Hmmm. . . I think a distinction needs to be drawn actually. There are in fact
three kinds of education. There is 1. religious 2. compulsory government institutionalized and 3. freedom of thought to be educated however the parents best see fit.
As long as government mandates compulsory education, we will have a problem. As long as there are "requirements" that must me met by the government, we will still have a problem.
Education of the young is where all the power in society lies. Around the turn of the century, the elites and the big industrialists that had plans to control the worlds masses understood that the massive capitol outlays necessary for huge industrial enterprises could not be justified or indeed continued if the masses were educated with an "entrepreneurial" and "inventive" spirit. Not everyone could be a "captain of industry." Thus, it is necessary to make schools the institutions that they are, to basically brainwash, dumb people down, and make them all think the same.
Next, it is critically important to make people, "consumers" and to make them "infantile" far into adulthood. The changes between people today and people 150 years ago are quite dramatic and it has all been accomplished purposefully through education.
What ever way you go, if you get your education through an institution, you are doomed. They are all farces with political agendas. In government run schools, you will NEVER learn the truth about power, government, industry, mind control, or any such related topic. In fact, in regards to topics such as these, you will be inculcated with ideas that should discussions come up about these topics, you will be programed to react STRONGLY should any idea contrary to what has been programmed into you be taught.
But, that same holds true of religious education. What do you think they are going to teach you of the Spanish inquisition? Or (if you live in America) the history of Salem Massachusetts or the honest reasons that freedom of religion was included in the constitution of the United States? Or how about do you think they will approach evolution? Or what angle do you think they will approach the dispute between Galileo and the church from? History, Biology, and several other subjects are bound to be adversely influenced by dogmatic interests.
So you see, ANY time an institution is involved with education, the institutions interests are necessarily first, the childrens minds are second. This, is the reason I am here. I consider this board populated by societies most motivated intellects. (There aren't many left.) The swoop like vultures of the Grim Reapers of culture have sucked the souls of most of the beings left on this tiny blue planet. T.V., Sports, Video Games, popular music, Shopping, the way the imagined "
obsessive need" for relationships & sex & love is constantly pushed on us in the popular media, celebrity gossip, psychology & psychiatry, and the drink and drugs we use to numb and fill the void. . . all of it takes us further from that magnificent potential we originally possessed, as we let the planet and it's collective culture and consciousness slip further into oblivion.
The only way to break free from the mind control that has been chained to us, is to SELF-EDUCATE, like real intellectuals did in the 1700's and 1800's. Hell, if Thomas Edison were born today, they would have labeled him with ADD, given him a chemical lobotomy with some Ritalin, and he'd have ended up working in a gas station or flipping burgers. No doubt. Look it up.
We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
- Woodrow Wilson
from an address to The New York City High School Teachers Association
Jan. 9th, 1909
(click image to read the book, or click here for a history tour.)
