Running with the turtles
Man can provide a reasonable defense for almost any idea he dreams up. We are not rational creatures so much as we are rationalizing animals, creating post-facto defenses for what we have chosen to believe due to its emotional appeal.
The human mind has a powerful tendency to cling to its beliefs, regardless of how they have been acquired. We are loyal to them in much the same way we hold to our sports teams, and often with as little reason and as little reward. (There speaks the Minnesota Vikings fan, still bitter about Drew Pearson and the most infamous no-call in NFL history... and don't even mention Morton Anderson).
Most beliefs are based on underlying assumptions, which come in varying degrees of validity. But even the most invalid assumption will remain a solid foundation if it goes unquestioned. And while it is often uncomfortable to question the assumptions that underlie our beliefs, it is the best way to strengthen those beliefs ... assuming that they pass the test.
Indeed, the anger often expressed by those whose beliefs are being questioned reveals their fundamental lack of faith in them, in their confidence that their assumptions will survive the questioning. The more insecure the belief, the less the believer can afford himself any questioning of his base assumptions.
Two of the basic assumptions that underlie public schooling is that mass education is beneficial to society and that group education does not inhibit the intellectual development of the individual student. While I am not entirely sure that the former is true, I am content to leave it unmolested for the time being. I am, however, interested in questioning the logic of the latter assumption.
An American child is the recipient of 13 years of group schooling, assuming that he has been to kindergarten. But consider, for example, a non-elite, but above-average child who is more intelligent than three-fourths of the student population, but less intelligent than the highest quartile. If he is limited to the performance of the average, as is necessarily the case in a classroom environment, in the first year he will only be advancing at 62.5 percent of his capability. And by the time he finishes third grade, he will be at only 15 percent of where he could be if he had been permitted to advance at the pace at which he is capable.
This may sound absurd, of course, and it is, but there is an element of truth in it. When we do not permit our children to test their limits, when we impose limits upon them, we rob them of the chance to experience the fullness of their potential. What is lost will not necessarily be made up as time passes, since it is impossible for us, as adults, to know what a child, with that child's imagination that we have long forgotten, will choose to do even at a very young age.
There is no shortage of empirical evidence suggesting that homeschool is a better means of allowing children to develop their intellectual capabilities than public school. This is not to say that it is the ideal means of doing so, much less that developing a child's intellect is one of the most important aspects of parenting or that such development can or should be forced.
Many parents are content if their children simply grow up to be healthy, happy and normal. There is nothing wrong with this, this world would be a better place if every child could be so blessed. But it would be a pity to waste the potential being thrown away every year by parents allowing their children to be held back by professionals whose primary interest is maintaining order and a uniform level of advancement where no child is left behind.
It is important to remember that Aesop only wrote fables and the tortoise cannot always run with the hare. No educational system that forgets that can hope to truly educate either.