How true to life! Often our calling is not what we wanted or desired.

Compared to what? What is the other option here, staying at home and learning the trade one of your parent's do. Thsi would produce a stagnent society and would create generations of "blacksmiths" in the same family. How ever school at least has the potential to open doors that wouldn't have been thought of or possible if we stuck to our families.

Rousseau argued that the first man to lay down a fence to take land as his own is responsible for all the war and tyranny. When soo much war and hate has started from the covetting of other's property how can the above quote stand as true? It can't, the basis is, that without principles of ownership half the issues we have seen in our history wouldn't have happened. The state wouldn't exist in reality or concept.

Impartiality is the sign of a great historian. Those with personal takes on history often are 'flash in the pans' and tie there opinion with history often distrorting the truth. If this is all people want from history they are betting off reading a gossip magazine. History is trying to establish the truth. It is a pure dicipline and has been tainted by TV deals for too long.

In a state where social and economic personal drives push parents to become separated from politics and distant from typical family life the state has free entry to the children's hearts and minds. The state will always strive to ensure it's own survival and the indoctrination of the young as an investment. The process has been allowed by parents for generations, and the ever growing pressure on teachers from parents to act like they are extended family, and the pressure from government to teach x, y and z causes a conflict of interest that has gone on for so long it is part of the fabric of every day life. The idea of separating church and state has worked in some parts of the world, but the concept of separating state from education has yet to be tried.

Why do teachers become teachers? Lessons extend beyond a state syllabus. Teachers are one of the better things about society and the fact that through history they have progressed countless persons beyond the life they would have received if they had just taught maths and not looked at their students as projects.

What is the purpose of education if not to build a mind to operate within society? Here is the basis of the basic education. Institutions may impose ideas on us but it is up to us if we accept their arguments and follow the docterines we hear. More often the greatest thinkers have been educated but have taken existing knowledge and found the loop hole in the accepted truths of their time. Where would Hawkins be without Newton? Where would Kant have done without Descartes? Those who walk before us in history show an example, it is up to the next generations to examine this and determine conclusions of their own.