Other than requiring two years of military training for young men that began at age eighteen, Athens let parents educate their children as they saw fit. Parents either taught their children at home or sent them to voluntary schools where teachers and philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle gave lectures to all who wanted to learn. These great teacher-philosophers did not need a license to teach, nor did they have tenure.

The ancient Athenians had a free-market education system. The thought of compulsory, state-run schools and compulsory licensing would have been repulsive to them. The Athenians respected a parents’ natural right to direct education of their children.

In contrast, Sparta, Athens’s mortal enemy, created first truly state-run, compulsory education system on record. Individual Spartans lived and died for state, and had to serve state from birth until sixty years of age. Their society was a brutal military dictatorship in which male children literally belonged to city, not to their parents.

What is life like for a prisoner? The warden and prison guards, in effect, take away prisoner’s life and freedom. They force a prisoner to live in a small cell he doesn’t want to live in, eat food he may hate, work at a job he detests, associate with other prisoners who may be dangerous, and remove him from everyone and everything he loved in outside world when he was free.

So why have we put our children into educational prisons called public schools? What crimes have they committed? Why do we condemn almost 45 million innocent children to this punishment? Do I exaggerate by calling these schools “prisons?” Well, let’s compare prisons and public schools.

Like prisons, public schools impose their will by force, by compulsion. Local governments force parents to send their children to public schools just as police drag convicted criminals into prison (even though many parents are not aware of this and voluntarily send their kids to these schools). A parent can be convicted of alleged child abuse and sent to prison if she disobeys school authority’s order to send her child to local public school.

Local governments then force parents to pay school taxes for these education prisons. If they don’t pay these taxes, their local government will foreclose on their home and throw them out on street.

School authorities force children to stay in school until they are 16 years old or graduate high school (these age limits vary by state). In effect, most children get a 10-year education prison sentence if they start school at age six.

School authorities force millions of children to sit in boxes called classrooms with 20 other children-inmates for six to eight hours a day, five days a week, for up to ten years. The children must obey adult education wardens (teachers and principals), who they may fear or dislike. They must study subjects they may hate or that bore them to death. They must associate only with other children their same age who may be bullies, violent, or emotionally disturbed. They must do homework and study for tests they must pass or be left back in school.