There is no recognition that the natural order in education means that the state has nothing to do with it. Education is entirely a family matter and ought to be produced and distributed in cooperative arrangements within the framework of the market economy.
It's a confident claim, but one which would be difficult to substantiate. Since modern humans appeared, the social group has almost always been larger than the isolated, single family, and the social group has always had an interest in educating its young members in the ways of the group. The author is either wrong about what the 'natural order' is with respect to education, or else is using the words 'natural order' in an idiosyncratic way.
What is your definition of "modern humans" the last 50 years? The last hundred? The most basic social group has always been the family. All social group larger then a family were, until very recently, products of multiple and interrelated family groups. Again it is only until fairly recently that anything other then higher education or specialized training was done outside the home. How long have we had government run schools in this country? How long have their been government run schools globally?
Dear snarks_when_bored,
I think that your criticism of Hoppe has some validity, although Hoppe acknowledges that the provision of education extends beyond the family. But Hoppe is right that in the natural order, the state has nothing to do with it.
Hoppe allows for involvement of entities outside the family when he says, "produced and distributed in cooperative arrangements within the framework of the market economy."
Where I think your criticism is valid is that Hoppe restricts the extra-familial involvement in education too narrowly, at least as I read it.
As a homeschooler, I can tell you that Hoppe has outlined approximately how we operate. Education is entirely our responsibility. And, we do engage in cooperative arrangements to further the education of our children. We buy a private curriculum, we buy other educational enhancements from other private and semi-private offerors.
But the language Hoppe uses seems to miss an important feature of our experience, which is the cooperative arrangements that are not really oriented toward the market economy. We do a lot of things with other homeschooling families that are not really "commercial" or "market-based" in conception, motivation, or practical application. I guess if you want to draw the definition of "markets" broadly enough, you could possibly include all these other activities, but to me, that's a mindless reductionism.
Many of the cooperative arrangements in which we homeschoolers participate are based on bonds of friendship, social cooperation, fraternal sentiment, religious identity, caring for one another, altruism, and principled morality. I think that they are not well-described by "the framework of the market economy."
sitetest