This is a great article on homeschooling from Home Education Magazine. (http://www.homeedmag.com/lawregs/hoopjump.html) My favorite bit of this article (written in 1991) is where the author (Helen Hegener) states: "Educational policy in this country is the result of many years of lobbying by powerful education interests, whose dedication is not to children so much as to protecting jobs, increasing benefits, and ensuring political clout. And schools are the foremost tools of social engineering. Gene I. Maeroff, education writer for the New York Times, cautions, "Make no mistake. Schools have been viewed by Congress primarily as instruments of social change." The benevolent teacher imparting knowledge to children has been replaced with a combination of psychological goals and restructured intellectual objectives. Schools have become the primary agency for eliminating social ills in this country, and for developing personal integrity and the national character. It has been a masterstroke to veil this design with an inspired long-term public relations campaign that has turned parents into staunch allies by proclaiming that "Education is the key to 'The Good Life!'" The idea of education as a method of control is not advertised as such, and most people simply think that teaching children to read and write and work with numbers is a good idea, which, of course, it is. This benevolent image has lead to unquestioned support behind education in this country from many quarters, and yet our schools are in trouble, fighting to maintain their hard won appearances. While the nose-dive in American education is an inability to continue making the social engineering palatable, it is being attributed to a loss of authority, and the most common reaction to a loss of authority is more authority, more control."
There is a book, not likely to be in your public library, called the "State vs the People". It starts with discussion of how our public school system is patterned after European systems that were admittedly for the purpose of social engineering. Much of this began in this country after the large numbers of Irish and Italians immigrated. The book called "What Your Child Needs To Know When" has lots of quotes along these lines through out the book on the sides of the pages.
