Does Compulsory Schooling Serve to Liberate Children?
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Freedom is achieved when the mind reaches a certain level of intellectual maturity: when it thinks for itself.
This is the purpose of compulsory education: to liberate children.
(Kant)
That is not what freedom means.
Freedom does not consist in the guarantee of certain thoughts or scope for action.
Roughly speaking, freedom is when you are left alone by others when you want to be left alone.
If you are sent to school against your will, you are not free. School is forced.
We need to distinguish between freedom of choice and freedom of thought.
School serves to educate students to have freedom of thought. This is achieved by restricting freedom of choice.
(Kant)
If freedom of choice is sufficiently restricted, freedom of thought is also restricted.
Anyone who is forced to spend hours every day dealing with topics they would otherwise not deal with has neither freedom of choice nor freedom of thought.
Forcing someone to think is impossible. The student remains free in his thoughts.
(Kant)