Texts:1973 Universal Voluntary Study: Difference between revisions

<p>These legal parameters however need not define the issue, for just as schools are only one among many agencies of education, compulsory schooling laws are only a small part of a community's actual involvement in compulsory education. By attending to this larger process, a basis may be found for a revision of the laws.</p>

<p>Whatever the laws, education is vitally compulsory. This is not to say that to get ahead in life a person needs a particular kind of education. Rather, it is to say something much more fundamental: to live is to be compelled to acquire an education, be it good or bad, adequate or insufficient. Life <i>is</i> a compulsory education. There are no exceptions to this law. The child is born inchoate, immature. To live, she must give herself form; she must learn continuously; she must acquire the makings of a sage or a fool, a saint or a sinner, a citizen or a subversive, a hero or some variant of the muddling mean. And the community participates deeply in this education.</p>