The top-down structure of anything, especially education, inhibits innovation and flexibility in the system. This doesn’t mean that there should be no top-down guidelines, but they need to be minimal and flexible. We want to keep the changes simple enough that most parents can understand the law being proposed.
We have two parts to look at:
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Via negativa (what is prohibited).
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Via positiva (what is required).
We must prohibit teaching what is harmful to children in the education system based on principles that cover as many versions of that harm under a single, simple law. A focus on eliminating the bad but allowing various interpretations of what is good to teach, as needed by different people in their personal education, gives the simplest, most flexible, and most effective legal changes.
For example, we don’t want our children to be taught lies, disproven theories, fake news, etc. But how do we write a simple law that prohibits that? It needs to have three parts:
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a prohibition on state funds being used for the teaching of lies to children within the educational system.
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a system to measure the curiculem for lies. (This is called a “truth test.”)
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a means of redress for parents and other stake holders to remedy breaches of the law.
There is a fixed number of things we don’t want happening to children in the education system. We need to list them, prohibit them, and include a test for each and methods of redress. All in plain language.
I propose that this via negativa structure be used to make a simple core law to reform the education system. Stop the bad. Let local schools decide on the good, perhaps with some guidelines. Given some more time, I could write the actual prohibition law if this proposal is popular enough.
Noah Revoy
Senior Fellow at The Natural Law Institute