Sunday, April 7, 2013  Nationalizing Children  Commissar for
Children: Anton S. Makarenko, depicted in a Soviet Postcard
Instructions given at a congress of Soviet educators in 1918
(cited in Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s
Families, by Sheldon Richman, pg. xv).  [The Soviet family] is
an organic part of Soviet society. Parents are not without
authority … but this authority is only a reflection of social
authority…. In our country he alone is a man of worth whose
needs and desires are the needs and desires of a collectivist….
Our family offers rich soil for the cultivation of such
collectivism. –  Soviet family theorist Anton S. Makarenko, The
Collective Family, A Handbook for Russian Parents, pgs xi-xii,
42.  If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for
children, then the fact that children are raised in families
means there’s no equality…. In order to raise children with
equality, we must take them away from families and communally
raise them. –  Dr. Mary Jo Bane, Assistant Se