The Social Contract, Positive and Negative Rights, and the State’s Encroachment Through Public Education

In the landscape of political philosophy, the concept of the social contract plays a pivotal role in understanding the relationship between individuals and the state. Central to this theory are the ideas of positive and negative rights, each representing fundamentally different obligations of the individual, government, and society. While positive rights require the state to provide specific benefits or services, negative rights demand that the state refrain from interfering with individual freedoms. These concepts are crucial in evaluating the role and reach of government, particularly in areas like public education, where the balance between state power and individual liberty often tips precariously.

Understanding Positive and Negative Rights

Positive rights refer to entitlements that require action from others, often delivered as a service by the state. These rights imply that individuals are owed specific resources or services, such as healthcare, education, or housing. The state, therefore, has an active duty to ensure that these rights are fulfilled, often through taxation and redistribution of resources.

Examples of Positive Rights

• Comprehensive Mental Health Services: Ensuring that every student has access to counseling and mental health support, recognizing the profound impact of mental well-being on educational outcomes.
• Nutritional Support: Expanding school meal programs to ensure that all students receive the nutrition they need to focus and learn effectively, addressing food insecurity as a barrier to education.
• Social Services: Offering support for families in need, helping to address issues such as homelessness or domestic violence, which can severely disrupt a child’s education.
• Inclusive Curriculums: Implementing teaching materials and methods that reflect the diversity of the student body, including lessons on LGBTQ+ history, race, and disability, to foster an environment of inclusivity and respect.

On the other hand, negative rights protect individuals from interference by others, particularly the state. These rights include freedoms such as speech, religion, and property. Negative rights require others, including the government, to abstain from infringing upon these freedoms, ensuring that individuals can act autonomously in their own lives.

Examples of Negative Rights

Negative rights require others, particularly the government, to refrain from interfering with an individual’s actions. They are essentially freedoms from certain forms of interference or coercion. Here are some common examples of negative rights:

• Freedom of Speech: This is the right to express one’s opinions and ideas without fear of government censorship or punishment. It requires that the government does not interfere with or restrict what individuals can say.
• Right to Privacy: This right protects individuals from unwarranted intrusions into their personal lives by the government, such as surveillance or searches without probable cause.
• Freedom of Religion: This right allows individuals to practice their religion (or no religion) without government interference. It ensures that the state does not impose a state religion or unduly restrict religious practices.
• Right to Property: This right ensures that individuals can own, use, and dispose of their property without interference from others or the state, except under certain conditions like eminent domain (which itself requires fair compensation).
• Right to Life: This right means that individuals are protected from being killed by others, especially by the state, without due process of law. It is often the basis for laws against murder and, in some contexts, against capital punishment.
• Freedom of Assembly: This right allows people to gather peacefully for protests, meetings, or other events without interference from the government.

Freedom from Slavery and Forced Labor: This right prohibits the government or any other entity from enslaving individuals or forcing them to work against their will.

The Role of Public Education

Horace Mann, often hailed as the father of American public education, played a pivotal role in shaping today’s education system. Mann’s educational theories were heavily influenced by the Prussian model of education, which was designed not just to educate but to mold citizens in ways that served the state’s interests.

Public education is the gateway drug of positive rights and the entitlement culture.  Most of us experience public education as students, parents, or both.  In public schools, conformance is achieved through coercion.  It’s foundational to the public school movement in America.  

Compulsory education laws force parents to surrender their children to state-controlled institutions for the most formative years of their lives. During this time, the state dictates what is taught, often prioritizing conformity over critical thinking and obedience over individualism. This is often rationalized as a trade-off whereby the parents get to be a dual-income family in return for surrendering their children to the public schools.

Under a positive rights regime, public education is an unconstrained domain in which the public school system should satisfy every positive right demand of those under sixty-five. By their definition, whatever the public schools do in pursuit of those goals is education.  As a result, specifying what’s included in education is one of the most influential roles in a community, with influences across generations.
However, the implementation of public education is far from neutral. The composition of the pedagogical content is, all too often, an expression of one ideology or another.  It is, in fact, one of the primary vehicles through which the state expands its influence and control over individuals. By mandating education and controlling the curriculum, the state is able to shape the minds of future citizens, subtly or overtly promoting certain ideologies that sustain its power and the power of the political class.

Conclusion

In his seminal work, “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill argued that education is essential for cultivating a well-rounded individual capable of exercising reason and judgment. However, he was concerned that government-run education could lead to uniformity of thought and a suppression of individuality.  Mill proposed a compromise: the state should ensure that all children receive an education, but it should not have a monopoly over the content of that education. Instead, Mill advocated for a system where the government sets minimum educational standards and provides some form of financial support where needed, but the actual education should be provided by a diverse range of institutions, including private schools and other independent educational bodies, as chosen by parents. This way, parents and students would have the freedom to choose between different types of education, preserving diversity and protecting against the dangers of state indoctrination.

Currently,  in New Hampshire, we are far from Mill’s compromise.  Roughly two-thirds of our property taxes go to fund public schools.  Given that the beneficiaries of the current system, students and their parents, and the benefactors, the taxpayers, are both unhappy with the value proposition offered by the public schools, how much longer can this go on?  In New Hampshire, the judiciary, the legislature, and municipal governments have proven ineffective in providing practicable, near-term solutions.  Perhaps the model Booker T. Washington provided at the Tuskegee Institute, comprehensive social, cultural, and academic training, is the solution.  Or, maybe we must all roll up our sleeves and get involved.  Volunteer at public schools, help homeschoolers, attend school board meetings, correspond with board members, speak at deliberative sessions, and be an informed voter at the school board and school budget elections.

New Hampshire families seeking education options will find many valuable resources at EdOpt.org.