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The Hidden Dark Agenda of Public Education
“An alien collectivist (socialist) philosophy, much of which came from Europe, crashed onto the shores of our nation, bringing with it radical changes in economics, politics, and education, funded - surprisingly enough - by several wealthy American families and their tax-exempt foundations. The goal of these wealthy families and their foundations - a seamless non-competitive global system for commerce and trade - when stripped of flowery expressions of concern for minorities, the less fortunate, etc., represented the initial stage of what this author now refers to as the deliberate dumbing down of America. Seventy years later, the carefully laid plans to change America from a sovereign, constitutional republic with a free enterprise economic base to just one of many nations in an international socialist (collectivist) system (New World Order) are apparent. Only a dumbed down population, with no memory of America’s roots as a prideful nation, could be expected to willingly succumb to the global workforce training planned by the Carnegie Corporation and the John D. Rockefellers, I and II.”
- US Department of Education Senior Policy Advisor Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
Yesterday I released an article, “Lack of Critical Thinking is Key to the Corrupt Status Quo Maintaining Their Power”, on my blog and at ZeroHedge and it generated a lot of comments including those that stated they don’t believe in conspiracies or the existence of a “big bad wolf” that deliberately is “out to get us”. However, for those of us familiar with the works of John Taylor Gatto, we know that there are literally mountains of evidence that indict former Presidents and corporate businessmen with deliberately steering the global education system towards the singular mission of producing obedient factory workers to serve the corporate industrialists during the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, there are mountains of evidence, direct from the horse’s mouth, that their continued mission for the academic system today is to produce obedient servants to the State and to kill any individualism and critical thinking that may lead to an awakened state among the masses that would challenge the moral authority, or rather lack thereof, of those in power.
John Taylor Gatto, one of the most well-known and outspoken critics of the public education system, quit his 30-year teaching career in 1991, because confined within the system, Gatto believe he was hurting children more than helping them. He stated the following as his reason for leaving institutional academia:
“I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free...I don’t mean to be inflammatory, but it’s as if government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker, not stronger...the training field for these grotesque human qualities is the classroom. Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, and generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, family-less, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about. An executive director of the National Education Association announced that his organization expected ‘to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force.’ You can’t get much clearer than that. WWII drove the project underground, but hardly retarded its momentum. Following cessation of global hostilities, school became a major domestic battleground for the scientific rationalization of social affairs through compulsory indoctrination.”
I precisely stated in my article yesterday, “Refuse to accept something as fact just because an authority figure, whether a professor, the Vatican, or politician, told you to believe it, and automatically many amongst the sheep will accuse one of pandering to conspiracy theories, even when one can present many facts that support one’s opposition view much more strongly than the widely accepted view” in the hopes that people would read this line and digest historical facts before dismissing the main points of my article. Yet, from reading the comments posted below my article yesterday, it seems as though some may have dismissed my argument before even examining the facts.
Mr. O.A. Nelson, retired educator, recounted a December 1928 meeting in which he spoke to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His recollection of the meeting below addresses some of the comments posted on my article from yesterday regarding the importance of sciences.
"We were 13 at the meeting. Two things caused Dr. Ziegler, who was Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, to ask me to attend...my talk on the teaching of functional physics in high school, and the fact that I was a member of Progressive Educators of America, which was nothing but a Communist front. I thought the word ‘progressive’ meant progress for better schools. Eleven of those attending the meeting were leaders in education. Drs. John Dewey and Edward Thorndike, from Columbia University, were there, and the others were of equal rank. I checked later and found that all were paid members of the Community Party of Russia. I was classified as a member of the Party, but I did not know it at the time. The sole work of the group was to destroy our schools! we spent one hour and forty-five minutes discussing the so-called ‘Modern Math.’ At one point I objected because there was too much memory work, and math is reasoning; not memory. Dr. Ziegler turned to me and said, ‘Nelson, wake up! That is what we want… a math that the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school!’ That math was not introduced until much later, as those present thought it was too radical a change. A milder course by Dr. Brechner was substituted but it was also worthless, as far as understanding math was concerned. The radical change was introduced in 1952. It was the one we are using now. So, if pupils come out of high school now, not knowing any math, don’t blame them. The results are supposed to be worthless."
While I agree that sciences are critical for learning and also critical for the development of reasoning skills, Dr. Ziegler’s comments reveal that men like him, men that helped shape our academic system, clearly did not want sciences to be taught in a manner that would improve critical thinking and reasoning skills, but instead, in a manner that was completely inapplicable to real life situations.
It is not a coincidence that after I graduated from university, I often would comment to my friends, “You know what, there is not one thing I learned in school that I apply in life today.” In fact, the inapplicability of schooling in life reaches far back from even my university days. When I was 14, I had already completed two years of advanced calculus, and believed in a typical teenager bout of self-delusion, that I was some sort of mathematical genius. But in reality, outside of the praise of my teachers, what was the point of my mathematical "progress" back then? Yes, it enabled me to score a perfect score on the math portion of the SATs and then gain entrance into an Ivy League university. However, in retrospect and in complete absurdity, I cannot think of one instance since my educational career ended that I have ever applied, in real life, anything that I learned during my years of mathematical schooling. It is as if the purpose of my institutional mathematical training was solely to enable me to gain a higher score on a standardized test, a ridiculous purpose if there ever was one. And today? Because all I did was memorize advanced mathematical formulas back then, I have long since forgotten them all, and nothing is applicable to my life today just as Dr. Ziegler of the CFR had desired.
In great irony, it was the very inapplicability of education that allowed me to excel through the system. The advantage I held over all my peers was that I had a photographic memory. I recall even as early as the 6th grade when I could read a passage about the Civil War a single time and remember exactly how many soldiers died from each side in each battle and on what specific date in history. Because the academic system stressed rote memory and regurgitation without any true learning, my photographic memory served me exceedingly well and my teachers labeled me as “gifted” and heaped extra attention upon me, even though I never really began to learn how to critically think until I read books on my own outside of the academic system and after I had already graduated from university.
But what if sciences were taught in a manner that developed critical thinking and reasoning skills? How much easier today would it be today to actually convince people of the fact that the global monetary and Central Banking system is a criminal, immoral system deliberately designed by corporate thieves to harm people instead of help people? How much easier would it be to convince people of State run false flag propaganda such as the bogus enemy engagement of the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin at the time it happened instead of 40 years later? How much easier would it be to convince people that the two-party system in America is just an illusion to con people into believing they have a choice when no real choice is ever offered to people in elections? Of course, the answer is that it would be infinitely easier.
The lack of developed critical thinking skills in the institutional academic system is also the reason why people continue to falsely believe the propaganda of banker shills that a gold standard helped cause the Great Depression and why it is so difficult to convince Westerners of the value of gold and silver but infinitely easier to convince Asians of the value of gold and silver. The stark dichotomy is due simply to the fact that people believe what the State tells them to believe. Logic, reasoning, and critical thinking are all meals on the menu of threats to the power of the status quo. And this is why the goal of academic education by the elites is to strip away reasoning skills from subjects such as math that inherently rely on reasoning. This is also the reason why institutional academia will never change and that those that wish for it to change find that they cannot work within the system but have to leave it. My friend, Alyssa Gonzales, decided that operating outside of the system and serving as a founding teacher of her own school, Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts, was the best solution to be able to encourage, instead of suppress, the development of critical thinking and reasoning skills of young children. If you live in Los Angeles, please visit her school and support Ms. Gonzales’s efforts, described at their website as the following:
"In contrast to curriculum found in a traditional public school setting which stresses teaching and learning in the areas that can be most easily assessed by standardized testing measures, arts-integrated curriculum develops the whole child: kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and natural intelligences. At LFCSA, we challenge children to construct their own meaning from complex ideas and concepts. Acknowledging that students learn and demonstrate what they know in a variety of ways, our instruction allows children to see, hear, and express according to their individual learning styles."
In support of spreading awareness of the true intent of corporate businessmen that have “donated” billions of dollars to shape the curricula of the most “prestigious” schools in the world today, here is a video titled “The Dark Secrets of Public Education”. Certainly, this video deserves a thousand times more views than the current 9,900 views it has thus far received. If you would like for our communities to be more thoughtful, more open-minded, and more co-operative in the future instead of obedient to the powers that be, please send this article and video to everyone you know so we can foster a more honest and open debate about the State’s goals of institutional academia. Thank you.
Read Part I of this series here, Lack of Critical Thinking is Key to the Corrupt Status Quo Maintaining Their Power
Read Part III of this series here, Business School Curricula Today Lacks Real Critical Knowledge to Survive the Global Economic Crisis.
About the author: JS Kim is the Founder and Chief Investment Strategist for SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research and consulting firm with a mission of helping to stomp out Wall Street fraud and to reinstitute sound monetary principles and sound money worldwide. We sincerely appreciate all of you that continue to “like” our Facebook fan page and "follow us" on Twitter. Through these mediums, we will keep all of you aware of some major campaigns we will be launching in early 2012 to raise global awareness of monetary truth and our proposed solutions to institute sound money that CAN serve as a viable and implementable solution to the financial ills heaped upon us by the global banking cartel.
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You get an A+ :)
(I'm never happy unless I get at least a couple of thumbs down on ZH, because it just means I haven't done enough to rile the usual warmongering bastards around here.).
Quite frankly, I've always disagreed with Mr.Kim about his attitudes toward higher education - imo, every individual gets what he/she deserves according to how much they are willing to put into it, but I do applaud his efforts at trying to enlighten others. What my post hoped to do today is reveal the simple truth that we can't all be geniuses, we don't all take the red pill, and the vast majority of us rather meekly follow the crowd as we are bound by our natural instincts to conform. We, the stupid apes that we are sometimes, even fight violently against others who do not think like us. Conformity is a very powerful tool used by sociopaths to control modern society - tptb, the wealthiest people in the world would not invest so heavily in mainstream media if it were otherwise. It may be cynical manipulation, but we can use the same tool of conformity to change things for the better by repeating again and again the way things really are in the world. For all its faults, ZH is one of the great pioneers.
Most people want to be spoon-fed summaries, synopses, and have their politicians bark sound-bites that they can whoop and holler at, or nod sagely to without understanding anything of depth or value.
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Of course, human nature. And just after that, most human beings...
Critical thinking indeed.
Yep, thanks for the thread.
Nothing better than observing US citizens congregating around a lie.
"Good teachers always encourage students to use their initiative to seek information elsewhere. May be that is what you are lacking: Good teachers."
Yes, good teachers do.
But often times just the mere broaching of Kims underlying subject (the intent of the structure) sets off a caterwauling of indignation among teachers who see it as an attack on their financial livelihood.
Which it is not.
If they were critical thinkers they would see that it is not.
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Edit: Because some people will not take the time...
"In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."-First mission statement of Rockefeller’s General Education Board 1906
+ a million public minds JS.
Well done sir!
I, for one, want to thank the author for these two articles. I think they bring up a topic oftentimes ignored in a "tyranny of the urgent" world. The "education" system IS the trojan horse in America. And it has almost accomplished its Machevellian objective.
I have known John Taylor Gatto's work for decades as my mom followed him 30 years ago. I have more recently become with the work of Iserbyte. And, yes, I have seen the videos posted above. Truly disturbing stuff!
Those who are posting derisive comments are shooting the messenger. I think much of the harsh tones come from a self-preservation posture....people are becoming overwhelmed at the sheer number of disturbing issues that face us today.
But we must keep trudging on, barefoot, through the cold, icy river. Our children are counting on us!
It's obvious the educational system is nothing more than indoctrination and almost always, restricted indoctrination, to create the creatures the oligarchs want. But even the oligarchs are indoctrinated, just differently. I also acknowledge that communists / socialists may very well have plotted to corrupt the democratic or republic forms of nations.
I cannot for the life of me understand why every fucking assessment of the merits of socialism or communism vs other forms of social organization always relies on an assessment of the god damned actors, instead of the actual principles. Yes, the former and current Soviet / Russian / Chinese / whoeverthefuckyouwant leaders sucked and were morally corrupt scum bags. But so were the god damned leaders of the so called "great" nations. And so what?
What about ignoring the actors, and how about looking at the logic of the system being proposed? Can you envision ways to overcome the weaknesses, and strengthen the strengths? I can. I am convinced capitalism fails because it absolutely cannot serve everyone. I know communism will prevail. The question is, how do we make sure it's working well for everyone. I'm working on that.
The point is, the western leaders were not corrupted by communism, as this article tries to portray, it was already corrupted by the oligarchy who held all the nations finances... they are not communist, they're capitalist, and merely self serving. Creating obedient workers is nothing new, it's what every fucking ruler has been doing since they took over the community. Slave, bring me my hommage, yo lackey, bring me my luggage, you Fred, bring me my sales report. Every ruler in every society has limited what the citizenry could / would be allowed to know. So to pretend this is communist trickery is really shortsighted and self serving. To imagine this is not also happening at the direction of capitlist leaders is delusional.
By the way, what good does it do to keep everyone busy toiling away at meaningless crap? I know most of you hate the lazy slobs who sit on welfare... has it occurred to any of you that they are sitting there lazy because they've been dumbed down so much by society that they've lost all semblance of self esteem and motivation? Has it occurred to any of you that the problem is not the lazy slob, but the fucking system that needs lazy slobs to prop up your self image? Good luck with your world view.
I am sick of the ignorance and the arrogance of so many fucking people who just can't stop thinking of the world from only their perspective. It's always, how is it affecting me. Stop for a second and think without concern for yourself or the other.... detach, then try to reason.
It is what you do, not what you say that has true meaning.
You make a few good points, but the notion that socialism is really a good system (and it's the socialists that give it a bad name) is not one of them. If you haven't read Hayek, Mises, et al, you need to. If you have, you have some 'splainin to do already. I won't try to summarize their work, everyone needs to read it for themselves. But here are two intital points to ponder.
First, the apparent "injustice" people see in what they call "capitalism" is distributive in nature. Leaving aside the fact that it is not necessarily unjust and that they almost always fail to define capitlism correctly, they also neglect to address the productive element of an economic system. There ultimately will be nothing to distribute absent production, and socialism sucks at that.
Second, as your "I'm working on it" comment poignantly points out, every socialist system has socialists in it. Utopias are one thing in your head, but every time they are put into practice, they turn into Dystopias. That's not a coincidence.
In the end, socialism is not a rational choice. It is an emotional chioce, and a bad one at that. Capitalism is not necessarily the social darwinist demon some portray it as, and it needs tempering with some regulation, just like private property needs some public protection. It seems to me that it is not perfect, but it is the least evil of the alternatives. If you have a rational argument to the contrary, I'd be interested in it.
The great irony is that comments like school didn't teach me things i could apply in life... there's a real problem with that statement and that line of reasoning. On the one hand, the criticism is that schools are only teaching dumbed down curricula, and on the other hand, there's the criticism that the curricula cannot be directly applied. Which is it?
What most people do not seem to understand about education, especially higher education, where they try to get you to think instead of do, is that they are giving you the opportunity to think creatively, on purpose. The condition you might graduate into may not be so fixed and patterened and it's not necessary to teach someone such things, the implication is that if they educate you or you educate yourself enough, you can figure out how to address your own needs. School, for the brighter students, is not a place to learn, it's a place to think. When you get out, you apply your thinking to figure out how to do the accounting, how to run a business, how to build a house. They don't need to teach you all of that in school. But for most people, they are so dumbed down, they resent not being told how and what to do, so they complain that school didn't teach them anything. No, it's you who did not learn anything, because school was trying to teach you to think, but you could only focus on doing.
That's why, most people should not aspire to higher education and why most people are misplaced in leadership roles... they don't really get anything, but they think they do. Sad really. So what happens, these mindless imbeciles redirect schools to teach only the material necessary to function in the "real world"... i.e. teach how to do things, and dumb down the curricula.
I refuse to participate in such a debacle mother fuckers. I proudly proclcaim that school taught me almost nothing, it gave me the room to think for myself, so I can figure out why I want to do certain things, what I want to do, and how I can go about doing it, by myself. If school taught people only how to do everything, there is far greater chance of society stagnating... and that's exactly what's happening today. The higher is now really lower or no education, it's pure indoctrination, into how to build a wall, how to wire a house, how to rob a bank, how to rob your neighbor. What a fucking waste of all of this human potential.
The condition you might graduate into may not be so fixed and patterened and it's not necessary to teach someone such things, the implication is that if they educate you or you educate yourself enough, you can figure out how to address your own needs. School, for the brighter students, is not a place to learn, it's a place to think. When you get out, you apply your thinking to figure out how to do the accounting, how to run a business, how to build a house. They don't need to teach you all of that in school. But for most people, they are so dumbed down, they resent not being told how and what to do, so they complain that school didn't teach them anything. No, it's you who did not learn anything, because school was trying to teach you to think, but you could only focus on doing.
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US citizens are not dumbed down. They are US citizens.
US citizenism breeds a culture of entitlements.
When you apply your thinking to figure out how to run a business instead of being taught a standardized way of running your business, this endangers the culture of entitlements cherished by US citizens.
US citizens want to go to school, learn a standard method and be rewarded for producing according to the expectations. Entitlements.
"I produce that standard so I am entitled to this reward as a US citizen."
US world order.
AnAnonymous
"US citizens want to go to school, learn a standard method and be rewarded for producing according to the expectations. Entitlements."
I stumbled across this
http://exiledonline.com/rivers-edge-redux-interview-with-jared-lee-lough...
River’s Edge Redux: Interview With Jared Lee Loughner’s Tucson Friends
eXiled: How did you guys meet Loughner?
Taylor: I met Jared Loughner at a party house in Copper Creek. It was the Burds’ house. On any day there’d be anywhere from 10, 15, 30 people there, mostly skate kids having a good time, experimenting. A lot of us came up in dysfunctional families and we were thrown in together. A bunch of us worked at the same fast food joint, so we’d carpool. It was a place to hang out, play Xbox, drink, smoke weed. The mom was an ex-tweaker turned alcoholic. There was also an older son, a Marine, just back from Afghanistan who was an alcoholic, too. He was a little messed up in the head, violent, always getting into fights. The parties started out pretty small, but when he came back the scene got really big. There were no rules. You could come and go as you please. Jared had friends in that scene and drifted in. We didn’t know him before that. We hung out there my freshman and sophomore years, from 2005 to 2007. The last time we really hung out there with him was summer of 2007.
( This is what the US is about. Rich kids, poor kids, Black kids, White kids. They don't give a shit it's about the party. You know just who taught them about the party? MOM AND FUCKING DAD!)
Spoken like the communist asshat you are.
Communism must be enforced at the point of a gun.
I think the issue is that ANY system which is controlled at a macro level is apt to be corrupted. Localism is the answer. I am fine with people living in local communes, if they desire, so long as they do not impose their ideas on me.
I think you are still caught in dialectical thinking.....one system vs another. And the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, isn't it?
A strengthened central government will ALWAYS be corrupted, no matter what the system. My answer?
The cure to globalism is LOCALISM! That is true freedom.
Sorry, I'm in a rush to finish something so in my haste, i glossed over your response. I've come to the conclusion that the best form of government is none. I however, don't think we can be just a bunch of people, like a RAID system, we work better together... and there are many many projects where collective agreement / effort is required.
So my solution is to create an administrative structure operated like jury duty, that has a 1 time participation rule, limited to a fixed short amount of time, like 1 year or 2, where every citizen who is called on to participate, must participate. It's already done globally for military service, but in this case, I think an administrative service that oversees things like building of bridges, roads, infrastructures, mass tranit, space program, whatever... things that need oversight, but the trick is to eliminate corruption by eliminating aspiration and longevity. No one knows they'll be selected, and no one will be there long enough to influence the results. To ensure continuity, perhaps there is an overlap of roles, so for every person who needs to participate, there is one person who is there from the year before and there is another person who will come on a year later, to have a 1 year overlap. I mean, we have plenty of people who want to work on interesting projects, there's no reason to have them work at idiotic jobs, unless they want a mindless job... i know some people do, sometimes i do.
The other aspect of my proposed social change are far more sweeping.... automation of production, establishment of research and laboratory facilities everywhere, opportunities to shift areas of interest / expertise, as long as you do the learning, etc. Life is going to be interesting in a couple of hundred years, if we work together, instead of against each other.
Communism is based on community and can be as broad or as local as we want to make it. You do admit that guns were used in the overthrow of Iraq, Libya, Japan, China, India, Africa, etc, etc, etc. Right?
"Community" is not a GSE. If one finds that most of one's ideas about "community" and "society" are centered on a regulatory/redistributionist government, then one's definition of "community" and "society" have become corrupted.
I knew you would say that! And if you read my post CAREFULLY, you would note that I said ANY system with controlled centrally would be corrupted, implying that, yes, capitalism can and HAS been corrupted. So don't assume that I am some knee-jerk capitalist cult member. I do prefer free markets to government owned/controlled markets. I think freedom is what each human soul desires, except for the evilmongers who wrest power at the expense of personal liberty.
My focus is on the superiority of localism as opposed to globalism. Now, how to achieve that utopian dream, I am not sure. But I still like the idea.
And, for the record, I am TOTALLY against our maniacal, MIC/globalist driven world hegemony. It's pure evil!
and the common denominator in most of those places? western money and influence paving the way for marxist totalitarians
china was given to the comms when the US intentionally cut off chaing kai shek in his hour of need
libya, egypt, morocco, soon syria-NWO productions handing them over to islamofascists. all you have to do is just LOOK and see the fingerprints
Africa has been divide and control by the Europeans for centuries. barely a war or revolution happens without euros behind it.
True...it really is ALL about the Hegelian Dialectical NWO machine.
US citizenism is globalization.
The US of A is a product of globalization.
The US of A is also a success of communaulism (communauty spirit)
And US citizenism is not corrupted.
US citizenism has not changed since 1776 July, 4th. The US citizens nature is eternal. There is no corruption in it.
Simply US citizens who now they are falling on the wrong side of US citizenism want to see a change in US citizenism other than a change in their own situation.
Fine series. Congrats to ZH.
No one should be allowed to teach anything until he, she, it (must be inclusive) has spent at least 10 years working in the real world. An education professional is a specialist in propaganda. Even the best intentioned among them, simply don't have a clue how the world works. What would they teach that's worth knowing?
There should be no forcible control of education at all, certainly not by the state.
The market will choose best. I assure you there is no product I care about more than my child's education. I have the financial scars to prove it.
Contrary to the pious and unsupported beliefs of reactionary statists, state-run schools are the fastest route to idiocracy.
The way I see it, it takes about 12 years of "education" in order to break a kids' will and transform him into a useful obediant citizen-cog.
A friend, with a MS in Mathematics and many years of work in private industry, lost his job several years back. He got a teaching certificate and went to work for the county school system, teaching math and computer programming. He got in trouble when he tried to teach Math properly, because he ignored the 'need' to teach so students could pass standardized tests.
The problem isn't simply 'education professionals', because they, too, are brainwashed slaves to the system. The standardized tests in this state were mandated by the legislature at the behest of educational lobbyists who probably had a hidden agenda. Everything is interconnected to everything else in our increasingly complex society. That makes it very difficult to know where to start when trying to fix any part of the system, such as education. Sometimes it's best in the long run to tear everything down and start all over again. Doing so can be very painful, so most people would probably choose the less painful road even if it leads to intellectual or economic slavery. Common people can kick the can down the road, too, it's not something peculiar to our elites.
It is not the elites who derail school reform. Instead, it is invariably the parents. This truth was learned by John Holt on his journey from teacher to homeschooling advocate. On his way from teacher to homeschooller his journey took him through the school reform movement. If bright energietic motivated and skilled teachers and administrators come into a school and get rid of all the BS and try to just teach the students how to think the parents will destroy the program and run the teachers out of town. I saw this exact scenario play out in a NH town 15 some odd years ago. Parents, not students, are the customers of the educational product. And what they believe they are buying is a grading service that is indespensible in order for Johny to be a success in life. "How will Johny get into a good college if his high school has stopped grading him?" they ask. Parents require grades, and grading creates the conditions that undermine the system. In addition to Gatto I highly recommend John Holt's works, starting with "How Children Fail". Also read Daniel Greenberg's "Free at Last" which describes the Sudbury Valley School where every accepted notion of how "education" works is turned on its head. You'll struggle to accept that what he describes could exist. Read it and believe it. We did and we homeschooled our kid. It's true. There is no conspiracy other than the teachers unions. Widespread self-propogating ignorance among parents ensures a broken system for at least decades and probably forever. Just extract your kids from it and don't look back. It cannot be reformed.
“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
- Joseph Stalin in an interview with H.G. Wells, 1934Excellent recent interview here-
Exclusive: Charlotte Iserbyt Reveals Skull & Bones and the Destruction of Americahttp://www.infowars.com/exclusive-charlotte-iserbyt-reveals-skull-bones-...
Edit to include excerpt:
Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of President Reagan, and has since become a treasure trove for a wealth of information on the secret agendas working against America– not the least of which is the secret society Skull and Bones– as well as a coordinated plan to undermine education, eradicate individualism and brainwash the masses to create a subservient population ruled by the super-elite.
During the 1980s I did delivery work in Manhatten. Once brought a package into the offices of one of the Jew-run Natl' Teacher's Unions at 404 Park Ave. S. Nobody at the reception desk, so I wandered into one of the conference rooms. Walls covered with posters of Guavera, Marx, Castro, Trotsky, Mao. No surprise. Dumbed-out, demoralized kids grow into collectivizable adults.
Children need one skill to survive. How to think. Everything else they can do independently.
Public schools teach one thing. What to think. Measure up and you climb their fake achievement ladder.
Any of you considering homeschooling be forewarned. All the elements are lined up against your choice.
K1 - K12 American education is dominated by female teachers and administrators. The declining results speak for themselves.
I wanted to give you an UP arrow for this:
"Children need one skill to survive. How to think...Public schools teach one thing. What to think."
...which I thought was true and well stated.
Then you said this:
"K1 - K12 American education is dominated by female teachers and administrators. The declining results speak for themselves."
Alas. Why did you ruin it? Plenty of our 'leaders' who influence education are male, or at least I am told that's what the President is. But, whether the 'educators' are male or female - and there are PLENTY of both in the 'ivy league' system - dumbing this down to a 'gender' issue is exactly what I would expect out of this degraded educational system we're stuck with.
I hope for better with the rise of the internet and its freedom of debate.
Hey dumb ass. Ivy league would be post K12.
K1 - K12 American education is dominated by female teachers and administrators.
what the fuck are you babbling about? there is a total glass escalator in education. Women dominate the low ranks, but men get promoted up to admin ASAP. admin and policy makers are overwhelmingly male
What the fuck century are you living in? You need to get out once in a while bozo.
lol, it's funny because you sounds like a whiney washed up middle-aged white dude.
Children need one skill to survive.
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Ah, ah.
No.
In this US driven world, children need one skill to live: being well born.
Nothing more.
How fortunate we are that your statement is false. If it were true we wouldn't be blessed with our supreme leader, Barack Obama. What a great country this is, allowing the son of a Kenyan citizen to attend great schools like Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, admit to using drugs, and still get selected president. Or was it a ruse on the part of TPTB to choose one of the 'lower born' just to convince the rest of us that the system is open to all?
It seems more like the cliche "it's not what you know, but who you know" that is the operative theme. Being well born may help with who one knows, but it's not a guarantee of success.
How fortunate we are that your statement is false. If it were true we wouldn't be blessed with our supreme leader, Barack Obama. What a great country this is, allowing the son of a Kenyan citizen to attend great schools like Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, admit to using drugs, and still get selected president.
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Barack Obama is lowly born? Since when?
Once again, another basic observation blurred by racism inherent to US citizenism.
Too bad for you !
My kids are all reading this series of books:
Screw the interviews. Learned way more from the pix.
the plan is going very well..destroy American prosperity and make those that do it feel like they are saving mankind. remember there is never enough to go round so somebody is living too large.
gotta laugh at the "peak" everything meme in so many posts..they have been coopted and have no idea they were.
THE 0.05% ARE WINNINGAs usual, funny.
It is always the same.
The key is: US citizens who happen to be...
Explaining this or that by omitting US citizenism is sink.
Bankers do not act the way they act because they are bankers but because they are US citizens who happen to be bankers.
Feminists do not act the way they act because they are women but because they are US citizens who happen to be women.
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the carefully laid plans to change America from a sovereign, constitutional republic with a free enterprise economic base to just one of many nations in an international socialist (collectivist) system (New World Order) are apparent. Only a dumbed down population, with no memory of America’s roots as a prideful nation, could be expected to willingly succumb to the global workforce training planned by the Carnegie Corporation and the John D. Rockefellers, I and II
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The best is that in a thread dedicated to critical thinking, one comes with the cheap propaganda of the fabled past.
US citizens work on two levels: the way they want to be perceived (propaganda) and the way they actually act.
US citizens want to be perceived as hard working, law abiding people when in reality, the key of their success has always been in the selective application of the law.
Free entrepreneurship? Holy cow, the US stole land from the Indians to distribute it to its citizenry.
Constitutional republic? Comical. US citizens mocked their own constitution when Jackson declared that the executive branch could overcome whenever it wanted the decisions of the SCJ in order to extort the land from the Indians.
Kicking the can, kicking the can...
US citizens do not want to admit that the very conditions that enabled their rise are fading away.
Earth has not enough resources to entitle that number of US citizens in an ever increasing amount of entitlements.
Less and less resources to rob, the world is finite and US citizens own more and more.
Not enough indians, too many US citizens.
Here's the trait: kicking the trait. No matter the field, US citizens strive to kick the can of admission of immediate reality with the intended goal of reaching the point of no return, a fait accompli status, preventing any other orientation than the one US citizens wish.
The addiction of US citizens to their cheap propaganda is such that in a thread on critical thinking, they can come up and spread the fabled past story.
US citizenism is all about submission. Submission to the group. Submit to the 'truth' dictated by the group. Join the group or fear the group. Congregate around the lie and defend it. The lie is the reason to be of a group in US citizenism.
Back to the wigwam.
"Plays well with others.
Runs with scissors.
Daydreams in class."
During the 1960's everyone got pidgeon-holed.
I was labelled as a Daydreamer, when in reality, I was bored with the snail's pace of the rest of the class and was reading ahead of everyone else. When I got called on to continue at the place that the last student left off, I could not do so because I wasn't paying attention to where everyone else in the class was.
Yep. Got kicked out of th "adult" section of the local library when I was 11 for checking out the grown-up Heinlein and Clarke books. By the time I reached high school I was so bored that I just started goofing off. I'd read the textbooks in the first week of school and ace the tests for the rest of the year. Drove my teachers nuts. College was boredom personified. Never did find the sweet spot.
"Never did find the sweet spot."
Most of us never do. I've done some of coolest shit. Toured the midwest in a rock band, built a recording studio, produced alot of reocrds, designed websites, and now do productiveless trading. The rush for passion in pursuits is a self made high. But, those bizzes were no cakewalk. When I started to lose that edge of passion, I knew I had to start looking elsewhere. I don't have a big stack of cash but feel blessed and a little successful.My college education was basic but a valuable tool. More tools in the toolbox the more things you might be able to build.
Life is journey, not a destination. Make the best out of it.
Same here, I 'dropped out'(intellectually) of school at around age 14 I was always top of my class up until than and always knew way more than my peers, than I just got so much ahead and my understanding of the World and the School system evolved to a point where I simply knew school wasn't going to teach me what I wanted and needed to know, so I just switched to autopilot for the next 10 years of my compulsory education
Sounds exactly like my experience. Interesting that we both ended up here. I wonder how many others on ZH had the same experience.
"hand wave".... here!
And then I joined the Navy!!!! Whut wuz I thinking!
ori
Another here.
I was reading Heinlein and Clarke by the time I was eight (still do, periodically). All but one other kid in the class were still struggling with sentence structure and spelling any word longer than 2 syllables at that stage.
I was helped a lot, I think, by my father (who would have made a fucking great teacher, by the way!) who was an electronic engineer, car mechanic, guitar amp designer and builder, general handyman, home brewer, welder, gardener, etc. All of which I am now competent at, or better. Though I added 'chef' to the list, cos Dad wasn't the best cook in the world. ;-}
I next plan to add Forestry Studies and Food Biology to my repertoire. Same way I learned everything else; go take the course at the local college, work out where the course is weak, then go away and learn the rest myself. That way I get the knowledge AND the piece of paper that says so.
This is one of the best comments I've read... Kudo's...
If you could replace evil with education, I would agree that we should be educated in mass, unfortunatley educating evil simply makes evil smarter.