Thus the state benefits in some sense from the destruction of the home as a productive economic unit because what was once produced in the home is translated into market production, a more visible, quantifiable, and therefore more easily taxed form of production. Home education, for example, has been replaced in large part by public schooling. While in public schools, the state further undermines the family by teaching children that their parents are probably imbeciles, and the State Knows Best. Swett wrote, the child should be taught to consider his instructor superior to the parent in point of authority . The vulgar impression that parents have a legal right to dictate to teachers is entirely erroneous .
Parents have no remedy as against the teacher.
This view of parental incompetence typifies modern writing on education. It Takes a Village contains these overtones in several chapters, particularly those on child care and primary and secondary education. Guidance by the civil government is necessary, she suggests, to get inept parents back in line on education meaning, of course, that the parents act in a subordinate and supportive role with respect to the public school. Instead of questioning the actions of teachers, parents should back up school authority. While teachers and principals are not always right, Mrs. Clinton confesses, they deserve to be given back the presumption that they are.