“As the reason of each man[24] must not be the sole arbiter of his rights, so much less should the education of children, which is of more consequence to the State than to fathers, be left to the intelligence and prejudice of their fathers.”  “If public authority, by taking the place of fathers, by assuming this important function, then acquires their rights through fulfilling their duties, they have so much the less reason to complain inasmuch as they merely undergo a change of name, and, under the title of citizens, exercise in common the same authority over their children that they have separately exercised under the title of fathers.”

In other words you cease to be a father, but, in exchange, become a school inspector; one is as good as the other, and what complaint have you to make?  Such was the case in that perpetual army called Sparta; there, the children, genuine regimental children, equally obeyed all properly formed men.

“Thus public education, within laws prescribed by the government and under magistrates appointed by sovereign will, is one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government.”

Through this the citizen is formed in Advance.

“The government gives the national form to souls.[25] Nations, in the long run, are what the government makes them — soldiers, citizens, men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases,” being fashioned by their education.  “Would you obtain an idea of public education?  Read Plato’s ’Republic.’[26]....  The best social institutions are those the best qualified to change man’s nature, to destroy his absolute being, to give him a relative being, and to convert self into the common unity, so that each individual may not regard himself as one by himself, but a part of the unity, and no longer sensitive but through the whole.  An infant, on opening its eyes, must behold the common patrimony and, to the day of its death, behold that only....  He should be disciplined so as never to contemplate the individual except in his relations with the body of the State.”

Such was the practice of Sparta, and the sole aim of the “great Lycurgus."-

“All being equal through the law, they must be brought up together and in the same manner.”  “The law must regulate the subjects, the order and the form of their studies.”  They must, at the very least, take part in public exercises, in horse-races, in the games of strength and of agility instituted “to accustom them to law, equality, fraternity, and competition;” to teach them how “to live under the eyes of their fellow-citizens and to crave public applause.”