Molon Labe! (67 page)

Thank you, Tom. I certainly enjoyed the first one.

Wyoming is the first state ever to propose dismantling its public education system. Much of the country seems horrified by this.

Horrified, eh? Perhaps they wouldn't be so shocked if they'd asked themselves why any government on these shores is involved in education in the
first
place. If one lives with a malignant tumor long enough it acquires the status of a vital organ.

But to address your question, education is a matter of parental, not state, concern. We in Wyoming are reclaiming our right to eliminate the forcible government indoctrination of our children. The Special Election will be held in August, and we are confident that the proposed constitutional amendments will be ratified.

The shrieking from the NEA about this is just amazing. They apparently believe that education is not possible without government schools. Well, they're half right, at least.

How so?

Government
education
does
require
government
schools. (laughs)

You have been consistently and intensely critical of public schools, calling them
"training camps for future slaves."
How can you justify that claim when this country still enjoys the greatest amount of personal freedom in the world?

First of all, to compare our level of freedom to that of other countries is not accurate or even helpful. As I've long been fond of saying,
"America is merely the healthiest patient in the cancer ward."
The comparison should be made against (1) the theoretical ideal, and (2) against the greater freedom America once had until the 1920s. To compare our freedom to the rest of the world only serves to slyly misdirect us from the freedom we ourselves have already
lost.
It's a way of shrinking the yardstick of measurement. Contrasted to other nations — sure, we're still six feet tall. However, contrasted to ourself —which is the only
proper
standard, in both the philosophic and historic senses — we have become a midget.

And, I am convinced that the government indoctrination of our schoolchildren has been largely to blame for this unnecessary decline.

Really? How so?

Well, because it was the stated and published goals of the public educators in the early 19th century. Their object was not quality education, but docile citizens. Not independent thought, but conformity. Intellectuals of every era have distrusted the common man, likening him to a coarse beast of burden which must be kept under yoke. They greatly feared popular uprisings. Shay's Rebellion in 1786 Massachusetts — which sparked the Annapolis and Philadelphia constitutional conventions — was still fresh on Bostonians' minds in 1818 where the first public school movement began in America. Then, many educators traveled to Prussia to learn their methods.

Why Prussia?

Gatto's fine book
Dumbing Us Down
outlined the whole sordid story. When Napoleon trounced Prussia in 1806 at the Battle of Jena, intellectuals decided that the reason for their defeat was a failure of the troops versus their commanders. They concluded that Prussian soldiers were too independent and thought too much for themselves.

As if soldiers would fall into philosophical debates over Kant in the field?

(laughs) Pretty much! No commander wants an army of deeply contemplative troops. (laughs) This reminds me of a story about Henry Kissinger. He was once asked if he feared assassination. He thought for a moment and replied,
"No, because only an
intellectual
would ever choose
me
, and even then he couldn't decide to pull the trigger!"
(laughs)

But seriously, the Prussian intellectuals believed that their citizens simply were not obedient enough and hesitated to fire on the enemy. The US Army noticed the same thing during World War Two when researchers discovered that only 20% of American soldiers would fire on an exposed enemy. The Army addressed this, and by the Korean War some 55% of soldiers would fire to kill. By Vietnam it was 90%. With the conditioning from violent films, video games, and military simulators, the percentage today is about 100%.

This has spilled over into our police, who have donned an alarmingly military guise. Federal law enforcement is now predominantly composed of agents with little onsite conscience. For example, a very high percentage of FBI agents for the past 50 years have been Mormons and/or ex-Marines.

Why is that?

Because their members are naturally "Yes, sir!" type of folks, which explains why the FBI wants them. They are what Erich Hoffer calls "true believers." They will obey even the most ghastly orders if there is a sufficient gloss of God and Country.

As an ex-Marine myself, I got only as far as captain since everybody knew that there was only so much crap I'd take! (laughs)

Anyway, the Prussians' goal of education was to create pliable students to be molded into compliant citizens. Meaning, those who work and fight at the behest of the government, and never have to decide to pull the trigger. This was accomplished by purposely
not
training the students how to
think
.

How did Prussian schools teach students not to
think
? Teaching not to think sounds like an oxymoron. Mustn't education,
any
education, awaken minds and activate the thought process?

No, not at all. Teaching by rote a series of disconnected facts is not the same as teaching one to actually think. What the Prussians did was unequivocally premeditated. They rearranged their school system into three tiers, as a very broad pyramid. About 1% of students
were
taught to think in the
Academie
. These would be the future leaders, doctors, lawyers, business chairmen, etc. About 5% were
somewhat
taught to think in the
Realshulen
. They would become the middle managers and politicians. Some mental faculty was required, but not
too
much! (laughs)

The rest, 94% of students were left in the
Volkschulen
to learn harmony, obedience, and docility. Cooks, mechanics, laborers, and, most importantly, soldiers. Reading was very much discouraged, as it tended to provoke dissent amongst the proletariat. It still does.

How were these Prussian
Volkschulen
different?

Their most telling trait was severe regimentation. The very word
Kindergarten
means "garden of children." Think about that. The Prussian educators not only had to get their indoctrinating paws on children as young as four years old, but they had the
nerve
to refer to them with a horticultural analogy. "Sorry, Inge, you're not a unique person, you're just one plant in the garden." Children are
not
a bunch of plants to be grown and harvested!

I never thought of it quite like that, but the analogy
is
inherently dehumanizing.

Absolutely. The battle for the metaphor is the most important, as it pre-structures thought, and thus action. In fact, we could continue their farming analogy even further. The testing which placed students in their "proper tier" of schooling were like threshers separating the
Academie
wheat from the
Volkschulen
chaff.

Yes, that follows. So, how were things taught in the
Volkschulen
?

They took the grand subject of Life and chopped it up into little subsets. Instead of illuminating the mysteries of living as a holistic system — as it most certainly is — they cleaved mathematics from music, philosophy from language, and so on. They taught the pixels, but not the
picture
formed by the pixels. In doing so, they created adults who could not
see
.

Could you elaborate on that?

Of course. Thinking really is all about
seeing
. Our brains are wired to receive information mostly by sight, about 80%. In fact, PET scans of the brain have proven that
visualizing
an object stimulates the same area of the brain as actually
seeing
the object. The eye is merely the camera for the recording tape of the brain. We only know what we have seen. That's why dreams often seem so real. The taped version is just as vivid to the mind as the live version. Physiologically, there's almost no difference. That's why sports trainers stress the repetitive visualization of movement —constant mental rehearsals. It actually imprints athletic memory, as the mind cannot distinguish between mental versus physical rehearsal.

It's no coincidence that when one has a eureka moment, one says,
"Oh, I
see
!"
What Prussian
Volkschulen
did was intentionally prevent the child from ever opening its mind's eye. The goal was to keep the people at large mentally blind. Sure, the masses stumble about fairly well in the
pretense
of seeing — just as a blind person with a cane can walk across town — but make no mistake; they
are
stumbling about in the dark by feel.

By segregating subjects and teaching them out of order, the mind's eye is never trained to see the "big picture." Vision, I tell you, is the key to nearly everything in life. If you can't see it, you can't know it or do it.

I understand your point, but I'm not convinced that merely teaching by subject necessarily stunts mental growth.

OK, let's take mathematics for example. It is without dispute that the USA scores lowest in math amongst the Western world. I recall we may have beaten Portugal once, but not by much. (laughs) The most exciting thing about math is not the numbers, but the
theory
. Mathematics is a way of understanding particular kinds of relationships. Numbers are simply the alphabet of expression.

For example, what is, oh, 7 times 19? It's 133. Now, did I multiply 7 times 10, which is 70, and then 7 times 9, adding the 63 to the 70? No! I took a shortcut. Why go through all of that when 7 times 20 is 140, and 7 times 19 is merely 140 minus 7? But kids aren't being taught to take shortcuts, because they can't
see
the numerical landscape and recognize shortcuts when they exist. They're taught to literally go by the numbers, like a blind man tapping with his cane.

What is not seen is not understood. See? (laughs)

Yes, I do. But does your analogy hold for higher mathematics?

Well, if we know that A has a specific relation to C, and that A also has a specific relation to B, then we can figure out what B is to C.

That's algebra. To use what you know to learn what you don't. Calculus is even
more
fascinating, because it explains relationships at an even deeper level.

Physics, especially quantum physics, gets
really
hairy. Either Life has the possibility for many states and is forced by observation to be in one particular state,
or
Life is many worlds in simultaneous coexistence which
appear
to us as a single state. Whichever it is, the math of quantum physics contends that Life is much more surreal and inexplicable than imagined under Newtonian physics.

But instead of firing up students about the marvel of math, "teachers" immediately bog them down in quadratic equations and log tables. It's like trying to teach dancing by steps but without the rhythm.

My point is this: mathematics is merely one tool for understanding and enjoying Life. Art is another. So is science. Music,
et cetera
. The mind — the
awakened
mind — uses all of these rays of light in its "lens" to
see
, to understand. The more rays of light, the more chromatic your picture. This was the avowed purpose of the long-lost classical education.

On a related note, it constantly amazes me how much of Life can be grasped by analogy. We learn about Life analogously through nature, through human relationships, and through science. It's all grist for the mill.

So, back to the Prussian system of education.

Yes, the
Volkschulen
.

They broke up Life into pieces. By dividing Life, they conquered free inquisition. They conquered thought itself. Then, they broke up the pieces into units, and units into small blocks of classtime lasting 50 minutes.

First, regiment the entire student body by artificial age groups. No more one-room schoolhouse. This separates older students from younger ones, which reduces socialization and nullifies any generational continuity. I mean, do you work or vacation solely with 34 year olds? It's ridiculous, but accepted without a thought in government schools.

You're right...no where else are you placed in a strict age group.

If you really dwell on it, it seems quite odd. I don't think that we even remotely understand the sociological damage it's done.

So, children are clumped together by age — their first experience at being a part of a collective. Then, get them accustomed to moving by a series of ringing bells. The bell commands when to sit down and stay, when to stand up and leave, when to eat, when to play, and when to go home. Pavlov's bell — day in and day out — -for 12 years! Class starts and then ends 50 minutes later. Who can possibly learn
anything
during these cruel and artificial blocks of time? Just when you've become interested in a lesson, it's time to rush off with the herd to the next class. The whole arrangement is little more than moving cattle from field to field. Hey, another analogy!