Some people in various ideological camps, including libertarians, object to compulsory schooling on the grounds that it restricts freedom of choice and aids state indoctrination. Others meet such objections with dismay, pointing out that irresponsible parents may leave their children uneducated. Children don’t choose their parents, therefore the state must ensure their right to education is realized, irrespective of who bore them.
Which concerns are more important is in itself an ideological question - some may believe that the parents’ or child’s free choice is less important than their obligation (or right) to education. Others may believe that citizens are not obliged to be educated or educate their children: freedom is more important. What’s certain is that both concerns are based in reality: on one hand, compulsory schooling does restrict freedom and aid indoctrination; on the other, absence of compulsory schooling can leave some children without basic education.
What’s perhaps too seldom observed is that addressing these concerns is not mutually exclusive. We can devise an approach which provides far greater personal freedom than presently dominant systems do, and at the same time ensures that every child gets a chance to receive a basic education. Such a compromise might be unacceptable for some ideologues. Many are inclined to seek only full realization of their extensive ideological narratives. Yet a rational actor should welcome any improvement according to their core values. (Leaving aside the fact that the popular ideological “truths” aren’t even always in line with the implied values). A rational political actor should also tolerate compromises which don’t result in significant losses.
A system which addresses both concerns at once is not hard to imagine. As already noted, the major implication behind the support for compulsory schooling is that unfortunate children should not be left uneducated. (Additional motives exist, but they are more trivial and can be discussed separately). In other words, the system’s primary function is to safeguard against failure to educate one’s children. But this function does not require standardized schooling to be unconditionally compulsory for everyone. Why should a child who is ahead of the basic educational requirements be forced into a heavily regulated school, if the system is designed to safeguard him from falling behind?
Hence, standardized schooling should be a response to a problem, not an obligation. We don’t put people in jail merely because they may commit crimes - we do it once they actually commit them. Neither should we impose compulsory schooling on other people’s children just because they may fall behind.
A possible objection is that if compulsory schooling is only used as a post factum response, an irreversible damage can be done: if a child has not received a certain kind of education by a certain age, it may be too late to address the problem. Therefore, we must use public schools preventively.
But this is only a question of finding a sufficiently narrow testing interval. Even under the compulsory system children don’t enter the school at an identical age, for the obvious reason of being born at various dates. An age-difference within one year is implicitly deemed acceptable. Thus a yearly testing system should suffice.
Basically, a state could devise an extensive yearly testing system and only oblige a child to go to a standardized school for the next year, if he falls behind certain minimal requirements. Such a system would ensure that a child is at school as long as he is in the “risk group”. It would not ensure that everyone will actually reach a certain level of proficiency, but neither does fully compulsory schooling: the most any approach can achieve is to try.
At the same time, such a system would ensure complete freedom of choice in the ways of attaining the required levels of proficiency. Some libertarians may object that yearly testing is too extensive, and it is still compulsory. However, the shift from compulsory daily attendance to once-a-year testing is colossal. It wholly resolves an entire array of problems related to compulsory schooling, such as (often complete) lack of freedom in choosing schedules, textbooks, teachers and even classmates, to name a few. An issue of striving for relatively efficient and fair testing criteria would still remain, but that would be an immeasurably narrower problem.
Similar practices - of effectively replacing standardized schooling with occasional testing - have been employed throughout the world, but mostly confined to exceptional cases. The proposition is to normalize the practice and realize it en masse. Even under such a system most parents may still choose to take their children to schools, but they would have far greater freedom of choice. Relying on yearly testing would also lift the necessity for extensive regulation of the methods used by individual schools, providing wider options to parents and leaving more room for improvement through competition.
Now the proponents of compulsory schooling may object that a standard, state-regulated school provides far more than can be tested on yearly basis. One of the aspects being grading the students throughout the year. However, systems which largely or entirely eschew grading, such as the Montessori or modern Finnish schools, have proven to be comparably if not more efficient. Besides, even when extensive grading is employed, its utility is very limited: an A given by one teacher in one school may mean less than a C given by another teacher in another school, even if comparable at all. In the end all we are left with in terms of certainty are the standardized test scores, such as GRE. At the same time, some proponents of compulsory education are advocating against standardized testing, which effectively threatens to leave people entirely in the dark concerning the efficiency of certain schools.
Other potential objections, such as the argument that schools enable children to socialize, are even weaker. Firstly, socialization predates any school system. Even cave children found ways to socialize and there is hardly a reason to believe that schools provide universally superior social skills to those acquired anyways. It may be true that urban environments limit some children in terms of socialization opportunities, but these limitations are clearly alleviated by the advent of digital communication technologies. Moreover, if there are ways to measure necessary social skills, we can consider incorporating them into the testing system. If there are no such ways, neither can the efficiency of standardized schooling be measured in this respect.
While at the moment compulsory schooling may seem almost engrained in human nature and inherent to civilization, there was no such system for most of the mankind’s existence. The modern public school system only started emerging in the 19th century. Back then the economy and technologies still didn’t allow most citizens to independently provide even basic education to their children. The children of the elite, however, often had superior educational opportunities and were home-schooled efficiently.
Nowadays far more people can provide various means of education for their children. Perhaps even more importantly, far more information is accessible at far lower costs and with greater ease than ever in history. It is not only unnecessarily intrusive but also inefficient to prevent people from using the abundant alternative means of education, in favor of the established systems. A child forced to attend a school in a distant village is likely to lose out to one who is relying on courses provided online by top educators of the world. In the contrary cases, we can still use state-regulated schools for those who fail to be educated without them.