As a high school student in 1984, the height of my political outrage came in the form of the seatbelt law enacted by then Governor Cuomo. Of course we had a smoking area and could keep our guns in the car during hunting season. I recall an intelligent conversation with our principal after school one day about the concept of loco parentis, a replacement parent in law and subsequently during our schooling. There were still a lot of ex-hippies teaching crazy and complicated curriculums, but even then there were cracks in this mighty foundation of public schools created in the United States over the previous 100 years. With stories like the one coming out Pennsylvania about students being under virtual surveillance by local schools, I wish it were 1984 again. My kids might still have a chance. 
I realize the erosion and illusion of the noble institution of public education has accelerated in its decline with more alternative information available on these great tubes. I applaud efforts by great libertarians like Jim Ostrowski to confront these issues forthright and without apology. Once taken, power is a hard thing to give up. In many ways the power of education is one of religion. Spreading the word and cause of freedom in a dynamic, robust free market economy is not where the dogmatic practices of rote memorization are preached and practiced.
The alternative to public schools are stupid kids on the streets doing drugs. Right ? No public schools means an uneducated population getting all their information from the television, or worse yet, Wikipedia. Cuts hurt our future. Cuts hurt our opportunities. That's what the commercials say. Given our current economic conditions and future, is it any wonder that parents are rabid about their kids success on the athletic floors and fields ? A big sports contract goes farther than that impossible engineering degree. Just ask George Sisler.
Even though we thought that instant mushroom clouds could happen at any moment, we were free to watch out MTV when it had music videos. We were capable of working on our own cars that represented new freedoms in our lives. Nobody just said no because we knew the hype was just that. We got drunk and went home. Maybe we were even home. But nothing like this. The insidious watching and judgment, in complete presumption of right and mission. Ugh.
The rare 'conservative' teacher that I come across in my usual circles is resoundingly resigned to a system obsessed with sensitivity training and progressive bullying. While they hate it, risking their own position within it does not accompany any meaningful protest. The big monolithic machine just keeps churning along.
In 1984 I was not a libertarian and the idea of no public schools would have seemed nonsensical. Being a live and let live conservative wasn't easy in a very liberal public university system. While they never beat me down enough to buy the collectivist's lot in civilization as they presume through tortured examples called social contracts, I was also able to remove the shackles of statism that conservatism inherently embraces. By the time I was resolved never to return to formal schooling, the Berlin Wall had fallen and I was stumbling into previously communist hotels in Prague only months before forbidden but by party officials. Freedom was the key.
It may seem great to get a free computer from your school, we were strapped to basic Apples in 1984. Fortunately, few kids grow up without Internet now, because of the free market. That free market of ideas and information makes it possible to expose these horrible practices of school systems whose hubris and tentacles have no bounds except our truer sensibilities of common sense and decency. If this were done at a private education institution, customers would react accordingly and the behavior could easily be corrected to a satisfying end. It probably wouldn't have happened to begin with.
The public system will protect the public employees who did this. They will back peddle and deny ultimate wrongdoing. Somehow they'll be insulated from what would have been considered criminal behavior by any other. The board of education will hold sympathetic hearings all the while shrugging that they can't do anything about it now because it's under litigation. Invariably some parents will even rally around the spying for the purpose of fight drugs. Other schools will promise worried parents that this would never happen here. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
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