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)
Expecting a child to keep his freedom of thought in the face of all that pressure is not realistic.
Freedom of choice is not restricted at school. For example, students can choose between different languages. They can choose their exams and what to read, etc.
(Kant)
That's not a real choice. For example, I had to choose between French and Latin, but I didn't have the choice to do neither and create a new alternative.
Compulsory schooling itself violates freedom of choice, as the student does not have the choice to stay at home and do something else with his time instead.