult. It is a fundamental fact of human nature that a person’s ideas are formed for himself; others may influence them, but none can determine absolutely the ideas and values which the individual will adopt or maintain through life.”

If you’re interested to dive further into this subject, you can get this ebook and audiobook for FREE at https://mises.org/library/education-free-and-compulsory-1 #ServeToLead #LeadersAreReaders #LetsMakeReadingCoolAgain

*Libertarianism: a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in the free market and the private lives of citizens.

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