9. Homeschooling and education.
"The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."
"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished."
"The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty."
And he had even more to say: Addresses to the German Nation.
-
“Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”
- The Philosophy of Education, by William Torrey Harris.
-
“In our dream…the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand…We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply…For the task that we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one: to train these people as we find them for a perfectly ideal life just where they are…an idyllic life under the skies and within the horizon, however narrow, where they first open their eyes.”
- The Country School of Tomorrow, by Frederick Taylor Gates.
-
“I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school…. If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle…and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.”
- Martin Luther.
-
“Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”
- Public School Administration, by Ellwood Cubberley.
-
"Luther understood that compulsory schooling could be used to indoctrinate young minds into the Lutheran Church, and sought to use State power to achieve this end. As a result of his pleadings, numerous German states created the first modern public schools.
In many ways Martin Luther can be thought of marking the birth of the modern schooling system. Not only was he the first advocate of compulsory schooling, but his conviction that the State should use its power to indoctrinate its citizens into a specific worldview, helped stimulate in Germany a climate of increasing subjugation to the State.
The great historian Lord Acton wrote of Martin Luther that he “impressed on his party that character of political dependence, and that habit of passive obedience to the State.”
Another important step in the rise of modern public schooling arose under King William I of Prussia who ruled from 1713 to 1740. Integral to the maintenance of Prussia’s powerful army during his reign was the national compulsory schooling system he established in 1717, the first of its kind in Europe. Subsequent schooling reforms throughout the 18th century built on this foundation and paved the way towards the development of what came to known as the factory model of schooling."
"The factory model of schooling emphasizes standardization of teaching, testing, and learning rates, respect for authority over the exploration of truth, and uniformity and orthodoxy over innovation and progress.
This schooling model developed by the Prussians was so efficient at inculcating into its citizens a worldview which benefited the Prussian State, that in the 19th century educational reformers in the United States caught wind of it, and quickly sought to implement it in their home country."
Some of that came from Public Schools, the Fixation of Belief, and Social Control - Academy of Ideas
-
"Let's talk about education. In most western countries school is compulsory, and state enforced. Truancy can result in fines or even jail time for parents. This isn't just a result of state coercion. On a cultural level education holds a sacred status much like that of religion. This is an institution that most never question, and that's a problem.
Did you ever wonder how it is that kids spend 13 years from kindergarten to high school supposedly being prepared for life, yet when they get out they don't have any real skills. Thirteen years and kids aren't taught how to grow a garden, how to build a house, how to fix a car, how to balance a checkbook, or how to cook a healthy meal.
Thirteen years and kids come out without even rudimentary concepts of how to organize or lead groups of people, without even a glimmer of understanding of how to resolve conflicts non-violently, and we call this an education?
Yes we're taught how to read and write and perform some basic math, but we aren't taught how to think for ourselves, we aren't taught the principles of logic, or how to question an ideology.
What we are taught is how to sit in a desk and listen obediently as the world is packaged into a neat little box that we are to accept without question.
We're taught to regurgitate that information for tests, to give the answer that those in authority demand, but most of all we're conditioned to conform, and the reward for faithfully jumping through all of these hoops for 13 years is a worthless piece of paper that no employer even asks to see. Kids exit high school barely qualified to flip burgers at McDonalds, and even for that they have to be trained.
Thirteen years is a long time. That's most of our childhood. To have this much time taken by force with such pathetic results is unacceptable. The problem here isn't a lack of funding, the problem here isn't poorly trained teachers, lax regulations, or low quality curriculum.
The problem is our entire educational paradigm. The system isn't designed to prepare children for the real world. It's designed to format their minds and condition them for a life of subservience. It's designed to create a population of individuals just smart enough to fill out paperwork and punch a time card, but too stupid to question the system itself or the authority of those running it.
If we want to change course we cannot ignore this aspect of our enslavement. There is no point laboring to wake up other adults in our lives if we send our children to be programmed by the state. The revolution of the mind must include a revolution in education."
Here's Quora writer Dennis Pratt's answer to the Quora question Why are schools politically liberal? (the word "liberal" has been replaced with "leftist" in order to avoid confusion):
"A Different Master For The Schools
Imagine that the NRA had the political power to “school” our children.
- The NRA opened NRA schools in every town.
- The NRA compelled our children to attend their NRA schools.
- The NRA forced taxpayers to pay for them.
- The NRA created the curriculum for teacher colleges.
- The NRA decided the requirements for teachers to graduate.
- The NRA selected which teachers went where.
- The NRA decided promotions and raises.
- The NRA decided the curriculum for our children.
- The NRA decided what should be in the texts.
- The NRA required students to pledge allegiance to the NRA every morning.
- The NRA posted pictures of past NRA presidents in every classroom.
- The NRA gave days off to celebrate NRA holidays.
- The NRA regularly had NRA speakers at the school.
- The schools tracked NRA news.
- Every student took heavy doses of NRA Civics.
- Every student learned about the important role that the NRA plays in protecting our freedoms.
- The students memorized the cities in each state where the NRA had its state headquarters.
- Human history was taught through the scope? of guns
- Essay questions often ended with,
“Describe how guns could solve this problem.”
What Result Would We Expect?
Would we be surprised to find all schools generally pro-guns? Would we be surprised to find graduates of their schools with major gun purchases and with lots of practice firing? Would we be surprised to hear the next generation talk to us passionately about the importance of guns in our life?
Whose pictures would an NRA school display for revering?
So When Government Does This Today,
What Should We Expect?
When schools are owned and run by the government, on government property, paid for by the government, staffed by government workers, overseen by government, and we have no say in whether our child or our money goes to them, we should not be surprised that they rationalize government control over our lives."
We expect that religious schools will indoctrinate their religion.
Government is just another religion. Yet we act confused when we see government schools producing wave upon wave of pro-government drones. It’s almost like our brains had been programmed not to see a connection. (I wonder when that might have happened.….)
That government schools teach allegiance to the government was no surprise in Sparta, where young boys were taken from their parents and raised in Spartan schools to be fully indoctrinated as warriors for the Spartan state. It was not a surprise when Prussia reinstituted government schooling on the Spartan model, because Prussia was tired of losing wars and wanted to instill blind obedience to the Prussian state. (Just a few decades after the introduction of Spartan schooling into Prussia, tens of millions of young men were willing to become obedient cannon fodder for their Fatherland, enabling the carnage of both WWI and WWII.)
And it was this Spartan-Prussian model that Horace Mann consciously brought over to America to impose on our children:
I get the most sad when I hear people saying that we need government schools to “teach our children about freedom”. There cannot be two concepts further apart. And yet, somehow people schooled in government schools parrot it back.
I wonder how that happened?"
Here's a comment that he made:
The same mechanism would be used to make schools politically conservative. I think I was talking only about the mechanism, and not how leftists, in many instances, won control of the mechanism.
I’ll have to take your comment under advisement. The mechanism of government-imposed, government-run indoctrination camps is available to any authoritarian. Look at the conservative method that Sparta and Prussia used it — to create drone armies happy to die for their leader.
Perhaps it is that in the US, leftists are much more authoritarian than conservatives. I was actually playing around with some political grids, and the old school fundamentalists are much less powerful today. However, there are places (e.g, in the south) where the same mechanism is actively used by the local fundamental conservatives for the analogous outcome. There the question would have to be, “Why are schools politically conservative?”
I had a revelation one trip around the South. I came upon group after group of leftists who were so angry that their schools were politically fundamentalist conservative. I thought that I had an in-road to talk about freedom of choice in schooling — allowing lots of alternatives and parents choosing the best school for their child and their family (always based on their values.) Of course, this would allow these leftists minorities to have a choice for their child which matches their values.
However, and this was the eye-opener for me, the leftists rejected freedom of choice. Instead, they were bound and determined to capture the indoctrination mechanism themselves in order to “save” the children from the values of the children’s parents.
Just so you know, I had a similar result in conservative minority communities who were upset by overwhelming leftists schools!! They seemed to be less interested in “a thousand lights” than they were in making sure all the lights were red, or blue, or whichever color they wanted everyone else to be.
The mechanism is effective, and that’s why we have these great battles over who should control the school experience of my child and of your child. My solution is to allow many different types of schools such that no sub community feels oppressed, but I fear that many people want to oppress. Government run schools are the perfect mechanism. :("
And another comment:
"I find it amazing, Barbara, that the people who are supposed to be teaching our children how to take their place in (what is a business) world, cannot solve the problem faced by every single company, (and by every one of their teeny tiny competitors battling the big monopolists). The only solution that they can come up with is using threats of violence to get their money — artificially keeping out alternatives and forcing parents to pay even when they don’t want the service?
Let’s be glad that a few of the graduates of those schools were able to figure out what seems to be such an intractable problem for government bureaucrats!
If they can’t figure out such a common invariable cost problem, how can we ever expect them to solve the demand problem of serving customers so much better that they don’t want to escape?"
Schooling and Indoctrination:
"Libertarians are quite concerned with government’s intrusion into the raising of our children.
Authoritarians see our rulers as being kind, helpful, and concerned for our children’s welfare
Libertarians see instead indoctrination, separation from the family and its values, submission to state authority, bullying, monopolization, crushing children into one-size-fits-few schooling, and inculcation into anti-wealth creation and pro-wealth confiscation.
A libertarian society would allow any entrepreneur to open up any type of school. It would allow families to select whichever schools they preferred for their individual child. Fees would be negotiated between parents, schools, and, if needed, voluntary charities and private financing. There would be a far greater diversity of schooling approaches that better matched the diversity of children.
Rulers would be kept as far away from our children as possible."
-
For those of you who still think that not sending children to government schools is child abuse/neglect, let me run a test.
Now, I want you to open up these three links, and take a good look through them;
VIOLATED SCHOOLCHILDREN Corporal punishment-induced trauma
Schoolchildren’s corporal punishment-related injuries - People Opposed to Paddling Students
WARNING - These images may be deeply disturbing to some viewers. Do not open these pages if young children are present.
Would you want your child's buttocks to end up like that?
But wait, there's more!:
School Made 11-Year-Old Girls Pull Down Their Pants for Disgusting Inspection
Forced Genital Exams of Children--Nothing Strange or Unusual Here? - The Ruthorford Institute
Girls say school forced physical exams - Pocono Record
Genital examination badly traumatized girl doctor testifies - Pocono Record
Doctor denies forcing exams on schoolgirls - Pocono Record
In case you thought this only happens in American schools:
Canadian Schools Are Strip-Searching Teens And That’s Cool with the Government – Reason.com
As Whatifalthist once said, "Evil doesn't exist if you've lived a comfortable life".
And as I would say, comfort is not the same as freedom.
Schools are prisons.
You are made to go in at a specified time. You are made to sit down at desks in nice & neat rows. You are made to do work which is to be completed at a specified time, & the quality of that work must be up to a specified level. A bell like that in a factory (which may also be a stand-in for military commands) rings to signal changing to other work types, with set times to do everything. It is common to walk in straight lines.
To go with all of this at the same time, there is a mandatory dress code, negative reinforcement, rules that fail to fully respect our real constitutional rights (particularly with zero-tolerance & restrictions on free speech/expression), an authoritarian structure with little to no real input in decision making, & there is emphasis on silence, order, & most of all, obedience. And all of that is before you are made to do homework.
No wonder why kids hate school so much, & feel like it is a factory prison.
It does not need to be like this. There are already educational philosophies that supports true learning and not conditioning obedience, such as Montessori, Peninsula School, and unschooling.
While one can strawman opposition to permissive to no regulations on education as useful idiots for teacher's unions and book companies or as cowards who are afraid of responsibility, I do recognize a legitimate concern to unregulated education as that there will be children who "fall through the cracks", or in other words, receive inadequate education. I would argue that it is better to let some people fail instead of forcing everyone down to the lowest common denominator and be equally mediocre.
I believe that sometimes planning around the worst case scenario can cause more harm than good. For example, mandating that the state raise children to protect children from child abuse will save a certain percentage of children from neglect or abuse, but will harm all children who could have grown up under decent parents, and thus making a child a ward of the state should be the last resort solution almost like a law enforcement officer firing his gun (or a country going to war) should be the last resort solution (the harm that I am described is actually demonstrated with Romanian orphanage children. Also, the state raising all children would require more employees, which would mean more incompetent, corrupt and abusive employees, and inspectors and the bureaucracy being less responsive or even potentially corrupt itself, especially considering the power dynamic when dealing with children).
Many people believe that people who are better educated will behave better.
But this ignores the fact that the Puritans who carried out the Salem Witch trials were some of the best educated people in their hemisphere.
National Socialist Germany was one of the very best educated nations in its day, and it was a racial supremacist totalitarian police state that went out of its way wasting resources to persecute minorities during a war and in the end failed its intentions with Europe being destroyed, half of Europe having communism forced upon it, and traumatizing western civilization and creating scars that have not healed to his very day.
I'll close this part off by addressing the belief that Americans are the world's dumbest people.
I don't think that Americans are the dumbest people in the world, but rather, we have a wide bell-curve in terms of intelligence (maybe the widest thanks to combining a large, diverse population with an individualistic culture). In other words, America has both some of the dumbest people in the world AND the most brilliant people in the word. Our cultural father, Britain, is the same way. Japan, by comparison, has a tighter bell curve, in which hardly anyone is pathetically dumb, and at the same time, hardly anyone is outstandingly, exceptionally brilliant.
I got that from Dawson & Illingworth on China, starting at 57:00 and ending at 1:02:40.