School a la drone

With the appointment of Betsy de Vos as Secretary of Education, I read an article which mentioned that public schools were developed during the industrial revolution to teach children the skills needed by factory owners. 

In the U.S., the notion of citizen elected governance further promoted the need for voters capable of independent reasoning, at least in theory. But the advent of neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalism and government austerity, public policy has been focused on privatization of public schools and de-empowering local and teachers-union control/input into public schools. Much of this is driven by profit through two mechanisms: (1) privatizing schools to allow private school corporations to skim profits from public monies; (2) produce compliant workers and voters who are not intellectually capable of challenging the status quo or any forms of authority, in other words, worker drones.

Down with Tyranny has a post describing many yeshiva schools operated Hasidic Jewish communities which seem to exactly match the eo-liberal laissez-faire vision of public education. My comment:

Deliberately denying children a good education is child abuse analogous to sensory deprivation as torture. Unlike uncontacted people who make a deliberate choice to live isolated from modern technology, the Hasidim live in the heart modern society and hold themselves separate and morally superior while taking full advantage modern infrastructure and technology (medicine for example). Children raised in these restrictive environments never have the opportunity to fully develop their potential, a waste for themselves, personally, and their communities. These children are also taught to behave opposite of their moral code - take from society without contributing to society.

There's an important lesson here for non-Hasidims/secular citizens. Schools that provide a "...very basic English reading and arithmetic, along with minimal levels of English writing..." education produce young people who "...lack the requisite skills to obtain employment with a decent income to support themselves and their (often large) families...". This is a major goal of some powerful economic players and education reformers. They want workers who cannot think critically to challenge the status quo. They want workers who compliantly conform to authority (God, rabbi, employer). But depriving children of education is unpatriotic. A dynamic, vibrant and functioning democracy relies on the participation of informed voters & citizens capable of analytical reasoning. So the Hasidic model described here fails at all levels, from individual development to Constitutional expectations.