Release Date: Saturday 29th July 2006
Release Time: Immediate

Contact Details:
Dr Sean Gabb (Director, The Libertarian Alliance), +44 7956 472 199 (UK access code), sean@libertarian.co.uk

For other contact and link details, see the foot of this message
Release url: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/news/nr045.htm

"VOTING WITH THEIR FEET: RISE IN TRUANCY TO BE WELCOMED", SAYS FREE MARKET AND CIVIL LIBERTIES THINK TANK

The Libertarian Alliance, Britain's most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, today welcomes the rise in truancy rates announced in a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

According to Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb:

"State schooling is an instrument of ruling class control. It is a means by which ideologies of obedience are imposed on the young.

"State schools have always encouraged intellectual passivity and trust in the authorities. In the past generation, they have begun also to celebrate illiteracy, innumeracy and a general ignorance of the world. Add to this endemic bullying and temptations to unwise experimenting with sex and recreational drugs, and we have in state schooling a comprehensive absence of what used to be meant by education.

"Rising truancy levels are to be welcomed. They show that increasing numbers of the young are withdrawing from the process of mass brainwashing. The young may not yet be expressing positive discontent with the corporatist police state New Labour and the Conservatives have made for us. But they are beginning to vote with their feet.

"While the Libertarian Alliance does not encourage breaches of the criminal law, even if the law happens to be pointless or malevolent, we do look forward to a time when state schooling will be as dead an institution as the workhouse and the debtor's prison."

The Libertarian Alliance believes:

* That all state funding and control of education should be abolished;
* That all compulsory attendance laws should be repealed;
* That the assets of all the various education authorities should be sold at once, and all their archives destroyed.

END OF COPY

Note(s) to Editors

Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. He is also Deputy Director of the Truancy Unit at Buckingham University and author of Home Schooling: A British Perspective, published in Homeschooling in Full View: A Reader (2005) by Bruce S. Cooper (Editor)

He is also the author of The Column of Phocas a novel. Publication date: 4th August 2006. Available via Amazon:

Dr Gabb can be contacted for further comment on 07956 472 199 or by e-mail at sean@libertarian.co.uk

Extended Contact Details:

The Libertarian Alliance is Britain's most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has published over 700 articles, pamphlets and books in support of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are freely available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk

Our postal address is

The Libertarian Alliance
Suite 35
2 Lansdowne Row
Mayfair
London
W1J 6HL
Tel: 07956 472 199

Associated Organisations

The Libertarian International - http://www.libertarian.to - is a sister organisation to the Libertarian Alliance. Its mission is to coordinate various initiatives in the defence of individual liberty throughout the world.

Sean Gabb's personal website - http://www.seangabb.co.uk - contains about a million words of writings on themes interesting to libertarians and conservatives.

Hampden Press - http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.- the publishing house of the Libertarian Alliance.

Liberalia - http://www.liberalia.com - maintained by by LA Executive member Christian Michel, Liberalia publishes in-depth papers in French and English on libertarianism and free enterprise. It is a prime source of documentation on these issues for students and scholars.