That's a hard sell. The reason being, my ability to read that opening statement shows that compulsory education is not a form of control.
I don't think that statement's true; an ability to read fluent English (or any language) is necessary to feed you information; necessary for you to submit to and work within the paradigm you're taught in.
In Western primary and secondary state educational systems, most generally, a governmentally approved curricula is taught to children whose attendance at such institutions is legally compulsory, but to what end should governments demand that each and every child above infancy and below adulthood learn predefined curricula?
In contemporary thought it is often argued by parents and teachers alike that education provides children with the skills necessary to compete and survive in the modern world; education should provide, at a minimum, a level of knowledge that enables an individual to be accepted into gainful employment by an employer offering minimum wage (one of the skills required for such is a basic competency in written or spoken language), and at most a level of knowledge which enables an individual to excel far beyond the lowest tiers of employment into more lucrative livelihoods.
It is fair to say, then, that education is purposed to enable an individual to garner some level of currency in order to provide themselves with at least the sustenance required for physical nourishment. It is in principle that one should garner a particular level of currency which is relative to the degree to which one contributes to the socioeconomic system; be that a cleaner in a hotel earning minimum wage or a CEO of a financial institution whose annual bonuses are of a monetary value several thousand times that of the cleaner's yearly earnings. Clearly this means that those who contribute the most economically -- those who are rewarded most financially - have the most to lose should they detract from the system.
It is also a common notion that state educational systems might benefit children in this way. Under this foundational notion ''the education benefits the child'', there exist strict guidelines in various Western cultures to combat truancy, poor attendance, and non-conformism, under the pretence of ensuring that children are educated to a level that does in fact enable them to survive when they leave schooling.
In Western nations, it is highly unusual to encounter a person whose livelihood does not depend on the garnering of currency by some means or another – most people who have no money simply fall into poverty -- thus it would seem that any programme to provide children with the skills necessary to garner currency should have measures in place to limit the number of people who might detract and thus potentially end up in poverty. However, it is pertinent, for the sake of inquiry, to ask whether these punitive measures and limitations within schools are purely motivated by a desire to see children do well in life.
Certainly, from the teacher’s point of view it is necessary to implement punitive measures such as detention, exclusion or some other forms of punishment to not only encourage conformity in offenders but also to set an example to other potential detractors. But in a wider context, these punitive measures which are at ground-level seemingly motivated by a desire for what’s best for the children, begin to look more like a part of wider, much more oppressive, picture.
Consider that in order to garner vast sums of currency that should enable a person to live beyond bare necessity and into comfort and even luxury (currency, which is really the
only way a person can live luxuriously), there are few, if any, means other than; business (the buying and selling of goods or services in exchange for currency, enabled by an educated knowledge of supply and demand and business practice); stock market trading (the trade of shares in various business companies [as above] which can directly affect the value of currency itself); or the education of oneself to a degree where one's qualifications provide higher salaries (as opposed to minimum wage labour) correlative to the level at which one contributes to society.
From the above we can deduce that human beings in Western cultures are pressed at educational levels into a primarily financially motivated social-educational system that penalizes non-conformity and severely limits a person's ability to choose any method of sustenance outside of its boundaries by perpetuating a climate that does not cater to those who deviate from currency as the means of trade and sustenance. It is by this implementation within state school systems wherein children are legally compelled to attend to learn information purposed to further their ability to contribute to the current socioeconomic system that human beings are initially subjugated by that system. Fiat-currency based capitalism is, in this respect, a self-containing socioeconomic system wherein people are given a false dilemma – currency or poverty -- which is considered a valid dilemma only because it is taught that the fiat currency based socioeconomic model is and must be the sole rational basis for both social and individual survival.
Aside from the conditioned thought (often imparted on the individual in state education) that precedes the notion that fiat-currency is the only viable basis for a socioeconomic model, I find no tangible evidence that the notion is true.
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