My views on education – that there is no role whatsoever for the State in this vital area; that knowledge and knowledge workers must always be perfectly free – is in full agreement with what Frederic Bastiat wrote in his election manifesto in 1846:
“Education is also bound up with the same fundamental question that precedes all others in politics: Is it part of the State’s duties? Or does it belong to the sphere of private activity? You can guess what my answer will be: The government is not set up in order to bring our minds into subjection, or to absorb the rights of the family. To be sure, gentlemen, if it pleases you to hand over to it your noblest prerogatives, if you want to have theories, systems, methods, principles, textbooks and teachers forced on you by the government, that is up to you; but do not expect me to sign, in your name, such a shameful abdication of your rights.”
The full text of this recently unearthed document can be found in my The Essential Frederic Bastiat, published in India by Liberty Institute. It does not seem to be there on the Internet.
Buy the book and let the winds of Liberty blow through your brains.
Boooom Shankar!
“Education is also bound up with the same fundamental question that precedes all others in politics: Is it part of the State’s duties? Or does it belong to the sphere of private activity? You can guess what my answer will be: The government is not set up in order to bring our minds into subjection, or to absorb the rights of the family. To be sure, gentlemen, if it pleases you to hand over to it your noblest prerogatives, if you want to have theories, systems, methods, principles, textbooks and teachers forced on you by the government, that is up to you; but do not expect me to sign, in your name, such a shameful abdication of your rights.”
The full text of this recently unearthed document can be found in my The Essential Frederic Bastiat, published in India by Liberty Institute. It does not seem to be there on the Internet.
Buy the book and let the winds of Liberty blow through your brains.
Boooom Shankar!
Sauvik,it is there over the internet.
ReplyDeletehttp://mises.org/books/bastiat1.pdf
http://mises.org/books/bastiat2.pdf