John Stuart Mill on Education

Before state schools were introduced, John Stuart Mill saw clearly why they were a bad idea:

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another, and the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation.

In proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence.

In other words, school vouchers. Mill suggests these be backed up with standardized tests from government in certain designated essential skills:

The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than public examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age. An age might be fixed at which every child must be examined, to ascertain if he (or she) is able to read. .... Once in every year the examination should be renewed, with a gradually extending range of subjects, so as to make the universal acquisition, and what is more, retention, of a certain minimum of general knowledge, virtually compulsory. Beyond that minimum, there should be voluntary examinations for all subjects, at which all who come up to a certain standard of proficiency might claim a certificate.

He then turns to the professions--and sees immediately the danger of government certification here:

The examinations, however, in the higher branches of knowledge should be entirely voluntary. It would be giving too dangerous power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any one from professions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency of qualifications. Degrees, or other public certificates of scientific or professional acquirements, should be given to all who present themselves for examination, but such certificates should confer no advantage over competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to their testimony by public opinion.

In other words, nobody should be prevented by law from setting themselves up as or from employment as a pharmacist, or an engineer, or a lawyer, or anything else. Such restraint of trade leads inevitably, as it has led, to self-interested cartels with no regard for the public interest.

It is that simple--it is all predictable. If we have nevertheless ended up with compulsory public schools and government-regulated professions, it can only be because this was the deliberate intent. Those in power wanted to protect a ruling class, and to impose conformity on the rest of us.

This, according to Mill, is not tolerable in a free society.