When American children reach the age of 5 they begin a 13-year journey through the public school system. Their first year, spent in kindergarten, no real ‘education’ takes place; their time is spent acclimating them to a classroom environment; conditioning them for the next 12 years of their lives.
Once they have passed through this acclimation process, their real ‘education’ begins; where their minds are filled with only the knowledge that the system has decided they ought to know.
Upon completion of this 12 year process, they are awarded a piece of paper that declares that they have been formally ‘educated’ and are ready to enter into the real world as productive members of society. Of course, some of them continue this process of ‘education’ by going off to college; where, after a number of years, they are given another piece of paper that declares that they have achieved more ‘education’ than a mere high school graduate.
It sounds pretty silly when you put it in those terms; bordering on ridiculous. That is because it is ridiculous, and I will tell you why I say that.
First of all, let’s ask ourselves what the word ‘educate’ means. I perused through numerous dictionaries; looking to see if they defined it differently. All of them, although they used different words, basically said the same thing, that education is: to provide one with knowledge: to inform. The acquisition of knowledge, in and of itself, is not a bad thing; unless, of course, that knowledge is inaccurate, or incomplete; then it can be a very bad thing. However, what I found to be both interesting, and somewhat disturbing, is that every definition I looked at was devoid of any reference to thinking.
Thinking, or more specifically, critical thinking is not a skill we are born with; it must be taught, nurtured, and cultivated. Everyone can think; to a certain extent anyways, but not everyone can think critically; a fact that becomes apparent when having discussions with a lot of people these days. Anyone can fill their mind with knowledge, but it takes training to develop the skill to use reasoning and logic. If a person cannot think, then what good is knowledge? I could put some alphabet soup into a bowl, but since that bowl cannot think, it would be unable to form sentences for me; it’s not the contents of the bowl/mind, it is the ability to put those contents to use!
It is widely held that Albert Einstein was a genius; yet Einstein was pretty critical of we call ‘education.’ He once said that ‘education’ is what remains after you forgot everything you were taught in school. I will leave you to glean whatever insight you can from that…
There are a lot of people whom I love to quote, but it seems that, no matter what the subject matter is, H.L. Mencken had an opinion on it. So, I would have been remiss if I neglected to see if Mencken had any comments on ‘education’ in America. Well, Mencken did not let me down; as I found this among his writings, “In brief, the teaching process, as commonly observed, has nothing to do with the investigation and establishment of facts, assuming that actual facts may ever be determined. Its sole purpose is to cram the pupils, as rapidly and as painlessly as possible, with the largest conceivable outfit of current axioms, in all departments of human thought—to make the pupil a good citizen, which is to say, a citizen differing as little as possible, in positive knowledge and habits of mind, from all other citizens. In other words, it is the mission of the pedagogue, not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right, and the more nearly his own mind pulsates with the great ebbs and flows of popular delusion and emotion, the more admirably he performs his function.”
The unfortunate thing about that quote is that it requires that people be able to think to understand what he was saying…
I am going to take the liberty of paraphrasing something George Carlin said to describe how I view the public school system, and what they call ‘educating’ our youth; They [the system] do not want critical thinkers. They want people smart enough to run the machines, but stupid enough not to see how badly the system is screwing them over.
The entire process, from the time our children enter into public school, to the time they graduate, is designed with one purpose in mind; to fill their minds, not only with knowledge (that is often inaccurate or incomplete), but to form and shape the beliefs our children will hold once they enter into society.
There is a term that describes what happens in our public schools, but I am hesitant to use it because every time I do, people tend to ignore everything else I have to say. However, since this is my essay, I am going to go ahead and say it; leaving you up to decide whether or not there is any validity to what I say. The term for that process is INDOCTRINATION. What I find ironic is that people sing along with a song by Pink Floyd that discusses exactly what takes place in public schools. The song is, Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2, and the lyrics go as follows:
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control…
I guess it goes as a testimony to the effectiveness of that indoctrination that people cannot see that they are victims of it…
However, our ‘educators’ cannot be assured of a 100% success rate with their program of indoctrination; sometimes it does not stick; as is the case with me. I went through the same schools as others did; had my mind filled with the same garbage they did; yet somehow I managed to find, and accept the truth.
I was taught how wonderful our Constitution is, and how virtuous the men who wrote it are. Yet, if you have read anything that I have written lately, you know that I no longer believe that rubbish. I was also taught that the Civil War was a noble war waged against the South to end the institution of slavery. Again, if you have read anything I have written about it, you will know that I no longer believe that hogwash either.
To this day I do not know why it happened, but I can tell what did happen; I sought out the truth, and when I found it, I did the only thing an honorable person could; I changed my beliefs and opinions so that they conformed to what I had discovered. Unfortunately for America, people such as myself are a rarity; most people stay thoroughly indoctrinated for their entire life; being programmed to reject any information which runs contrary to what they have been taught; or told by people in positions of authority.
There is a flaw in that indoctrination though. Since people are incapable of critical thought, and since they are only given enough information (a lot of it inaccurate to boot) you can easily destroy their opinion by posing them questions, and asking that they provide historical evidence to support their answers. Of course they do have a fallback position, a back door to escape that kind of trap; they simply begin hurling insults at you in an effort to discredit you, your character, and your opinion. If they do that, then you know that they are full of shit; they don’t know what the hell they are talking about, and you are wasting your time debating them.
Since I used song lyrics to describe the indoctrination process, I may as well use them to describe this as well. This time I will be quoting from the Queen song, I Want to Break Free:
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You’re so self-satisfied
I don’t need you…
When determining if your position is valid on something, one should, and I emphasize should, as it does not happen often enough, weigh the knowledge they use to form that opinion against all available knowledge; meaning the facts others may use to contradict your opinion. If you find that your opinion cannot stand this test, there is a good chance that you should reconsider your opinion; even change it to conform to the facts. However, that requires intellectual integrity; something else that our children are not taught anything about.
Science fiction author Isaac Asimov addressed that problem when he stated, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” The irony in all this is that people get offended when you tell them they are ignorant; yet they confuse ignorance with stupidity; which proves that they are, in fact, ignorant.
Ignorance is merely that lack of knowledge. Stupidity, on the other hand, is the refusal to accept, or put to use, knowledge. Although I am not a fan of Aleister Crowley, I have to give him credit for saying this, “The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.” If that be the case, then there is a whole lot of sinning going on; seeing as how people routinely reject the truth because it does not pander to their prejudices, or the beliefs they have been indoctrinated to have.
It does not bother me in the least when people insult me, or my character; it falls off me like rainwater dripping off a window pain. What irks me though, causes my blood to boil, is when I hear people say that the thoughts and opinions of a bunch of ‘old dead guys’ do not matter in today’s modern, enlightened society.
While I do not care for every one of our Founders and Framers, they were alive when all this history was being made; whose opinion on the matter should hold the most weight in a debate; theirs, or yours; which is based upon something you read in a book 200 years after the fact?
What a lot of people today fail to realize is that, good or bad, most of those men had more knowledge in their pinky toe than most Americans today could ever hope to cram into their heads; myself included! Many of them were fluent in multiple languages; having been required to study the classics in their original languages of French, Greek and Latin. By the time Samuel Adams had reached the tender age of 14, he was in Cambridge University translating books from Latin and Greek into English. How many 14-year-old kids today could even think of doing that?
Another thing our Founders were trained in, which is not taught today, is philosophy. It is said that philosophy originated in ancient Greece. While Greece may have produced many philosophers, I think that the origin of philosophy dates further back in time to ancient China; maybe even sooner. Lao Tzu was an ancient Chinese philosopher; founding Taoism with his book, Tao Te Ching. Even The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, was a philosophical look at war.
However, for the sake of not going off on a tangent, let us assume that philosophy, or at least the word philosophy itself, originated in ancient Greece; around the 4th Century BCE. So what is philosophy; what does the word mean? Using the Greek word philosophia, philosophy is translated to: the love of knowledge, pursuit of wisdom; systematic investigation. Maybe that is why it is not taught; for if it were, people would be capable of critical thought, and those who control our educational system would lose their ability to shape and manipulate people’s opinions and beliefs.
So, when I hear people say that the thoughts and opinions of our Founders do not matter, I have to ask; if knowledge and critical thinking do not matter, then what does matter to people these days?
I wonder how many people are aware that, back in 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner at the White House for 49 recipients of the Nobel Prize; to honor them for their achievements. During that dinner the President made the following comment, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
I wonder what kind of thoughts passed through the minds of those Nobel Prize laureates when Kennedy said that. Can you imagine, 49 of the brightest minds at the time, and the President of the United States was saying that Thomas Jefferson was as smart, if not smarter, than all of them combined! Can you envision a future president saying anything remotely similar about Barack Obama; George W. Bush; Ronald Reagan; Bill Clinton; Donald Trump; or, heaven forbid, Joe Biden?
Yet people think Jefferson’s beliefs do not matter in today’s modern, enlightened world. Yet those who say that are, more often than not, unable to support their opinions with the simplest of facts without resorting to emotional tirades and insults. Yet they will tell you that they are more knowledgeable and informed than the man who wrote our Declaration of Independence? Blow me!!! I would say to them something my dad was fond of saying, “You don’t know shit from shinola!”
How many books on philosophy do you think the average voter has read? Do you think they have read Locke’s First and Second Treatises on Civil Government? I have. Do you think they have read Plato’s Republic? I have; although it was a bitch getting through it! Have they read Rousseau’s, The Social Contract? I have. Have they read The Law, by Bastiat? I have. Have they read Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution, or Abel Upshur’s book written in response to it? I have. Have people read any Thoreau, Paine, de Tocqueville, or de la Boetie? I have.
I don’t say any of this to brag, I say it to show you that my opinions and beliefs are probably more well-rounded; based upon more facts and critical thought, than the average voters are. And those are just books on philosophy. How many people do you think have read biographies on the men who participated in establishing America as a free and independent country, or who participated in drafting the Constitution? I have read biographies on George Washington, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and I’m currently reading a biography on Samuel Adams.
Then, there are all the historical documents I have accumulated and read. I have a folder on my computer (and backed up to external hard drive) that contains over 4,500 documents relating to our country’s history and the establishment of the Constitution. Included among those documents, are 125 letters between our Founding Fathers; 120 historical documents, such as the Cause and Necessity of Taking Up Arms; every presidential inaugural address; 66 Supreme Court rulings; and 408 files regarding the Constitution; including Madison’s Notes, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist essays, debates from the Ratifying Assemblies, and the State Ratification documents.
Again, I do not say this to brag, my knowledge pales in comparison to what my friend Mike Gaddy has managed to accumulate over the course of his life. Although I would love to stand in the presence of men like Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry, I feel I would be unworthy to stand amongst such knowledgeable men; men whose burning desire was, not for comfort and security, but for rightful liberty; something else they don’t teach our children anything about today.
So, you will have to forgive me if I do not take your opinions seriously; especially when you sidestep the questions I raise and use circular logic to defend your position.
Our educational system has one thing in common with our government though; it is doing exactly what those who established it sought out to do. Just as our government was NOT established to secure our rights and liberty, the public school system was not established to teach children to think; instead, it was established to be a system that taught them WHAT TO THINK.
It has succeeded in its mission; producing a country of ignorant government addicts; people who cannot shake their addiction to the institution that is depriving them of the freedom that God intended all men to enjoy.
When people allow their system of ‘education’ to fall into the hands of government, that system can then be used to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of those who make their way through it; creating a docile and compliant society that refuses to accept that they are slaves, and considers it treasonous to oppose their precious government.
Yet, is that not how our country got started, by rabble rousing patriots who refused to bow down before a tyrant? Boy, we sure have fallen a long way since 1776, haven’t we?
November 15, 2022
~ The Author ~
Neal Ross, Student of history, politics, patriot and staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Send all comments to: bonsai@syix.com.
The Far Left Democratic Party Communists are making continuous gains through thousands of lies propagated, facilitated and advanced through John Dewey’s public education system that paved the way for the indoctrination of generations of Americans into the Marxist philosophy. Dewey himself was an admirer of the Bolshevik experiment and an admirer of Leon Trotsky, although he disagreed with him on some points; but suffice it to say that Dewey subscribed to the same mob rule that always comes from pure democracy, a mob rule that now manifests itself in today’s ANTIFA, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements and the nihilism they direct at America’s Founding.
The Left offers the fictions of their multiculturalist global narratives designed by society’s power players, that promote and seek more Big Government and power for the already powerful and less freedom and liberty for the rest of us, through numerous lies focused on climate change and the Cap and Trade taxes and redistribution of wealth, fiat debt, open borders, free migration, central economic planning, socialized medical care — contained in the USMCA too, in some form or fashion — in plans designed to subjugate us all in the lowest common denominator in poverty and policies that absolutely and completely destroy national sovereignty. Just listen to Commie Joe, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC and their ilk long enough and you will hear of a utopia for all, paid for by the government, that costs upwards of forty to fifty-seven trillion dollars and destroys real wealth, destroying America in the process.
Also, based on a plethora of faulty white papers coming out of the Campus propaganda mills, such as reports presented to the World Economic Forum, in 2002 and 2015 by Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex, the Democrats and RINOs of America expect fly-over rural and suburban America to reduce our standard of living, embrace radical, costly and potentially deadly changes in the energy generation industry, food consumption, modes of travel and the economy; they also demand we hand ourselves and our futures to the controls of multilateral and global institutions, which is supposedly part of the solution required to save us from ourselves. And in the meantime, Al Gore jets around the globe doing his “Chicken Little” bit on global warming, as he leaves his 10,070 square feet Bell Meade Mansion in Tennessee for weeks at a time with all its lights burning bright and burning up an average of 220,000 kilowatt hours a year.
These dangerous people do not have one bit of standing to tell You or me or anyone how we should or must be living our lives. They are the morons who we must sift out of government as one sifts chaff from the wheat, so that we may minimize their collective deranged, irrational ideas impact on our culture and our society, however, if they insist and continue to force the issue and their contention that all Americans must live according to their dictates, at the expense of our own freedom and liberty, violent conflict will be inevitable.
Americans and their progenies are facing the most dangerous times to be an American, since 1861 and the spawning of incremental tyranny, that I have witnessed in my sixty-five years on earth, as a trend continues and grows today towards tyranny across all fronts of U.S. government, and the tyrants are closer than ever to gaining the total control they seek and a top-down hierarchy of control by the few. The situation has arisen through careful planning, and it is gaining momentum due to an apathetic, complacent, indoctrinated, ignorant and blind general population, and if we who have clear vision wish to stop the advancing new world order and the end of liberty in America, each and every Free Born American who loves God, Family, Country and Liberty must be prepared to take up arms against a ruling class that has gone too far and exceeded all bounds of accepted power, in order that all Americans may once again control their own destiny.
God ultimately controls my destiny, but I intend to control my own destiny here on earth as much as humanly possible, through my own free will, so long as breath remains in my body.
~ Justin O. Smith
This in part ties in with much of the troubles we find in our education system today, and it illuminates just how deeply the communists of this country have infiltrated our education system, for many long years:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/05/a_tool_for_americas_transformation.html
May 25, 2014
A Tool For America’s Transformation
By Justin O. Smith
Common Core State Standards (CCSS), initially approved in 2009 by all fifty state governors at the National Governors Association, currently represents one of the most severe threats to our domestic tranquility, individual liberty, and national security that the United States has seen in decades, as a new age of collectivism and the Progressive plan of 1934 emerge together at the direction of the Obama administration. This threat exists in Obama’s recognition of Common Core as an efficient tool for indoctrinating our children into the Progressive Marxo-fascist worldview, creating a convergence of communism and capitalism that amounts to crony capitalism and fascism here in the United States. And in so doing, these elitist Progressives plan a new, and yet old, approach to government, in order to create a seamless web that extends from cradle to grave.
The best-educated people across the ages, such as Pericles, Cicero, Voltaire, Madam Curie, John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, were products of a liberal education, in the classical sense of the word “liberal.” They were educated in a manner befitting a person of free birth, and they were not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or absolutist forms. Instead their education focused on developing one’s powers of reason and judgment, as opposed to professional or vocational skills. Education without barriers enhanced knowledge, and human ingenuity allowed the ever widening ranges of desire and the needs of society to be satisfied rapidly.
Doesn’t this alone suggest that the much-touted need for national education “standards” is overstated and most likely has ulterior motives?
Friedrich Hayek, renowned economist and historian, explained in 1944 that the socialists everywhere were the first to recognize that the task they had set themselves required the general acceptance of a common and definite set of “values.” In striving toward their singular worldview, they created most of today’s instruments of indoctrination. Common Core is just one such instrument in a long line of others.
While Progressivism and statist aspirations can be found in the Republican Party, too, such as in the globalist policies of both Bush presidents, the most insidious precursor to Common Core is found in the collusion among the Gates Foundation, the National Center on Education and the Economy (founded by Marc Tucker and funded by Bill Gates), and Hillary Clinton in the early 1990s. Clinton was paid $100,000 to direct the NCEE’s “Workforce Skills Program” while she worked at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas, and after the Clintons reached the White House, Tucker sent a letter to Hillary Clinton that outlined a radical progressive plan “to remold the entire American system” through a centralized national standards “Trojan Horse.”
In keeping with CCSS-style schemes, Bill Gates, Marc Tucker, and Hillary Clinton have consistently advocated for top-down control of education masquerading as reform. Tucker and Clinton have explicitly advocated the creation of a P20W system to groom students from prenatal (P) through graduate school (20) and into the workplace (W).
The Obama administration is utilizing P20W in the fundamental transformation of America. Immediately upon Obama’s election to the president’s office, the Obama administration changed student privacy laws, so that the students could be tracked from birth, monitoring everything from math and reading skills to values, opinions, and attitudes.
U.S. school systems have been ignoring the Secondary and Elementary Education Act since 2009. This law is supposed to protect a student’s personal information, but since Obama took office, sensitive personal information regarding mental health and family income is stored in a manner violating federal privacy laws, as noted by Senator Markey (D-Mass.)’s to education czar Arne Duncan on October 22, 2013 and corroborated by Fordham University Law School.
In 2013, a U.S. Department of Education draft document titled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century” cited “changing workforce needs.” It called for public schools to cultivate “non-cognitive factors” in students, including “attributes, dispositions, social skills and attitudes” that are “independent of intellectual ability.”
The progenitors of CCSS are in the process of building total psychological profiles of our children, pinpointing weaknesses and any need for “remedial education” and indoctrination. This serves as their template to place our children on career paths chosen by the “educators” and the state, while traditional education is reserved for the top ten percent of “elite” students. Common Core aligns with the global drive towards school-to-work outcome-based training, fully backed by the U.N. and funded by the Carnegie, Gates, and Rockefeller families.
In an August 21, 2013 article, Charlotte Iserbyt, senior education policy advisor under President Reagan, wrote, “[M]y serious concern [is] that Common Core … will lock up All children worldwide in the computerized Communist workforce training system necessary for a planned global economy.” Iserbyt recently described CCSS as a “womb to tomb” plan by globalist “elites” intent on transforming America from a free-market capitalist system to a socialist system.
One teacher from Murfreesboro, TN was recently quoted in “Tennessee Parents Reclaiming Education” (April 2014) regarding CCSS. This teacher asserted, “CCSS is not what fits Tennessee. It is experimental and unsound, especially in K-2. I am one of Tennessee’s two National Teachers Hall of Fame Inductees. I vote NO!”
Parents are angry that Common Core is moving ahead in many states. All across America, parents, especially in New Hampshire, are outraged over pornographic depictions in assigned readings. New York and Tennessee parents are objecting to CCSS social studies standards stating that America is founded on democratic principles of equality, fairness, and respect for authority, but making no mention of liberty.
Anita Hoge has been fighting education bureaucrats since the 1990s, and she currently is an education consultant and an expert on student assessments. Like many other Americans, including Governor Bobby Jindal, she says, “Opting out is really the key.”
Common Core is designed by Progressives to control unfavorable views of Progressivism, and it will control all disciplines dealing directly with human affairs, such as history, law, and economics, which will most immediately effect political views. The disinterested search for the truth is not of value in CCSS, because the vindication of the Progressive Marxo-fascist view becomes the sole object, whether it advances the false science of man-made global warming or the false premise that socialism outperforms laissez-faire capitalism, even when the facts and experience show otherwise.
The political ideas of a people and their attitude toward authority are as much the effect of the political institutions under which they live as anything else. So even a strong tradition of liberty is no safeguard if the immediate danger is precisely that the institutions and new policies, such as Common Core, guided by amoral men like Arne Duncan, will gradually destroy that spirit through indoctrination.
But of course, if America’s strong sense of liberty reasserts itself, the people will recognize the inherent danger of Progressivism and its associated tyranny. They will completely discard the Progressive worldview and resolutely change their course.