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Features
The link between literacy and modern compulsory schooling, however, is complex, and should not be taken for granted. Increasing literacy and increases in the level of democracy are not necessarily the result of compulsory schooling. As a rich body of research has demonstrated, schools restrict physical liberty and personal autonomy; and from the point of view of children’s rights, as well as the rights of parents and families, schools do not function along democratic lines. Parents of children in public schools are not asked to vote on textbooks or teachers, nor are children provided with administrative responsibility. State schooling is mandatory, despite the presence of a wide range of different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups within American culture, not to mention the infinite variation in the needs of individual families and individual children. The tendency to resegregate along class and racial lines within communities has also limited the use of the school as a means for the teaching of tolerance, regardless of how thoughtful individual teachers may be. It may be problematic to assume that the public school system will bring about conditions of being that it does not succeed in practicing within its walls. This Article is also available in our Homeschooling Toolkit along with our other 4 homeschooling reprints.
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