Although this is often attributed to Albert Einstein, there is some debate as to whether or not he actually said the following, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” For the purpose of this essay it really isn’t important if Einstein actually said that or not; what is important is the truthfulness of the words. That brings up an interesting question though; If what Einstein (supposedly) said is true, then why do we bother sending our children off to school?

Good question; why indeed?

There is a reason why we are made to send our children off to public school for the formative years of their lives; and it isn’t to better prepare them for adulthood. I hope that by the time you finish reading this you will have a better understanding of how sinister that reason is.

First, as sort of a precursor to what I am going to say, allow me to quote from the late George Carlin; and I apologize in advance for the language:

“They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that! … You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it…”

I’ll get to who the they are that he is referring to later, but for now let’s start off with what we, as parents, mistakenly believe; that we send our children off to school so that they can learn the things that will serve them later in life when they become adults; reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and to a lesser extent, history and civics. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but there is something missing from that list, a skill that is more important than all the knowledge in the world; how to think critically.

I don’t know how much things may have changed over the course of the 50 some odd years since I graduated from high school, but when I was making my way through the public school system the method they used to instruct us consisted primarily of rote memorization; combined with frequent testing to determine how much of what we had retained. There was very little, if any, thinking involved; it was basically, read this, take a test to see if you remembered what you had read, then move on to the next topic. One did not graduate based upon how well they could think, they graduated based upon how well they remembered what they had been taught.

If you peel away everything else about it, critical thinking is essentially the pursuit of truth; not what the system tells you the truth is, but the actual truth. To think critically one must have a mind that is open to ideas and beliefs that go against everything they believe to be true. I am not saying that you must agree with those things; only that you give the facts a fair and unbiased examination before forming an opinion on them. Russian author Leo Tolstoy said it best when he wrote, “Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.” Critical thinking involves the examining of evidence, and the forming of opinions/conclusions based upon the weight of the evidence presented. It requires that one constantly be ready, and willing, to challenge their beliefs if new evidence presents itself. If you cannot, or will not, do that, then you aren’t thinking critically.

I wasn’t taught how to think critically in school, I had to learn how to do it the hard way; trial and error. I made some pretty serious blunders as I made my way, and I still have a long way to go before I become proficient at it, but that’s how one grows; they make mistakes, pick themselves up, then press on. Sometimes it’s a lonely path and sometimes you lose friends because your beliefs no longer align with theirs. However, I would not change a single thing about it; what you gain far outweighs what you may lose.
Now that I’ve gotten a discussion of what critical thinking is out of the way let’s begin talking about why it isn’t taught in school anymore, and the reason it isn’t…

Who determines what is taught in our public schools? Some might think that the federal government determines the curriculum; after all, that is what the Department of Education does, right? Well, the do, and they don’t; at least not directly. The individual states are responsible for establishing the curriculum for the schools within their borders, and deciding which textbooks the students will learn from. Yet the federal government exerts a lot of influence upon the states via federal funding. To get the states to comply with what the federal government wants, all that needs to be done is to threaten to withhold that funding if the states do not comply with federal law; such as the No Child Left Behind Law enacted by Congress, and signed into law by George W. Bush.

Yet it wasn’t the federal government, at least not directly, that decided to eliminate the teaching of critical thinking; it was the puppet masters for whom this system of government was created to serve who made that decision. To explain why I say that I’m going to have to rehash some things I’ve discussed numerous times in past essays.

According to the PEW Research Center, roughly 29% of the voting public identifies as Democrat, with another 19% leaning in that direction; with 28% identifying as Republicans, and another 15% leaning to the right. So while they aren’t even, they are close enough to say that the country is pretty evenly divided along the left/right paradigm. This causes people to focus most of their attention upon what the other, the opposing, political party is doing rather than the history of what government, as an institution, has done; it’s track record, if you will.

If one had been taught the true history of how, and why, our system of government came into being they would know that it was not established to serve the people; to secure to us our rights and liberty. People reject that; stating that the Bill of Rights proves that government exists to secure our rights and liberty. Yet the Bill of Rights was not part of the Constitution as it was presented to the people for consideration; it was only when opposition to the Constitution became so intense that the framers promised to draft a bill of rights if the people would just ratify the Constitution first.

That is not some conspiracy theory, it is historical fact that anyone with a mind to can research on their own. From the moment our government went into effect it has existed to serve the business interests of this country; tossing out a few bread crumbs along the way to give people the (false) impression that it exists to serve them. Our government always has placed the interests of big business and big banking over the interest, and welfare, of the public. The left/right paradigm exists solely for the purpose of giving people the illusion that they have some say in what government does.

That is summed up by something else George Carlin said, “Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.”

That is the they Carlin referenced in that other quote of his I shared earlier; but who exactly where the people who pushed to have critical thinking removed from the curriculum of our schools? Well, let’s see if I can answer that for you.

During the Gilded Age of America there were men who depending upon your opinions of them, could either be classified as Captains of Industry, or Robber Barons. While there were more than those I am about to mention, four of these men were, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and James Pierpont Morgan. Rockefeller made his wealth in the oil business, Vanderbilt made his in railroads, Carnegie made his in the steel industry, and Morgan dabbled in a little bit of everything before becoming a powerhouse on Wall Street.

Not only did these men use their wealth, and political clout, to serve their own best interests, they also had dark sides to them; things they did that could be considered evil and corrupt. For instance, during the Civil War, Morgan purchased defective carbine rifles from the United States government for $3.50, then resold them to Union generals for $22; knowing full well that they tended to malfunction when fired. Then, in 1863, Morgan and his associates transferred $1.15 million in gold to England; a massive sum at the time. This caused a dramatic increase in the price of gold at home; whereupon Morgan and his crony friends then sold back their gold at the increased price; profiting enormously.

But it is Rockefeller and Carnegie who really, as the old saying goes, take the cake. Both of those men were heavily invested in the promoting of eugenics in America; the belief that society can be improved by selective breeding and the elimination of gene pools they deemed to be unfit. Does that sound remotely familiar to you? It ought to; it is the same belief espoused by the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. In fact, Hitler based much of his eugenics programs upon literature produced by the Rockefeller and Carnegie Institutes. So yeah, there is a dark side to these Titans of Industry that most people are totally unaware of.

While I can’t be absolutely certain about JP Morgan, there is one thing the other 3 men I spoke of had in common; their interests, their business empires, relied upon huge numbers of laborers. While things haven’t changed that much, it was in their best interests to have workers who did not complain about lousy wages, or terrible working conditions; and a citizenry taught to think critically was not in their best interests. So they, Rockefeller specifically, set about to revise, reshape, our system of education so that it would produce the kind of people he wanted; the kind Carlin was referring to when he said, “They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it…”

Historians record what Rockefeller did as an act of philanthropy; making education available to even the poorest among us. I see it differently; I see it as creating a worker pool that had been conditioned to be the obedient workers Carlin spoke of.

Regardless of how historians paint the picture, here is what happened.

In 1902 Rockefeller, along with Frederic T. Gates (a baptist minister and Rockefeller’s chief business adviser) established the General Education Board; not to be confused with the boards of education we have today. The stated purpose of this General Education Board was to make education available to all; but the real motive was not as benevolent; it was to create a system that would teach only that which served Rockefeller’s interests.

Although this is a rabbit hole for another day, Rockefeller’s General Education Board did more than just reshape the public school system; it expanded into medical schools as well.

On the surface it seems that Rockefeller was doing this country a favor by making sure that everyone had access to a good education, until you look at the model he based his system on; that’s when you begin to see the true purpose behind what he was doing. To understand that though we must travel back in time to a country that no longer exists; Prussia.

Prussia was more than just another name for Germany, it was a kingdom that encompassed Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and portions of southwestern Russia. Prussia was officially dissolved on February 25, 1947 when the Allies enacted Law 46; splitting up the former kingdom into different political entities. But it was what happened before that which is pertinent to our discussion.

In the early 19th Century, around 1806, the Prussian’s suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. The Prussian elite blamed this loss on the individual thinking of the soldiers that comprised their military, so they went about reshaping their school system to eliminate individualistic thought; implementing a more collectivist mindset among the people. In short, they wanted a society that would not question authority and who would do as they were told without hesitation.

That is the model that Rockefeller adopted when he set about to reshape education in America, and that is the system we have today; the one that each and every one is forced to attend for the formative years of our lives. If you do not see the problem with that then you are a shining example of how successful the schools have been of indoctrinating us; how they have removed critical thinking from the arsenal of tools we have at our disposal to form our own, fact based, opinions!

While the dumbing down of America did not happen overnight, the framework that would allow it to happen was put into place, and was adopted across the country by the states, and heralded as an act of benevolence; equalizing access to education regardless of race or whether or not we could afford it. That is important, even if you don’t understand its significance. If the revision of our school system only affected those who could afford to go to school then there would still be many who, even without an education, could think on their own. Rockefeller’s plan ensured that everyone be indoctrinated by the same system; to hold the same fundamental beliefs regarding government, work, patriotism, and a whole slew of other values and beliefs.

Now do you see why I began this essay with that quote from George Carlin? Unfortunately, that is only half of the story. Rockefeller and the other elites were not satisfied with simply eradicating critical thinking, they wanted control over the information we use to form our opinions, beliefs, and even our values. The attained much of that by controlling the curriculum of the public schools; what we are taught. But people still had access to news; which was the next thing the elite sought to gain control of.

Instead of me attempting to explain what they did next I will let the words of former Congressman Oscar Calloway speak for themselves. Testifying before Congress, Calloway stated,

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. … They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.”

I am certain that there will be some who consider that a conspiracy theory, and if you are one of them I suggest that you do a bit of research on the matter. You can begin by searching the Congressional Record for February 9, 1917, page 2947. Of course, there are many for whom the facts do not matter; only their opinions matter.

Again, if you do not see the problem with any of this, you are a perfect example of how successful they have been in conditioning (indoctrinating) the American public. On the one hand they created a system of education that does not teach people how to think critically; it tells them what to think, and that to obey orders is a sign of their patriotism. On the other hand they gained control over the news we are provided with; which allows them to shape and manipulate public opinion; to best serve their interests, of course.

What could possibly go wrong with that? All one has to do is to watch how people react when a crisis, such as 9/11 or Covid, arises; the people believe the narrative being spoon fed to them by government and the news media without question; attacking those who have the audacity to do their own research; to think for themselves. That’s what could go wrong.

This diabolical plot has far reaching ramifications that extend beyond politics and current events; it reaches into religion as well. According to a study done by Lifeway Research, only 30% of churchgoers read their Bible at least a few times a week. The number drops to 14% for those who read their Bible daily; with 9% of the churchgoing public not reading their Bible at all.

If people are not reading the word of God, then were are they getting their beliefs from? They are getting them from their pastors and priests, that’s where. I’ve spoken to people who have told me that they left one denomination and began attending services in another because they did not like the message being preached; that it did not make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Gee, I wonder how they would feel if they read the prophets; who certainly weren’t afraid of telling the people the truth no matter how bad it made them feel about themselves?

It is because people do not read, or study, their Bibles that they believe things like the pre-Tribulation Rapture, or that the modern nation state of Israel is the same as the kingdom of Israel that existed in the times of Kings David and Solomon.

It is why there are churches that teach that people should tolerate things that God has said are an abomination to Him…homosexuality and abortion being the two most prominent ones. It is why there are cults, (I only call it as I see it), that teach that salvation comes by works; when the Apostle Paul clearly stated it doesn’t. (Ephesians 2:8-10) It is why there are churches that teach that the temple is a necessary part of religious worship; when we are the temple in which the Holy Spirit now resides. (1 Corinthians 3:16) It is why there are churches that teach we should confess our sins to a priest rather than engage in true repentance.

Finally, it is why there are so many who place all their hope and faith in institutions created by men rather than placing their trust in God. Apparently they have not read Psalm 146:3, Romans 12:2, Proverbs 3:56, and 2 Chronicles 7:14. People claim to love God, then place their trust in institutions that reject God, and enact laws that serve men. Quite the contradiction, if you ask me.

People want a church that corresponds with their values, their beliefs, their world view. They do not want a church (for the most part anyway) that teaches them that Christ is the only path to salvation; that if you love Him you will keep His commandments. (John 14:15) They do not want a church that preaches a gospel of repentance and obedience to God’s eternal law.

People talk a lot about fake news and fake information, when the real fake news and information is that which they have been indoctrinated into believing; whether it be in regards to politics, current events, or even their faith. Ask anyone why there is so much evil in the world today and they probably won’t be able to answer. Yet the answer is obvious; evil exists because people do not obey God’s law; if they did, evil would cease to exist.

I am not a prophet, I am not a religious leader, and I’m certainly not a philosopher. What I am is a person who has taught himself to think critically; to analyze data and form my own opinions; rather than having them force fed to me by those who do not cherish the truth.

People may think I am hateful, or insensitive, but I am not; I only want people to break free from their conditioning; to see things as they really are. If that is asking too much, then so be it. At best I am similar to what one reads in Ezekiel 33; a watchman who warns of the danger they see approaching. If those reading this do not heed the warning, then their blood (their fate) is on them; but it would be upon me if I did not try to warn them; which is the ONLY reason I keep doing this; I have long ago given up that people are going to listen to anything that I have to say.

July 16, 2026

 ~ The Author ~
Neal Ross is a student of history, politics, patriot and staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment. Life continues to expand for this prolific writer and guardian of TRUE American history. Neal has been a long-time contributor to the family of Kettle Moraine Productions and its various websites.

Send all comments to: NealHRoss@outlook.com.