Straight from the Horse's Mouth - Quotes from those who have designed and promoted compulsory education

The Real Power Speaks

The real power of the world exercises its power from behind the throne. The politicians are but puppets who perform a kind of theatre for the masses to give them the illusion that their vote makes a difference. They present the voters a "Hobson's Choice" puppet #1 & puppet #2 and the masses then vote against the candidate they dislike the most or for the candidate whose scientifically-crafted, focus group-tested rhetoric they believe in. Every once in a while a member of the ruling elite will say something openly about the system they have installed.

In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present eduction conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen – of whom we have an ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
– John D. Rockefeller General Education Board (1906)

The Social and Societal Architects Speak

The ruling elite wants to protect its power and wealth. Their goal is to create a society where their crimes go unpunished and their control is complete. Obviously they have no interest in a free and open society of free thinkers and intellectuals. They require top-down centralized control by puppets whose strings they pull. They require fascism, communism, socialism, etc. to maintain control. They fund and promote the architects of these systems and then get the architecture implemented by governments who then get the system installed by administrators and bureaucrats. Here are some quotes from the social and societal architects:

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.
– Karl Marx, "The Communist Manifesto"

We must create out of the younger generation a generation of Communists. We must turn children, who can be shaped like wax, into real, good Communists.... We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families. We must take them over and, to speak frankly, nationalize them. From the first days of their lives they will be under the healthy influence of Communist children's nurseries and schools. There they will grow up to be real Communists.
– Communist Party Education Workers Congress (1918)

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.... The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
– Aldous Huxley, forward to "Brave New World," 1946 edition

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
– Vladimir Lenin

Government Leaders Speak

All governments seek to control their populations. Here are some quotes from those in power who were particularly honest about the goals of compulsory education.

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.
– Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1874)

Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils... and to awaken in them a sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation.
–Bernhard Rust, Nazi Minister of Education, from "Racial Instruction and the National Community," 1935

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.
– Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany

Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
– Joseph Stalin

Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.
– Winston Churchill

Government Administrators Speak

Governments need administrators to control and run the system. Some go along for the for the money and power, some are communist/socialist "true believers" who mistakenly believe they are "doing good", some are "useful idiots", some are collecting a paycheck, and some are "School Sakharovs" who understand the way the system works and are trying to affect positive change from within. I will leave it to the teachers and parents of Ashburn Elementary to sort out which buckets our school and county administrators belong. Here are some quotes from senior administrators of government systems.

Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.
– William T. Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.
– Horace Mann, first secretary of education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent.
– John Dewey, American educator

"Parent choice' proceeds from the belief that the purpose of education is to provide individual students with an education. In fact, educating the individual is but a means to the true end of education, which is to create a viable social order to which individuals contribute and by which they are sustained. "Family choice' is, therefore, basically selfish and anti-social in that it focuses on the "wants' of a single family rather than the "needs' of society.
– Association of California School Administrators

Teacher's Union Officials Speak

When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.
– Albert Shanker, Former President of the American Federation of Teachers

It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.
– Albert Shanker