Artificial Intelligence and State Monopolies in Education

From Human Right to Education in the Age of Innovations and Smart Technologies, June 12, 2024 (Peter Lang, Lausanne and Berlin). Edita Gruodyte ̇ / Aušrine ̇ Pasvenskiene ̇ (eds.) Series: New Approach

Daniel Barnhizer & David Barnhizer

Abstract

Throughout the developed world, local, state, and national governments have a near-monopoly on primary and secondary education. In that context, primary and secondary education is legally compulsory and primarily funded by the State, most (if not all) educational institutions are regulated by the State, instructors are certified by the State, and parents may be subject to civil or criminal penalties for failing to ensure school attendance by their children. Moreover, the State is often involved in selecting virtually every aspect of the educational experience, including identification of required subjects, selection of approved textbooks and curricula, approval and monitoring of instructional methods, and assessment of student educational achievements.

In this chapter we are focused on two main points. One is the extent to which Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is infiltrating our systems at all levels with a scope and intensity never before experienced. This analysis includes how AI technology is both benefit and curse, including the fact that many human leaders simply do not understand the implications, or do not car about the ultimate consequences as long was their power base is secure. A great deal of the detailed information on such issues is covered in our co-authored 2019 book, The Artificial Intelligence Contagion: Can Democracy Withstand the Imminent Transformation of Work, Wealth and the Social Order? (Barnhizer & Barnhizer, 2019 Clarity Publishing).

A growing number of parents of school-age children reject or attempt to reject State-controlled education systems in favor of increased educational autonomy. The reasons for parents’ decisions in favor of increased educational autonomy may include desires for religious or moral education, concerns over child safety and welfare in public schools, concerns over entrenched ideological control by teachers and other education professionals, and concerns regarding the quality of education available in public schools.

The mix of reasons that drives individual parents to increase the educational autonomy of their children also affects the form and degree of educational autonomy they adopt. Educational autonomy occurs in different degrees, including supplemental tutors for public school students, enrollment in private and/or religious educational institutions, school choice regimes permitting parents to choose the public schools their children attend, and direct parental education of children (commonly referred to as “homeschooling”).

Although each of these alternatives to the State monopoly on education raises challenges to that continued monopoly, none has received as much criticism from State and professional interests in the education industry as homeschooling. By its very nature, and unlike other forms of educational autonomy such as private schooling, school choice, and charter schools, there are significant difficulties involved in gathering data on homeschooling choices, curriculum, and educational outcomes.

Nonetheless, in the U.S., at least, available data suggest that homeschooling produces educational outcomes comparable to or better than those available from the State-run public school systems. Despite this, homeschooling has historically been treated with suspicion, hostility, and – in jurisdictions such as Germany and Sweden – outright legal prohibitions. Moreover, homeschooling has been the target of substantial criticisms, often from those who have a financial or ideological interest in maintaining the State monopoly over education.

Introduction

This chapter addresses several of the traditional critiques in the context of the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on education. Specifically, this chapter focuses primarily on a major overt critique leveled at homeschooling – namely whether homeschooling adequately educates children – and one major covert critique of homeschooling – whether homeschooling threatens to disrupt the social, political, and economic benefits derived by special interests from State control over education.

We analyze those critiques through the lens of the potential educational benefits of AI. While AI technologies are affecting or have the potential to affect education at multiple levels, the availability of AI applications to supplement homeschooling practices raises the question of whether human rights involving family, education, and personal autonomy now outweigh State and professional interests in forcing students into State-controlled educational institutions.

Where traditional criticisms of homeschooling have focused on factors such as a lack of training and certification of parent-educators, the need for students to meet State-approved educational goals, the need for students to be properly “socialized,” the need to ensure child safety, as well as other hidden goals such as ideological indoctrination, the increasing availability of AI as a supplement for homeschooling reduces or eliminates many of these traditional objections to homeschooling. Given the availability of AI, the case for State hostility to homeschooling is startlingly weak in the face of parents’ and students’ human rights to an effective and meaningful education.

Background

“Homeschooling” refers to the choice by parents to withdraw their own children from the public education system, either completely or partially, in order to educate those children (generally in the home) (Donnelly, 2012). The legal right of parents to homeschool children differs widely between jurisdictions. In the U.S., for instance, homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, although states impose varying levels of regulation on homeschooling parents. (Homeschool Legal Defense Association [HSLDA], n.d.)

The U.S. state of Michigan, for instance, expressly recognizes the constitutional right of parents (People v. DeJonge, 1993) to homeschool their children and provides only minimal requirements for homeschooling (The Revised School Code, 2017). While the state does mandate that homeschooled students receive instruction in a list of basic subjects (The Revised School Code, 2017), parents are generally not required to report to any state institution regarding their choice to remove their children from the public schools academic progress, or the substance or structure of the curriculum (Michigan Department of Education [“Home Schooling in Michigan”], n.d.).

In contrast to the highly permissive Michigan homeschooling regime, the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania imposes significant requirements upon homeschooling parents, including an annual notarized affidavit that the parent intends to homeschool and that includes an outline of proposed education objectives, evidence of immunization, evidence of health and medical services available, certification that the home education program will comply with state law, and certifications regarding the non-criminality and education of the parents (Public School Code, 2005).

Additionally, Pennsylvania homeschooled parents must submit their child to an annual evaluation of the child’s educational progress by “a licensed clinical or school psychologist or a teacher certified by the Commonwealth or by a nonpublic school teacher or administrator.” (Public School Code, 2005, 1(e) (2)) At any time during the school year, the local school administrator, upon reasonable belief “that appropriate education may not be occurring in the home education program”, may institute proceedings to evaluate and revoke the parents’ permission to homeschool their children (Public School Code, 2005,1(i)-(m)).

At the other end of the spectrum of legal homeschooling options, some juris- dictions such as Germany prohibit homeschooling, and school-age children must attend either public schools or State-approved private schools. Wunderlich v. Germany is the latest in a number of European Court of Human Rights cases reviewing Germany’s anti-autonomy position regarding homeschooling and educational autonomy.

Other significant cases include: Konrad et al. v. Germany, 2006; Dojan, et al. v. Germany, 2011; and Leuffen v. Germany, 1992). Thus, in the case of Wunderlich v. Germany (2019), the court held that the German government’s interests in compelling attendance by school-age children in State-approved educational institutions did not violate the parents’ rights to determine both the residence and the education of their children (Wunderlich v. Germany, 2019, paras. 42–58).

In Wunderlich, the parents refused to enroll their children in the local public schools, ultimately resulting in German authorities taking custody of the children until the parents agreed to reverse their position and enroll the children. Although the children were ultimately returned to their parents’ custody, the local Education Authority filed criminal charges against the parents for failing to compel their children’s school attendance.

The factors relied upon by the German government, and ultimately the court in Wunderlich and similar cases denying a human right of parents to educate their children outside of State-based educational institutions, mirror many of the traditional criticisms opposed to homeschooling generally. Specifically, the decision to remove the children from their parent’s custody was based upon a number of factors, including:

• Concern over the adequacy of the children’s education. “The schooling by, in particular, their mother had to be regarded as inadequate, since the children had been taught only for five hours a day, interrupted by a lunch break, and notwithstanding their different ages, all children had been taught together and the same curriculum.” (Wunderlich v. Germany, 2019, para 40));

• Concern over socialization. “In addition, the children had had no regular contact with society and hardly any opportunity to meet children of their own age, for example during music lessons or in sports clubs, or to acquire social skills.” (Wunderlich v. Germany, 2019, para 40);

• Concern over child safety and well-being. “…[A] risk emanating from the children’s father to their physical integrity could not be excluded...” (Wunderlich v. Germany, 2019, para 23)); and

• Concern regarding integration of the children in civil society. (“… failed attempts to bring the children to school by the police had led to the risk of the children internalizing the attitude that laws had no bearing on them...” (Wunderlich v. Germany, 2019, para 23) and “… the State, in introducing such a system [of compulsory attendance at a State-approved educational institution], had aimed at ensuring the integration of children into society with a view to avoiding the emergence of parallel societies....” (Wunderlich v. Germany, 2019, para 50).

The concerns suggested in the European Court of Human Rights opinions on homeschooling in Germany have likewise been echoed and even expanded upon by academics opposed to educational autonomy in the U.S. For instance, Professor Robin West (2009) opined in 2009 that:

1. homeschooled children are at greater risk of abuse,

(2) homeschooled children are not properly vaccinated,

(3) homeschooled children need public schools as “a welcome respite” from the love of their families and to be valued for their traits and status,

(4) homeschooled children are either politically disengaged or are uneducated “citizen-soldiers in the ‘homeschooling movement’” that seek to “undermine, limit, or destroy state functions that interfere with family and parental rights”,

(5) homeschooled students are “ethical[ly] servil[e]” to their authoritarian parents,

(6) homeschooled students “are suffering educational harm which would be avoided or minimized were they either in public school or were their home- school subjected to decent regulation,” and

(7) homeschooled students from the “hardcore of the homeschooling movement” come from “trailer parks, 1000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots,” and “[t]heir lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.” (pp. 9–10).

Similarly, ten years writing after West, Professor Elizabeth Bartholet (2019, p. 3) stated that “[h]omeschooling parents can, under current law, deny their children any meaningful education and subject them to abuse and neglect free from the scrutiny that helps protect children in regular schools.” Moreover, according to Bartholet (2019, pp. 5–6):

“Even if many homeschooled children did do all right on some standard educational measures, this would say nothing about significant subsets of homeschooled children we should be concerned about. These subsets include those whose parents are either uninterested in educating their children or incapable of doing so and those whose parents subject them to serious abuse and neglect.”

The criticisms raised include the assertion that academic success says nothing about success in terms of preparing students for civic engagement. Many homeschooled children miss out on exposure to others with different experiences and values. Most miss out on extracurricular activities like student government. A significant proportion of homeschooling parents are ideologically committed to isolating their children from the majority culture and indoctrinating them in views and values that are in serious conflict with that culture. Some believe that women should be subservient to men while others believe that race stamps some people as inferior. Many don’t believe in the scientific method, looking to the Bible instead as their source for understanding the world.

The presumptive one-sided caricatures in West’s and Bartholet’s arguments speak for themselves. Moreover, West’s and Bartholet’s articles have been severely criticized for importing the authors’ personal biases into the conversation on homeschooling without substantial factual or empirical support (Wolf et al., 2020; Ray, 2010). However, the two articles and others like them illustrate the types of criticisms often leveled at homeschooling. As Brian Ray (2010), founder of the National Home Education Research Institute stated in reviewing West’s article:

“Academics and others who voice concerns and claims about homeschooling like those in Robin West’s article bring two key points to the fore. First, they notably lack foundation, empirical evidence, to support their assertions about home-based education harming children or giving children and youth a less-effective opportunity than would state-run schooling or state-controlled homeschooling.”

Second, their concern about parent-led home-based education and solutions to alleged problems are driven by something like the State Authority perspective .... That is, they generally believe that the state should use its power to exercise final authority over the teaching, training, and indoctrination of children and youth. (All forms of education – whether state-run public schooling, private institutional schooling, or home-based education – consist of the teaching, training, and indoctrination of youth. ...) This is clearly antithetical to the perspective of most of the homeschool community and all Americans who hold to something like the Parental Authority perspective .... “ (n.p.).

Despite criticisms such as raised by West, Bartholet, and the ECHR, a growing number of parents reject (or attempt to reject) the State-based education system in favor of educational autonomy, commonly known as “homeschooling” (Wamsley, 2021). In the U.S., prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and government responses to the pandemic that severely curtailed in-person instruction in the vast majority of public schools, homeschooling was already becoming increasingly common as an educational option.

For example, the National Center for Education Statistics within the U.S. Department of Education reports that in 1999 homeschooled students represented approximately 1.7% of school-age children (ages 5–17) (U.S. Department of Education (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2021, Table 206.10). By 2019, 2.8% of school-age children in the U.S. were homeschooled (NCES, 2021, Table 206.10).

The U.S. Census Bureau’s “Household Pulse Survey” conducted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that “the global COVID-19 pandemic has sparked new interest in homeschooling and the appeal of alternative school arrangements has suddenly exploded” (Eggleston & Fields, 2021, n.p.). In the first week (April 23 – May 5) of Phase 1 of the Household Pulse Survey, about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported homeschooling. By fall, 11.1% of households with school-age children reported homeschooling (Sept. 30-Oct. 12). A clarification was added to the school enrollment question to make sure households were reporting true homeschooling rather than virtual learning through a public or private school.

It is difficult to estimate whether the higher rates of homeschooling observed during government responses to COVID-19 will continue, but there are indications that the popularity of homeschooling may continue to rise. As Professors Daniel Hamlin and Paul E. Peterson (2022, pp. 18–24) observed, the number of U.S. school-aged children who are homeschooled may be substantially undercounted in official surveys and may continue to grow as a proportion of the educational market, stating: “Clearly homeschooling is on the rise. Even cautious estimates indicate a doubling of the practice during the pandemic, and the actual shift could be much greater.”

Was the surge in homeschooling a temporary phenomenon induced by the pandemic, or will it become a permanent part of the education landscape? In a national poll conducted by EdChoice in 2021, 60 percent of parents held more favorable views toward homeschooling as a result of the pandemic. Market researchers are reporting significant, if unofficial, drops in school enrollments in the 2021-22 school year. Early reports say that some homeschooling newcomers are enjoying the flexibility, personalization, and efficient use of time that homeschooling allows. Families are also taking advantage of opportunities to combine homeschooling with part-time virtual learning, college coursework, neighborhood pods, and informal cooperatives, which are lessening the teaching demands on parents who homeschool.

However, Hamlin and Peterson (2022, pp. 18–24) also note that not all parents who shifted to homeschooling during the pandemic are likely to continue the practice. They explain:

“[T]he 2021 Education Next survey revealed that many parents were finding education at home to be an exhausting undertaking and looked forward to a return to normal operations. Nearly a third reported they had ‘to reduce the number of hours [they] work[ed] in order to help with school work this year.”

A significant percentage of parents said they had to rearrange their work schedule. A quarter of those calling themselves “homeschoolers” said they did not plan to continue the practice.

Parents choose educational autonomy alternatives (including homeschooling) to State-based public educational institutions for a variety of reasons. In a 2007 article, Eric J. Isenberg (2007) analyzed NHES data suggesting four categories of reasons for parents to homeschool: (1) religion, (2) education, (3) behavioral or special need issues, and (4) other reasons. While these general themes appear throughout discussions of homeschooling, the actual reasons for educational autonomy decisions are much more nuanced. As J.D. Tuccille (2023) notes with respect to pre-pandemic justifications for homeschooling:

“People have always had different reasons for DIY education. According to [U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Education Statistics] survey data of families homeschooling in 2019, “more than two-thirds of homeschooled students had parents who selected one or more of the following as a reason for homeschooling: a concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure (80 percent); a desire to provide moral instruction (75 percent); emphasis on family life together (75 percent); and a dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools (73 percent).” (n.p.)

Some of the factors cited by Tuccille (2023) – such as concern about school environment – may encompass concerns about child safety, bullying, teacher bias (both illegal bias against particular demographics and bias by teachers against particular children they simply dislike personally), dissatisfaction with or distrust of the social, political, and educational ideology of teachers (or administrators, unions, and other stakeholders in the public education system in general).

Other factors include dissatisfaction with the specific curriculum used in local public schools, a belief that alternative educational methodologies will result in superior outcomes, or a desire to tailor the curriculum to their own child’s learning style or interests. Within this universe of concerns over educational quality, the particular reasons for parents to shift toward some form of educational autonomy may have significant effects upon the form in which that autonomy expresses itself.

In the U.S., following the pandemic, social and political developments, concerns over educational quality, child safety, and a growing distrust of public education systems have provided new reasons for parents to homeschool. Los Angeles Times reporter Laura Newberry (2022) notes that the reasons for homeschooling post-pandemic:

“are diverse, complex and span socioeconomic and political spectrums: schools implementing too many COVID-19 safety protocols, or too few; the polarizing conversation around critical race theory; neurodivergent kids struggling with virtual instruction; and an overall waning faith in the public school system.” (n.p.).

In the current social and political climate in the U.S., concerns over the quality, content, and ideological bias of public school instruction are significant. As the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (2021) has argued, “education” in U.S. public schools has been replaced by “indoctrination,” and the distinction between “education” and “indoctrination” is being lost. Stephens writes that: “There’s something kind of totalitarian about that. You’re not producing independent thinkers, you’re producing Red Guards. (n.p.).”

Similarly capturing concerns over introduction of “woke” ideologies as an integral part of public school curricula, Jason Riley (2021) assessed:

“A majority of American fourth-and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. ... Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be lagging academically, it’s a question that anyone professing to care deeply about social inequality might consider. Learning gaps manifest themselves in all kinds of ways later in life, from unemployment rates and income levels to the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and involvement with the criminal-justice system. Our jails and prisons already have too many woke illiterates.”

Here we are focused on two main points. One is the extent to which Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is infiltrating our systems at all levels with a scope and intensity never before experienced. While we develop AI here in the context of autonomous educational options, that coverage is only partial. Importantly, we do not attempt to survey the specific applications of AI in education. While many particular applications exist, covering a range from learning management systems to language and math instruction, tutoring packages, and a host of others, we approach AI technologies as encompassing several common characteristics regardless of the specific context. Specifically, as we described in Chapters 1–4 of The AI Contagion this includes:

1. AI is an umbrella term that covers a range of technologies including machine learning, natural language processing, expert systems, robotics and other forms of automation, vision and speech recognition, and others;

2. The vast majority of tasks currently performed by human labor, including even creative tasks such as composing recipes, driving cars, providing certain types of mental or emotional therapy, resolving disputes, writing news stories, and many others currently performed by human beings can be automated through AI technologies; and

3. Economic incentives will, over time, lead to the development of new technologies that will supplement or replace human labor in favor of AI technologies except where the complexity of the task is high and the value of the task is low relative to the cost of developing AI applications to replace that task.

It is important to note that this third characteristic of AI technologies does not refer to the absolute value of human labor in performing a specific task, but rather the relative value of that labor compared to expected returns from automating the human component with AI. Engine mechanics, for example, perform valuable services in diagnosing mechanical breakdowns (notably with the assistance of automated expert systems and code readers). However, the cost of developing both the AI technology (including robotics and associated infrastructure) necessary to replace the human labor involved would likely exceed any reasonable return that could be achieved in the engine repair business.

To this initial list, we add a fourth characteristic.

4. The skills involved in most primary and secondary education tasks are not an exception to the fact that those skills can be largely replicated through AI technologies.

The ChatBot Evolution

AI technologies can curate appropriate materials; assess student performance; and track student learning, attention span, interests, and learning styles. As opposed to current industrial mass-production models of public education, AI holds the promise of a bespoke education for each student that is less susceptible to individual or demographic bias, more rigorous, more responsive, and more comprehensive.

In that context, humans are necessary only so long as they focus on tasks AI cannot do. As Peter Jacobsen (2023) observes, the recently released beta test of the ChatGPT AI chatbot “can write poems about any topic, give book recommendations, summarize specific chapters of books, and create workout routines.” (n.p.). More importantly for the education context: Chat GPT can write reading responses, online discussion-forum posts, short answers, and even essays. Chatbots, in the two years following Jacobsen’s report, are now integrated in writing analyses for an expanding number of journalistic and other written products. The speed at which the various Chatbots have been developing is absolutely stunning and is continuing in sophistication.

Admittedly, the essays on the earlier systems weren’t perfect, but they were certainly not worse than the worst essays students turned in. At this point in 2025 many students are engaged in turning in AI products as their own. This creates a serious issue for education. For years, papers, essays, and other open-response assignments have been the gold standard in preventing cheating. Plagiarism can be an issue, but modern plagiarism detectors and a bit of work on the professors’ side were expected to eliminate the issue.

AI essays, however, are already being shown to be non-detectable by these means. Students have the ability to fake an original essay. To give one (non-scientific) example of the threat that ChatGPT and similar technologies pose for traditional education, Daniel submitted the five separate essay questions from his Fall 2022 final exam in Contract Law (a first-year course in most U.S. graduate JD programs) to ChatGPT and then scored the answers using a previously-developed exam rubric. The average score for each answer produced by ChatGPT was between a B and a B-, with the low scoring essay as a C, and the total score would have been around the 55th percentile for that particular class. The capabilities of AI systems have improved by leaps and bounds since that testing.

The chatbot in question as of 2023 performed extremely well at spotting legal issues raised by each question and fact pattern, correctly stated the applicable legal standards, and provided legal analysis comparable to what would be expected from a time-pressured law student who did not quite catch a few important distinctions in the essay fact patterns. Ironically, the only thing that would indicate to a professor that the answers were written by an AI chatbot rather than a student was that there were no grammatical mistakes in the ChatGPT answers.

Update 12/22/24: A “Glimpse” of the Developmental State of

AI Technology and Capability

“For Gen Alpha, learning to read is becoming a privilege”, jridley@insider.com (Jane Ridley, Ayelet Sheffey, 12/20/24. https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-alpha-reading-literacy-crisis-privilege-society-divide-2024-12.

“Joshua McGoun, a K-12 public-school teacher in Frederick, Maryland, first noticed a change in his students about 10 years ago. They began to struggle with focus. Increasingly, younger kids were not nailing basic reading skills before third grade — a crucial window. Those who miss it have a tough road ahead in middle and high school. Even adept readers in their tweens and teens have become afraid of complex or extended reading tasks and more comfortable with short texts or bite-size summaries. McGoun, who has a doctorate in education, shared one stark example. With struggling readers, he hands each child a book upside down and backward. "They should be able to turn the book the right way up and open it at the first page," he said. These days, "some students aren't able to do that.” This is not unusual. Across the US, kids are struggling to read. Last year, reading performance for fourth graders hit its lowest level since 2005, and teachers expect that number to keep tumbling.”

“Google Unveils A.I. Agent That Can Use Websites on Its Own: The experimental tool can browse spreadsheets, shopping sites and other services, before taking action on behalf of the computer user”, Jason Henry, 12/11/24. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/technology/google-ai-agent-gemini.html.

“Today, chatbots can answer questions, write poems and generate images. In the future, they could also autonomously perform tasks like online shopping and work with tools like spreadsheets. Google …unveiled a prototype of this technology, which artificial intelligence researchers call an A.I. agent. … Various A.I. start-ups, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have unveiled similar prototypes that can use software apps, websites and other online tools.”

“My trip to the frontier of AI education: First Avenue Elementary School in Newark is pioneering the use of AI tools in the classroom”, Bill Gates, 7/9/24. https://www.gatesnotes.com/My-trip-to-the-frontier-of-AI-education.

“When I was a kid, my parents took me to the World’s Fair in Seattle. It was amazing to see all these fantastic technologies that felt like something out of a science fiction novel. … I remember walking away from the fairgrounds each time feeling that I had just caught a glimpse of the future. That feeling came back to me recently as I walked out of a classroom in Newark, New Jersey. In May [2024], I had the chance to visit the First Avenue Elementary School, where they’re pioneering the use of AI education in the classroom. The Newark School District is piloting Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutor and teacher support tool.…

We’re still in the early days of using AI in classrooms, but what I saw in Newark showed me the incredible potential of the technology. I was blown away by how creatively the teachers were using the tools…. Several of the teachers I met with showed me how they can access each student’s dashboard and get a summary of how they’re doing in a particular subject. They loved being able to easily and quickly track a student’s progress… They were also excited about how their students are using Khanmigo as a personalized tutor. …. It reinforced my belief that AI will be a total game-changer for both teachers and students once the technology matures. Even today, when the teachers at First Avenue delegate routine tasks to AI assistants, they reclaim time for what matters most: connecting with students, sparking curiosity, and making sure every child feels seen and supported—especially those who need a little extra help.”

“AI Will Eventually Be ‘As Good a Tutor as Any Human’: Bill Gates”, Samantha Flom, 4/19/23. https://www.theepochtimes.com/ai-will-eventually-be-as-good-a-tutor-as-any-human-bill-gates_5207460.html.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may not be advanced enough to replace teachers now, but according to Bill Gates, that time is not far off.

“The AIs will get to that ability to be as good a tutor as any human ever could,” the Microsoft co-founder said at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego on April 18. “We have enough sample sets of those things being done well that the training can be done,” he added. “So, I’d say that is a very worthwhile milestone, is to engage in a dialogue where you’re helping to understand what they’re missing. And we’re not that far.”

Independence, Autonomy, and Transformational Innovation

Another focus involves how we can possibly make AI-assisted education a vital element in transforming American autonomous education. Although cited critics such as West (2009) and Bartholet (2020) claim without empirical support that some segments of homeschoolers are uneducated, abused, not socialized, not civically engaged, and not following State-based models of what they should be learning, the reality is that the same charge can be laid against formal public education systems. Characterized by mandated curricula and more-or-less lock step methods and implemented by systems of teacher certification and under-graduate schools of education, the State-based public education system fails students at multiple levels, particularly for the most disadvantaged students.

For instance, in 2021 Audrey Conklin reported that a Baltimore high school student ranked near the top half of his class after failing all but three classes over four years and holding a 0.13 GPA (Conklin, 2021). An administrator for Baltimore Public Schools stated, “This transcript is not unusual to me. I’ve seen many transcripts, many report cards, like this particular student.” (Conklin, 2021). While 24% of students in Baltimore Public Schools earned below a 1.0 GPA before the pandemic, that number doubled following government-mandated school shut-downs in response to COVID-19 (Casiano, 2021).

Eli Steele (2021) reports that:

“[i]n 2019, only 37% of third-graders in Illinois demonstrated grade-level proficiency in English-language arts, and when it came to math only 41% could demonstrate grade-level proficiency. [Steele asked] Why would the state of Illinois consider new standards when it failed to uphold the most basic and universal of education standards?”

“The messy work of destabilizing a kid’s racism or homophobia or transphobia”

A so-called public school “teacher” actually made the above ludicrous comment, obviously overrating his own capabilities and abandoning any moral sense of the nature of his role. As an example of why parents may perceive the public school system to be more concerned with indoctrination of children than the quality of education, Lucas Manfredi (2020) reported on concerns raised publicly by one Philadelphia public school teacher “about the ‘damage’ that ‘helicopter parents’ might cause if they overhear lessons on topics such as gender and sexuality”. The “teacher” further noted that “‘conservative parents’ were his chief concern when engaging ‘in the messy work of destabilizing a kid’s racism or homophobia or transphobia.”

When teachers openly discuss that they are concealing what they are doing with the children entrusted to them, parents have every right to be concerned regardless whether the teacher is engaging in sexual abuse (Chasmar, 2022) or indoctrination of the children in that teacher’s personal ideology. Reports such as these legitimate parents’ distrust of failing school systems even while self-righteous educators justify the desire of many parents to seek educational alternatives for their children.

The Claims to Educational Autonomy and the Power to Indoctrinate

With respect to educational autonomy the availability of AI technologies increasingly counters many of the traditional critiques leveled at homeschooling by those with a vested interest in maintaining the State monopoly on education. Here, we address the impact of AI technologies on two critiques used to justify that continuing State monopoly.

First, State control of education may be justified (to some extent) on the basis that the State has an obligation or duty to ensure that its child citizens receive a minimum quality education sufficient for those children to be productive members of the community. This critique of educational autonomy overtly asserts that children cannot or may not receive a minimum quality education from parents who are not certified as professional teachers, curricula that are not reviewed and vetted by State-controlled experts, and a lack of mechanisms to adequately assess student achievement and performance.

Second, a more covert and hidden justification for State control of education is that educational autonomy deprives the State of the ability to indoctrinate children with the ideology and worldview desired by those who control the State-based machinery of education. As Brian Ray (2010) observes, indoctrination is an inevitable consequence of education: “All forms of education – whether state-run public schooling, private institutional schooling, or home-based education – consist of the teaching, training, and indoctrination of youth.”

The issue in the ongoing conflict over what takes place and who controls is whether the State has a legitimate interest in indoctrinating children with the ideology and worldview of individual instructors, local schools, teachers’ unions, aggressive Identity Groups with political agendas, or state and national level education bureaucracies. The important question is not whether indoctrination should occur, but the nature and abuse of the process as implemented.

With respect to the covert indoctrination critique, AI technologies do not prevent indoctrination. But by challenging the remaining critiques of educational autonomy, the availability of AI technologies that permit parents to provide high-quality education compared to the public systems is forcing entrenched interests to openly state their interests in indoctrinating students as a justification for maintaining State control over education.

The Quality of Education Received

Although common at the beginning of the homeschooling movement in the U.S., complaints regarding the quality of the educational experience for homeschooled students have been belied by the data. Educational outcomes for homeschooled students are comparable to or better than outcomes for peer students educated through the State-based public education system.

Traditional critiques of the quality of education that children receive in the homeschooling environment look to the lack qualifications of parents to teach, compared to professional educators trained and certified according to State standards. Similarly, educational quality may also refer to a lack of academic rigor, a concern that parents may be overly generous in awarding grades for homeschooled student transcripts, or claims that the curricula used by homeschooling parents may not adequately cover subjects the State has determined to be critical for education.

Another factor is that outside of jurisdictions that mandate all school-age children to participate in regular standardized testing to assess educational achievement, autonomous education approaches lack reliable mechanisms for the State to certify mandated levels of students’ exposure to state minimum requirements for basic educational needs. These needs include literacy, numeracy, culture-specific history, civics, and subjects considered to be fundamental elements of a sound education.

These traditional critiques of autonomous education have been largely dis- proven. As the data on America’s schools presented here demonstrates, a majority of students being allegedly educated in some of the nation’s urban school systems cannot pass basic proficiency exams or standards, very large numbers of students drop out and never graduate, many others receive social promotions regardless of a lack of adequate learning and are awarded degrees that are not worth the paper on which they are printed.

State control of what is essentially a “warehousing” of children and mass production of public education for reasons of efficiency was something that originally produced a sense of great trust by parents. Government responses to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic shattered parents’ trust in a purportedly “expert class” of K-12 teachers trained in university schools of education employing identical methodological and ideological models. This educational model largely replicated in many ways the organizational structure offered by the emergence of very large-scale economic actors. In doing so, it provided a ready-made work-force trained according to the needs of the economic and political system.

How bad is the state of America’s public education system, and what are the social and economic implications of the unfolding disaster produced by its deterioration? If America’s educational establishment were functioning well and doing the job its defenders claim, we would be having a very different discussion. The problem is that across the nation we find increasingly tragic examples of how students and their families – and therefore the nation – are being betrayed. A national educational establishment that reacts to any criticism with outrage and smugness in fact is doing an abysmal job of educating our students and condemning millions of America’s youth to lives of despair, hopelessness and rage.

Essential Conceptual and Decision-Making Skills

Thinking, analysis, manipulation of numbers and their underlying implications are essential conceptual skills available to everyone who opts to develop them, not some form of systemic “racism”. The absence of those critical skills of thinking, problem solving, understanding reality, honoring real diversity, interactive discourse, and strategic thought, sabotages students and the nation dependent on a population of insightful people capable of contributing to a true and dynamic community. The failure to develop such skills in our educational systems, and the resulting inability to compete in a world where many others possess such capabilities, is not a “good” thing for America or its people.

The Technological and Social Transformation Is Hitting Us at “Light Speed”

AI breakthroughs are coming much faster than the best estimates from our most knowledgeable experts in AI suggest. In 2014, Nick Bostrom (2014) made the daring claim that an AI “player” might be able to beat a skilled human GO master in ten years or so. Only a year and a half after that prediction the world’s best GO master was left humiliated and depressed after being trounced by an AI opponent (Moyer, 2017). This has implications for many human activities, good and bad, and the education of our young people is one of the most vital areas of concern and change.

Stephen Hawking, the brilliant Cambridge University physicist, warned that AI/robotics systems could lead to the end of humanity (McCrum, 2016). Prior to his death, Hawking stated that artificial intelligence could destroy our society by first overtaking, and then surpassing humans in intellect, capability, and power. Developments in AI/robotics are so rapid and uncontrolled that Hawking warned that a “rogue” AI system could be difficult to defend against, given our own greedy and stupid tendencies (McCrum, 2016):

“I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer. ... [C]omputers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence – and exceed it. ... It will bring great disruption to our economy. And in the future, AI could develop a will of its own – a will that is in conflict with ours. In short, the rise of powerful AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity.” (n.p.).

To understand the potential contributions of AI/robotics, begin by considering the seemingly far out possibility voiced by Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Japan’s Softbank and a major world actor in AI/robotics and the “Internet of Things”. He believes Artificial Intelligence systems are likely to reach an IQ level of 10,000 within the next thirty years, perhaps even as soon as 2030 (Shead, 2018). This compares to the Einsteinian “genius” IQ capacity of 200 considered the height of human intelligence (Shead, 2018).

Son’s prediction is simultaneously frightening and exhilarating. Some look forward to such developments and see them as a way for humans to solve problems that are otherwise beyond human capabilities. Others see such incredible projected AI capabilities as threats to human societies, including even the continuing existence of the human race. It is interesting to say the least that US President-Elect Trump just recently made a joint appearance with Son in December 2024 explaining the fact that he was intending to establish a significant manufacturing presence in America.

If people such as Hawking, Max Tegmark, Son and Nick Bostrom are even partially correct, we are witnessing the emergence of an alternative species with capabilities far beyond what we think of as possessed by “machines”. the implications for American (and global) society are both exhilarating and dire. On that topic Margi Murphy warns: “Humanity is already losing control of artificial intelligence and it could spell disaster for our species.” (Murphy, 2017)

This newly created “alternative species” could ultimately represent a fundamental threat to the human race. Tegmark, for example, voices amazement at the fact that some people in the AI/robotics field feel that AI not only marks a next evolutionary stage, but are excited by the fact we are creating entities dramatically superior to us in numerous ways (Tegmark, 2018). Tegmark’s dismay centers on the fact that that some researchers state they are looking forward to the replacement of “inferior” humans as the AI systems evolve beyond the point of serving humans and understand their own superiority (Tegmark, 2018).

Whatever happens with Artificial Intelligence over the longer term which may become a reality sooner than we think, we face extremely serious challenges in our immediate and near-term future, effects we are already experiencing but not yet fully comprehending the consequences. Many of the shorter term effects are already impacting a wide variety of nations. These effects are already having powerful effects on our children and grandchildren. Those impacts are much more immediate and concretely predictable than the projections of a possible “AI/robotic apocalypse”.

The already emerging consequences include widespread social disintegration and division, large-scale job loss, rising inequality and poverty, the shrinking of American and Western European middle class with serious consequences for the stability of nations, increased violence and crime, and vicious competition for resources within and between nations. We covered such topics in The Artificial Intelligence Contagion.

What Is the Form and Function of Education in the New AI/Robotic Culture?

Opportunity and employment are areas in which we are already experiencing substantial effects. This has a direct connection with our educational systems, both K-12 and in universities, because the world into which our children are going and that for which the educational systems are responsible for preparation is changing in fundamental ways. Those systems are not prepared to adapt in the ways required. Nor are there reasons to expect that current teachers, as a rule, possess the understanding, knowledge and skills needed to prepare our youth for the world they are entering.

At the center of our attempt to understand what education must provide students is at least awareness that AI is developing abilities we did not expect or that in our ignorance and arrogance we thought were only achievable by humans. One example is described by Daniel Nadler, chief executive of Kensho, a financial services analytics company partly owned by the Goldman Sachs Group. He describes what he sees as ongoing job loss in finance and banking (Popper, 2016).

Nadler explains: “Anyone whose job is moving data from one spreadsheet to another ... that’s what is going to get automated.” (Popper, 2016). Many economic activities have been decimated by the transition Nadler described eight years ago, and more cuts are on the way even as the capability of Artificial Intelligence systems are “going through the roof” faster than the AI “experts” predicted.

But the challenges are not only job and opportunity loss due to greater data management and interpretational skills. The growing capabilities of AI systems go well beyond data-crunching. It is not simply manual labor jobs that are being replaced although the elimination of such work opportunities. That is a serious social and political issue but only part of what we face.

We are going through a compressed process of research, development, testing, application, implementation, familiarization, and refinement. AI programs are already writing movie scripts, creating poetry, painting pictures, solving problems humans cannot, operating independent weapons systems, and “crunching” data at levels no human will ever achieve. AI programs are also accessing and manipulating a stunning range of information in ways we cannot comprehend nor match, and are evolving in ways their creators admit they don’t understand, even though they designed the original programs.

AI systems are being created that can autonomously rewrite their program- ming based on their own experiences and do so without human intervention. There are already early developments in self-learning by AI systems that signal the strong likelihood those systems will achieve that heightened capability to unanticipated degrees and do so in the near future.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company and the owner of the AI research company DeepMind, developed an AI – AlphaGo – that AI taught itself how to play GO in three days. AlphaGo invented entirely new strategies on its own that far surpassed the capabilities of the world’s finest GO masters (BBC, 2016; Muldeen, 2017). More recently, DeepMind has turned its attention away from specific AI agents developed to play games and towards a more general AI that can teach itself to solve complex scientific problems, such as prediction of protein structures based upon the genetic makeup of the protein (Shead, 2020).

Even subtle skills aimed at enabling AI systems to recognize qualities such as aesthetic beauty are being worked on by China’s Alibaba (Soo, 2020; McGoogan, 2016). The company’s former CEO, Jack Ma, predicted that within the next 30 years AI systems are likely to become CEOs themselves. He warns that we are in for decades of very difficult times as the AI/robotics transition occurs:

“Social conflicts in the next three decades will have an impact on all sorts of industries and walks of life. ... [He] adds: “A key social conflict will be the rise of artificial intelligence and longer life expectancy, which will lead to an aging workforce fighting for fewer jobs.” (Bloomberg, 2017).

The availability of AI applications for autonomous educators challenges many of the basic assumptions that had long justified large-scale industrial production models of public education. Access to educational techniques, methodologies, interactive technologies, shared strategies and the like have greatly expanded the ability of homeschooling parents to maximize students’ educational opportunities, tailor educational programs to the interests and needs of individual children, and explore innovative pedagogies while maintaining academic rigor and quality. As Mary Rice Hasson (2012, p. 3) observed in 2012, technological advances even before AI provided significant support for homeschoolers seeking to improve the quality of home education.

Developments in technology have reshaped the homeschooling landscape dramatically. The internet expanded the possibilities for homeschooling families not only in terms of access to information, resources, and curriculum, but also in terms of access to peers, support, and expert advice. Parents now can find, review, and order curricular materials with ease. They can seek out curriculum reviews not only from the local support group but also from homeschooling parents and experts anywhere. They can delegate course instruction to another educator, through online instruction, complementing the use of other non-parental instruction such as cooperatives or tutors. Students can communicate with educators, tutors, and peers using secure chat rooms, Skype, and instant messaging, providing opportunities for both academic instruction and peer discussions.

New resources and curriculum materials use audio and video technology – podcasts, webcasts, digital microscopes, video streaming of documentaries and educational videos as well as hands-on resources, helping parents to incorporate the latest methods of instruction into learning environments most suited to their children’s needs. Smartphones and social media also help homeschooled students create a rich social network beyond their geographical area in addition to their in-person social interactions.

AI technologies take the information-era advances of the early 2000s even further. For example, in foreign language instruction – a skill that many homeschooling parents previously had to supplement through outside tutors or education collectives, particularly in the U.S. – AI-based platforms such as Duolingo have advanced to the point that they may provide acceptable substitutes for in-person language instruction at beginning and intermediate levels. Although focused on adult students with no prior experience with a foreign language, a 2021 study of the effectiveness of the Duolingo application concluded,

“In comparing listening and reading proficiency between Duolingo learners and university students in language classes, the results indicated that the proficiency scores of Duolingo learners aligned with those of fourth-semester university students.” (Jiang et al., 2022, p. 992).

Likewise, a similar 2018 study of the effect of Duolingo’s “gamification” of language learning on language learning for third- and fourth-grade students concluded that “the students using the Duolingo® application achieve similarly to those receiving traditional face-to-face classroom instruction.” (Rachels et al., 2018, p. 83).

Other AI-based educational applications have likewise been shown to be able to supplement or supplant traditional in-person education (Fang et al., 2019).

AI applications in education have the capacity to assess student educational needs, resolve student educational deficiencies, design customized curricular paths, and ensure student engagement with the material. These rich and powerful resources have “changed the educational game” in terms of the location, methodologies and form of K-12 education. They significantly enhance the ability to provide high quality education outside traditional contexts of large classes in public schools. This, of course, poses a dramatic threat to the prevailing educational establishment which has resisted doing the hard work of adapting to a rapidly changing world.

Given the availability of AI technologies to supplement the educational pro- cess, the case for a state monopoly in education is startlingly weak in the face of parents’ and students’ human rights to an effective and meaningful education. The emergence of smaller scale, adaptive and flexible educational experiences create a growing threat to the members of the monopolistic educational establishment and they are fighting back aggressively.

As AI-and parent-driven capabilities have dramatically increased, a clash has arisen between parents and the formalist systems controlled by school boards, teachers unions, state departments of education, school administrators, textbook publishers and consultants. The revenues these systems obtain depend almost entirely on the maintenance of the current educational monopoly, as is the case for university colleges of education committed to preserving the existing educational system.

Technological developments, access to information, sharing between mutually interested groups regardless of physical location, and other important developments have not rendered the local public school mechanism irrelevant, particularly if its participants embrace the changes that are required, but they have made that largely rigid and increasingly ideological model simply one among numerous others. This conflict between educational models centers on the question of whether the human rights of the family, including education and autonomy, outweigh state interests in forcing students into state sponsored education where everything is created and defined by the state and the educational establishment.

But even that vital issue is only part of the equation. Breaking the hold of the educational establishment and opening up legitimate experimentation and competition creates a mindset of innovation and educational inventiveness. That possibility challenges a boring, inefficient, and mass produced “one size fits all” monopolistic system by offering exciting alternatives to students. To their discredit, many school boards, teachers union, school administrators, and consultants are fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent this from occurring.

Indoctrination

As America expanded and settled into fixed localities, we created public school systems supported by public revenues that offered a reasonably efficient educational mechanism for most students. The public school model developed methods, texts, and curricula that became increasingly homogenous and controlled and dictated by school boards, county and state departments of education and, within the past 50 years, by the US Department of Education and large scale state and national teachers’ unions such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Taken together, these entrenched interests have created a powerful and coordinated educational monopoly that has become heavily politicized and homogenous in terms of what they teach, how they teach, and what they do not teach.

Attempts to distinguish legitimate education from indoctrination by those who control State-based educational institutions are at the heart of current hotly-contested debates over education in the U.S. Particularly with respect to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and ideologies relating to gender and sexuality, U.S. public schools and related institutions have blurred the line between essential education of children and indoctrination of children. The debate over the degree to which public educational institutions are free to impose the ideologies of their leadership and members has exploded over the last several years.

For instance, following a significant number of public protests and parent advocacy at local school board meetings over such things as masking mandates and CRT influences in curricula, the National School Boards Association (“NSBA”) claimed both that its members were “facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula.” (National School Boards Association, “Re: Federal Assistance” [NSBA, Federal Assistance] 2021, p. 1). In its 29 September 2021 letter to President Joseph Biden, the NSBA declared “[a]s these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” (NSBA, Federal Assistance, 2021, p. 2).

A review of the examples put forward by the NSBA to justify its assertion that individuals protesting against school boards should be investigated for domestic terrorism shows that the examples of “domestic terrorism” comprise almost exclusively claims of disruption and protest at school board meetings (NSBA, Federal Assistance, 2021, notes 1–24), and after significant public outcry (Downey, 2021), the NSBA was forced to issue an apology (NSBA, “Re: Message to NSBA Members” [NSBA, Message to Members], 2021).

However, both the apology for characterizing as domestic terrorists parents who protested mask mandates and the denial that public schools were including ideologies such as CRT in the curriculum fall short. With respect to the latter, as noted previously, the denial is particularly disingenuous given that the two largest teachers’ unions in the U.S. are committed to including these ideologies in public education (Riley, 2021). While it is almost certainly true that few, if any, public school teachers in the kindergarten through 12th grade explicitly teach any type of critical theory (a subject more properly reserved for undergraduate and graduate programs), the reality is that educators apply the principles of ideologies such as CRT, intersectionality, and other controversial theories to their pedagogy.

The application of these ideologies is having or is perceived by parents to have, real world impacts upon students. Reporter Anthony Zurcher (2021) perfectly captured the distinction between the technical philosophy of CRT and the application of CRT principles in primary and secondary education:

The concepts [within CRT] ... have influenced historians, journalists and educators in school districts across the US who say they want to do more to teach the public about the US struggles with discrimination rooted in race.

How the concepts translate into a public school curriculum and teacher training have become the flashpoint of the CRT controversy. An elementary school in Cupertino, California, for instance, asked third-graders to label their own power and privilege in an “identity map”. At least 30 schools recommended that students should read Not My Idea, a children’s book that called racism “a white person’s problem and we are all caught up in it”. Its author, Anastasia Higginbotham, has argued that “any place where there are white people has violent white supremacy embedded into it” and she is not shy about labeling her discussions on race as “CRT”.

Beyond the real or perceived commitments of the teachers’ unions to CRT- related ideologies, states and local school districts incorporate applications of these ideologies into their programs. For instance, the Virginia Department of Education and the California Department of Education both proposed elimination of advanced mathematics classes for high-performing students, justifying that move as an attempt to achieve racial equity in mathematics performance (Soellner, 2021; Blume, 2021). At the individual school district level:

“For years, two administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships. This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.” School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in.” (Nomani, 2022).

At the level of individual teachers, some clearly believe that CRT and related ideologies are being imposed upon public school curricula and students. It has reached the point that some teachers have resigned rather than continue to participate in what they see as a damaging process. For example, Sam Dorman (2021), reports on the resignation of a Connecticut teacher over curricular issues consistent with CRT. He writes:

“‘They’re so young and naïve and that to me was the hardest part about all of this,’ teacher Jennifer Tafuto [said]. ‘We’re taking away that innocence because we’re trying to make them so obsessed with race and a characteristic that they can’t control. It breaks my heart and I just didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.’”.

As we have stated repeatedly in this chapter, we are not taking a position here on the merits of CRT or other ideologies or the extent to which such ideologies may or may not be incorporated into the machinery of public education. What is important here is that large swaths of the public perceive that professional educators and those in control of State educational institutions are forcing their children to accept indoctrination by the one-sided message of those individuals.

It is one thing when children are educated with the tools to enable them to assess the materials to which they are exposed. It is quite another when an academic monoculture is perceived to impose its worldview on children unprepared to evaluate that worldview. AI technologies in the educational context can support the former endeavor. However, with respect to the reality or perception of indoctrination, the only impact AI can have is to eliminate other objections to educational autonomy so that entrenched influences must become explicit in their desire to control State education in order to continue indoctrinating students.

Against this backdrop of tensions over racial and other forms of discrimination, concerns over indoctrination, and the desire of many parents to avoid illegitimate and distorted abuses of State-based powers of educational indoctrination, the writings of American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (“King” or “MLK”) are particularly relevant. Writing at a time of extraordinary social upheaval and racial tension, King captured what the essence of education – contrasted with indoctrination – should be.

A number of King’s aims have to do with the clarity, quality, and honesty of our thought. Specifically, in seeking the essence of education, King brings the values of objectivity, logic, rationality, truth, the importance of fact and evidence, individuality, morality, and character to the fore as essential educational aims. To King, these virtues are fundamental elements of any effective education in a complex and diverse representative democracy of the kind America represents.

MLK emphasized the ability to think, analyze, distinguish, communicate, value, work with facts and evidence, and interact with others to resolve issues and take effective action. This focus can be seen in other civil rights leaders. U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X described the function of education as: “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” (X, 1964). In the same sense, we very much like his urging that:

“We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.” (X, as quoted in Clarke, 1990, p. 304).

Likewise, the courageous South African civil rights and anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela (1990) also offered a powerful insight into the vital importance of teaching critical thinking, knowledge, personal empowerment, and vital skills. Mandela states:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Education is the first step for people to gain the knowledge, critical thinking, empowerment and skills they need to make this world a better place.” (n.p.)

As teachers, activists, public interest and civil rights lawyers, consultants, and authors, we agree completely with the statements of King, Nelson Mandela, and Malcolm X. The tragedy is that the powerful formulations by these three leaders of what our children’s education “should” be have less and less to do with what is taking place in America’s systems of K-12 and university education.

Based upon these, and similar statements, Doctor King likely would be stunned and dismayed at the way the American system of education has been corrupted. His perspectives on the nature and purpose of education are set out below. He describes an educational system that teaches students matters of substance, method, the ability to think and solve problems, ethics, morality, and critical information. Such a system necessarily would and must include a critique of society and its shortcomings. This includes the history and realities of racial discrimination. But a major part of its aims must be focused on preparing learners for the future rather than fixating on a past that must be honestly understood, but cannot be changed.

Based on the statements of educational purpose MLK offers, we can see that what he described bears little if any resemblance to the reality our young people are forced to deal with today as they are betrayed, indoctrinated, and “brainwashed” by America’s educational establishment. While King saw morality as an essential component of education, it was not an unquestioned ideology programmed into students taught to accept what the educator sought to impose but rather part of the process of teaching students to think and engage with the real world as autonomous individuals:

“To my mind, education has a two-fold function in society. On the one hand it should discipline the mind for sustained and persistent speculation. On the other hand, it should integrate human life around central, focusing ideals. It is a tragedy that the latter is often neglected in our educational system.

Education should equip us with the power to think effectively and objectively. To think is one of the hardest things in the world, and to think objectively is still harder. Yet this is the job of education. Education should cause us to rise beyond the horizon of legions of half truth, prejudices and propaganda.

Education should enable us to “weigh and consider,” to discern the true from the false, the relevant from the irrelevant, and the real from the unreal. The first function of education, therefore, is to teach man to think intensively. But this is not the whole of education. If education stops here, it can be the most dangerous force in society. Some of the greatest criminals in society have been men [who] possessed the power of concentration and reason, but they had no morals. Perhaps the most dangerous periods in civilization have been those periods when there was no moral foundation in society.

Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere. It is not enough to have the power of concentration, but we must have worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. It is not enough to know truth, but we must love truth and sacrifice for it.” (King, 1992).

Mark Bauerlein (2021) offers a critique of what has taken place in American universities in the past several decades. We offer this because the newly entering generations of “expert” K-12 teachers are coming from our universities. When those institutions are corrupted and overwhelmingly ideological, so are the K- 12 teachers and administrators trained and indoctrinated by them. Bauerlein (2021) writes in “The Strange Obedience of the Professorate:”

“Everything now has a political ingredient. That’s the ultimate triumph of Woke: the insertion of political criteria into places where they don’t belong. The gatekeepers of academia (liberals, mostly) won’t keep them out, not any longer. The leftists in the room, few though they be, have too much moral fervor, the liberals too few convictions of their own. Those two groups have managed to expel nearly all conservatives from the faculty ranks, and they’re probably happy about that. But the campus is no longer a zone of renegade minds and novel ideas. What used to be a vibrant, energetic, rousing habitat of ideas and people in hot debate is now an oppressive, predictable, fatiguing workplace. They’ve ruined the university.” (emphasis added) (n.p.)

We are not focused in this chapter on the merits or effects of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Gender Theory, and other ideologies. However, as discussed above, these ideological orientations have further altered parental attitudes about trusting and respecting teachers. In numerous instances, “racialized” and “genderized” belief systems being advanced by teachers have raised serious questions in the minds of parents and others concerned with what they see as one-sided ideological manipulation of children due to questions about the accuracy of what is being taught, the extent to which children are being deliberately converted to a specific form of political activism, and the appropriateness of some method- ologies and material for some age groups.

What is important here is that many parents perceive the public education system as having abandoned children’s education in favor of these ideologies. As Jason L. Riley (2021) discusses in the New York Post:

“Recently, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, announced that they had jumped on the bandwagon. At its annual meeting [in July 2021], the NEA adopted a proposal stating that it is ‘reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frame- works for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.’ More, the organization pledged to ‘fight back against anti- CRT rhetoric’ and issue a study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropo- centrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society. There was no proposal vowing to improve math and reading test scores, alas.” (n.p.)

Although Riley’s observation is also relevant to the issue of those in control of the State education machinery to indoctrinate students in their preferred political and philosophical ideologies, what is important here is the suggestion that parents of school-age children are justified in their perceptions that public educators emphasize indoctrination over educational quality. If these perceptions are valid, as is reflected in Bret Stephens’ (2021) conclusion that “education” has been replaced by excessive and distorted “indoctrination” and the distinction between “education” and “indoctrination” lost, America is being deprived of the educated population that is essential for its healthy future.

As noted above, AI technologies can greatly assist in education and moreover can provide parents seeking educational autonomy with the tools necessary to provide their children an education as good as, if not better than, that available from public schools. With respect to indoctrination within public schools, all that AI technologies can do to ameliorate the problem is to remove the excuses that entrenched State-based interest use to obfuscate the issue.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have explored some of the issues parents face choosing var- ious levels of educational autonomy and separation from State-controlled educational institutions, with a particular focus on educational autonomy in the U.S. While public schools have become increasingly distrusted by many in terms of quality, safety, and ideology, educational autonomy options such as private tutors, private schools, school choice, charter schools, and homeschooling require time, money, and effort by both parents and children to be successful. At the same time, the promises and challenges of AI technologies offer additional tools for those choosing some level of educational autonomy to assist them in providing the highest-quality educational experience for their children while at the same time providing legitimate mechanisms for accountability, rigor, and child safety and welfare.

In writing this analysis we are fully aware of how limited is the space when seeking to inform readers of the nature, seriousness, and consequences of the sweeping failures in education being experienced in America’s university education and the kindergarten through twelve system (K-12). We therefore suggest readers look at the following works for expanded data and analysis as well as the material cited in the list of references.

The books include: David Barnhizer & Daniel Barnhizer, The Artificial Intelligence Contagion: Can Democracies Withstand the Imminent Transformation of Work, Wealth, and the Social Order? (2019); David Barnhizer, “Un-Canceling” America (2021) David Barnhizer, “No More Excuses! Parents Defending K-12 Education, (2022). Also just published in January 2024, see, David Barnhizer, Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities (Skyhorse). Those books describe the technological, economic, political, and educational realities of the extreme challenges we face.

Experimentation, Innovation and Hope

The following news report that was just released offers a fascinating look at how some parents are taking dramatic steps to alter the inadequacies created by too many public school “captures” of their children’s futures resulting from declining educational quality and compelled attendance at what are too often failing or declining systems. It did not appear in the chapter itself but is well with reading.

“How New Microschool Accreditation Pathways Are Opening Doors for Founders and Families: The Next Generation Accreditation pilot program aims to offer faster, more affordable, and more flexible routes for emerging schools.”, Kerry McDonald, 7/5/25. https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/how-new-microschool-accreditation-pathways-are-opening-doors-for-founders-and-families-5882074?ea_src=frontpage&ea_cnt=a&ea_med=section-1

As a mother of nine in Tennessee, Sarah Fagerburg tried a variety of different schooling types, from public schools to homeschooling, but she always felt there had to be something better. In the spring of 2023, she discovered Acton Academy from listening to a podcast, and knew that this was the educational model she had been seeking. “My mind was blown,” said Fagerburg. “I had no idea education could be this good.”

She applied to open her own Acton Academy, and was accepted into the fast-growing network of approximately 300 independently operated schools, emphasizing learner-driven education. Fagerburg launched Acton Academy Johnson City last fall with 13 students, including four of her own children. Today, she has 26 K-6 students enrolled in her secular microschool, with plans to add a middle school and high school program in the coming years. “Parents want this. They love it,” said Fagerburg, adding that some families drive up to 45 minutes each way for their children to attend her program.

With the current expansion of school choice programs, such as Tennessee’s new universal education savings accounts (ESA), many more families are able to access innovative schools and learning models. “It’s a complete game changer,” said Fagerburg, explaining how the ESA program enables Tennessee families who previously had limited education choices to now use a portion of state-allocated education funding to select the school or learning space that is best for their child.

But there’s a catch. In order to participate in Tennessee’s ESA program, Fagerburg’s school must be accredited, and its current accreditation by the International Association of Learner Driven Schools isn’t recognized by the state. That is why Fagerburg jumped at the opportunity to participate in a fledgling program offered through the Middle States Association (MSA), one of the four major K-12 accreditation entities, with 3,200 member schools worldwide. In partnership with Stand Together Trust, MSA’s Next Generation Accreditation pilot program seeks to offer a faster, more affordable, and more flexible route toward accreditation for today’s emerging schools.

The Editors

Edita Gruodyte ̇ holds the position of Tenure Professor and Vice-Dean for Research at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU), Faculty of Law. She has authored more than 50 scientific articles, co-edited several books, and is the Chief Editor of the journal Law Review. Her main research interests include (European) criminal law, human rights, legal ethics, legal education, and law and technologies.

Aušrine ̇ Pasvenskiene ̇ is an Associate Professor and Vice-Dean at VMU, Faculty of Law. Her research interests include education law, technologies in education and law, human rights in education, law and technologies, and financial literacy. She holds the position of Editor-in-Chief of the Baltic Journal of Law and Politics and is a member of the European Association of Education Law and Policy. © 2024 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne Published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin, Germany.