It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
– Mark Twain

As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best schools in the area? Which option can provide the best environment in which to thrive? If the best options aren’t public, can we afford them? Is it worth the money? All these questions and more have filled the minds of my wife and I over the past couple of years, but lately we’ve started to ask even bigger questions; such as whether the compulsory education system as it exists in the U.S. in 2017 makes any sense in the first place. I’m increasingly starting to conclude that it doesn’t.

Before I get into that, let’s take a step back. A lot of what I do here at Liberty Blitzkrieg is highlight what’s perverse and destructive about human behavior at this time, and how things can be made dramatically better in the future. If I had to summarize my worldview concisely, I’d state that human beings at the moment are living under highly centralized, hierarchical power structures which are gamed by unethical, greedy and corrupt people at the top who exploit the masses ruthlessly.

Since the worst of humanity will always work hardest and most violently to attain power (this will always be the case), the only way to achieve lasting, positive change is to systemically move to a different model for human activity. Trying to get decent people at the top of a highly centralized power structure is counterproductive and merely a short-term solution if it can even be achieved in the first place. What we need to do is tear down and reduce centralized power as much as possible in the first place. If power becomes distributed far more widely across the planet, the ability for mass control and consolidation becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.

The most significant theme of the next hundred years (at least) will be a dramatic shift toward decentralized networks in nearly all aspects of human affairs. We’ve already seen its profound impact in a dramatic decentralization of information/media content creation and distribution, and we’re starting to see its impact when it comes to currency/monetary systems. Without the arrival and viral adoption of the internet, none of this would’ve been possible. More importantly, only 50% of the planet is currently online and massive social media networks have only been going for a decade or so. If we assume the internet isn’t going anywhere, we’re only in the very, very beginning stages of how it’ll ultimately shape human affairs.

As I noted in the recent post, Bitcoin, Terence McKenna and the Future of the Internet:

I remain in awe of the implications of people across the world easily talking to one another in real time and forming global networks. We’ve become so accustomed to social media at this point many of us already take for granted how extraordinary and revolutionary it really is. Nothing like this has ever happened before in human history, and it’s hard for me not to be extremely optimistic about its impact on life here on earth over a longer time horizon.

One of the most remarkable things about humans across the world talking to one another, is it becomes increasingly difficult to manipulate distinct populations into hating each other and rallying around wars that only benefit elite sociopaths in the first place.

As things stand now, people from all over the planet are examining the way the world functions and coming to the conclusion that it’s completely insane and anti-human. We live in a world where we’re told to be slaves to authority and expert judgement, despite the fact that such figures are consistently and spectacularly wrong, with their proclamations often leading to massive levels of death, destruction and economic collapse all over the world. To summarize, the world as it’s currently organized is transparently insane and cannot stand up to even the slightly degree of scrutiny. As more and more people wake up to this reality, the world will change in unimaginable ways. The earth as it stands today will be unrecognizable in 25 years.

Although I’ve discussed what this means when it comes to governing institutions and monetary systems frequently this year, one area that I’ve only begun to explore is education. As our kids creep toward the age where most children enter the school system, my wife and I have started to examine what this system looks like, and if it’s as insane as everything else about the world today. The answer seems to be, yes.

Earlier this year, I came across a 1990 speech given by famed teacher and author, John Taylor Gatto, and it completely and totally blew my mind. I highlight a few excerpts below, but cannot stress enough how important it is to read the entire thing. It’s one of the most powerful pieces of information I’ve ever shared.

Enjoy:

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent – nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching – that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard…

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” – that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic – because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead. The products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves…

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does…

I could name a few other conditions that school reform would have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies, or television, or both. It’s a simple matter [of] arithmetic, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That’s what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.

What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot, then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.

Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn’t cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of “experts”, a central elite of social engineers. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato’s republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn’t work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology – drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach…

Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer – these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of “school” open – to include family as the main engine of education. The Swedes realized that in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of adopting unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted. They didn’t succeed completely but they did succeed in reducing the number of unwanted Swedish children from 6000 in l976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by children not raised by their natural parents so they did something about it. We can, too.

Family is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents – and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 – we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life, we’ve gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief. I have many ideas to make a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you will have many ideas, too, once you begin to think about it. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grass-roots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large vested interests pre-emptying all the air time and profiting from schooling just exactly as it is despite rhetoric to the contrary. We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We’ve all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press – a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more “expert” opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their “solutions” are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family. I’ve said my piece. Thank you.

This above excerpts are from a speech by John Taylor Gatto accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990. Please read the entire thing and share it with the following link: Why Schools Don’t Educate.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss the concept of unschooling and why it’s captured my attention recently.

If you liked this article and enjoy my work, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or visit our Support Page to show your appreciation for independent content creators.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

26 thoughts on “It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)”

  1. Having lived in different US states for a few years and visited many times too, it is shocking to me how few kids you see around.

    Here in Spain, kids and old folks are almost revered. All kids are welcome in all bars and restaurants, shock horror. If they weren’t welcome, the bars etc would have no customers, because families go out all the time to socialise (not get drunk) as a family. Adults readily play with and joke around with their friends’ kids, and anyone with a baby, good luck getting it back, with everyone passing by giving it a hug and an ogle. Old folks give sweets to kids in the street. Young kids hang out in the park after school or during the holidays with older kids, the parents intermingle.

    I am sure the progress my 5 year old daughter has made, will see her shape up into a well rounded and confident young adult, just like the 16+ year old kids around here. Unlike others, she will be trilingual, exposed to three languages between home and time with foreign friends, street and school.

    In a national survey, 85% of under 25 year olds said the most important thing in their life was…. family. And this wholesome bunch flourish despite the school curriculum, which is pretty rubbish and reflects the sort of militarised learning by rote automaton nonsense you are addressing. There do seem to be changes afoot, but as you point out, changes will likely not be radical enough to break the centralised strait jacket.

    On a separate note, Azimov had some great ideas about alternative education, the most obvious one being that kids should do apprenticeships from quite an early age. The primary benefit was that they would mix with adults, and escape the influence of being part of a herd of like-minded hormonal nutcases cooped up in a classroom. Also kids are literally pre-wired to learn any language with hardly any training or effort, up to the age of 11. So exposure to other languages should start at pre-school, not age 11.

    Reply
  2. Yes. You’re probably preaching to the choir here, but I for one have known how superior homeschooling is from first hand observation of friends’ home-schooled kids who grew up to be well-rounded, confident adults. The objection is always, always, always, They need to be socialized! The fact of the matter is that home-schooled kids are much better socialized than their antisocial, standoffish-with-adults and scornful-of-younger-kids peers. Home-schooled kids live in the real world. That’s the main advantage they have. Everything they learn is learned in the real world. They learn reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic in the real world. They learn social studies, science, and shop in the real world. They gain a real (that is, adult) perspective on everything they learn, as they go. There’s no transition between schoolboy- and -girlhood and adulthood. THAT can be a very traumatic transition, and homeschoolers completely sidestep it. Under our current system, it takes some time for the products of our educational system to become real people. That’s what their ’20s are for, to make real adults out of schoolkids. Homeschoolers arrive at that point at around age 15 or 16.
    But the real objection to homeschooling is and always will be: How can we possibly mold these kids into the kind of reflexively- unquestioning-our-premises droids we want without compulsory formal education?

    Reply
  3. Oh, I thought of another objection to homeschooling that will be advanced: How can we possibly have powerhouse interscholastic athletics without primary and secondary feeder systems to select and train the best athletic entertainment? The whole American way of life would come crashing down. Bummer.

    Reply
  4. Mike,

    I have the solution to what this article is referring too. Or one of the many needed solutions. I have a educational method I developed for myself that had me outperforming engineers in my field on a consistent basis. I have developed a new educational system that will revolutionize the industry. I have a “World Wide Energy Efficiency Standard for Buildings” and a great plan to implement it. I have a patent on the use of a formula that calculates the measurement needed to compare one building with another energy efficiency wise. My method will hugely improve the efficiency of our economy by greatly improving productivity and hugely reducing co2.

    But the establishment either ignores me or gets mad at me for thinking different. They wanted me to get LEED certified and the LEED system increased co2 by 29% based on the largest study done at the time. LEED is a points based system that simply never worked but they didnt want to hear that from me.

    None of the prominent builders or architects wanted to hire me. In the end I quit disgusted with it all. I shrugged.

    Reply
  5. I didn’t really quit. I fell deep in debt and lived pay check to pay check for a few years until the stress was just so much I couldn’t take it anymore.

    At one time before the great res-session, I had a booming business. I started the business myself from scratch. I bought a upper class house in a nice neighborhood, my wife didn’t have to work for 5 years. We had money to go away weekends and on vacation. I achieved the American Dream.

    And then lost it all accept for a 401k and a IRA that they can’t grab in bankruptcy.

    Reply
  6. Homeschooling is great…as long as the parents are both well-educated and emotionally well-balanced. And I’m sorry to say, that description doesn’t seem to fit a majority of parents out there right now.

    Don’t get me wrong, I think formal schooling in America leaves a lot to be desired. I personally had terrible experiences with it. But I’ve concluded that the problem isn’t schools or their curriculum. The problem is that society (at least American society) has decided that there are only two viable paths to success and respect: “higher education,” and being an entertainer. Neither of these are what most human beings excel at. Other “careers” to which large portions of the population would naturally excel at (child-raiser, entrepreneur, craftsman, laborer) are widely considered to be booby prizes, suitable only for those who can’t make the grade in a “real” occupation. As a result, in both academia and the job market, huge numbers of square pegs compete for the privilege of forcing themselves into a very small number of round holes. This prevents everyone from being as happy or productive as they could be, and is a source of huge stress for many people.

    The good news is that the solution (as I see it) doesn’t require any changes to laws or reallocation of funds. It simply requires a change of focus. Instead of putting so much emphasis on what grades we (or our kids) get from where, we put some more emphasis on finding what we (or our kids) are naturally good at and taking the time to get better at it. When we find out what our peers or their kids do for a living, we judge their choices based on how well a person does what they do, rather than what it is that they do. And we apply the same criteria when we look to invest in those around us. If we do those things, what is (or is not) taught in school will no longer be able to throw us or our society as out of whack as it often does now.

    Reply
  7. Forget private school. It’s all the same as public school – you just have to pay for it. My wife and I started homeschooling our son starting with the 6th grade. He’s now 21 and doing quite well. David’s comments are spot-on!

    Reply
  8. “Tell me about your childhood…..

    Ha! Must have took me for a fool
    When they chucked me out of school
    ‘Cause the teacher knew I had the funk.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09qT075Y4R4

    – “Hyperactive” (Thomas Dolby)

    By the time I was in 3rd grade I had lost count of how many times I was reprimanded by my parents after a parent-teacher conference because the teacher told them that her only complaint was “he keeps bouncing his knee and staring out the window…he’s just too hyperactive”.

    Later they started medicating kids for the same thing after they started calling it ADD, instead of hyperactive.

    Yeah, I had a lot of energy. I was 7 years old for chrissakes! Almost all of us had a lot of energy and you locked us in a prison 5 days a week while forcing us to learn by rote memorization. So we were also bored as hell.

    Best of luck changing any of this. The NEA and the “educational establishment” are not going to let that happen. But even higher up the chain the last thing those pieces of shit want are a generation of critical thinkers. That’s their worst nightmare come true.

    Good intentions, Michael. But it will remain nothing but a pipe dream for the vast majority of parents and children for many more decades.

    Reply
  9. I am a teacher and am strongly anti-authoritarian but I realised quickly that the system forces you to train children into obeying you otherwise your life is going to be very difficult. I live in Asia where education is absolutely drilled into students from a young age and their ability to question authority is non-existent by 7. I definitely would consider home-schooling for my future children if not for the social development they gain at school.

    Reply
    • Pulseatilla, it’s my observation that home schooled kids are far ahead of schooled kids in social development. What schooled kids learn on that score is to be subservient units in the peer group pecking order. It’s an even worse tyranny than that imposed on them by their adult masters. Home schooled kids are free of that, free of checking their every thought, word, and preference against the lowest common denominator that is peer group approval and the concept of “cool”. If home schooling ever reaches a critical mass, maybe the sellers of youth-oriented paraphernalia might be out of business. We can only dream.

  10. The school trains you for the economy you are facing. The economy structure has less then 1% of people as owners, and 99% as obedient workers. The same is true of 1% owners of capital vs 99%renters of capital. So you are correct to think support of the family will have good impact but if that support is seen as unearned, it will have no effect.

    The data on home schooling is basicly cherry picked data, because of the nature of the parents who have choosen it. Their kids would likely be just as successful(possibly depending on the quality of the teachers in either case) in public or private schools, less the parents removed all the support they would otherwise have given.
    If you look at Michigan with more wide spread adoption you see the success rate above public schools is no longer significant as you you are no longer cherry picking the kids. Infact I think the data has now turned to show the are less successful.

    Reply
    • I agree with you that parents who choose to homeschool historically have possessed certain traits and capabilities that have directly led to the success of their children. I’d also agree that if a majority of parents suddenly had to homeschool the results wouldn’t be spectacular.

      The point of the post wasn’t to say that the answer to the problematic and unhealthy nature of compulsory education in the U.S. today is for everyone to homeschool. Most families have two parents working in this twisted economy just to survive, so it wouldn’t even be possible. The point of the article is to highlight that the way we’re doing things is stifling and we need to totally rethink it.

      For my wife and I, unschooling might be a great option, but this wouldn’t make sense for the vast majority of families for a multitude of reasons that I acknowledge.

  11. My wife and I keep our daughter out of school. Skipping 1st grade now. So far working out well. My cousin has 4 kids not in school. Working great for them too. I think any thoughtful attentive parent with children without major health or psych problems should have every reason to expect success outside of school.

    Reply
  12. Michael – we were in your situation not long ago and chose the school system. We inoculated our kids against some of the indoctrination we knew they’d be getting. We instilled strong BS detectors, skepticism of authority, logic, and an understanding of “systems” and games.

    I think following blindly is a recipe for disaster in the future that’s unfolding. So we’ve told them that they don’t have to go. I don’t care what the laws say – if they don’t want to go, they’re not going. This hopefully keeps their sense of freedom intact.

    So far (several years now) they seem to like it.

    As a “hobby farm” owner, I’ve been ruminating on the “self-sufficiency is poverty” maxim. Specialization, not DIY, has got us the good things we now enjoy. So hopefully there’s some benefit in handing the kids over to specialists in learning psychology and specific subjects – specializations I don’t have.

    Reply
  13. One of the best “programs’ I’ve seen is one that was adopted, in New York, I think, when kids would converge on a community center, both before and after school and engage with seniors from the community who helped them with homework and developed fun programs with them. EVERYONE benefited. The seniors were excited when they woke up every day……just thinking about spending time with young, eager minds. Stress was removed from working parents who knew that their kids were in good, caring hands.Best school I ever visited was one where the kids decided on a “theme” and all the teachers designed their specialties in accordance with those themes……that included music, and art. I’d LOVE to be part of a team that revolutionized what happens in classrooms and how prospective teachers are actually taught how to be an effective teacher.

    Reply
  14. Thank you, Michael– From my perspective, what you summarized in the following paragraph is far more valuable– not to mention concise– than what many commentators have been able to put forward during the course of their careers:

    “Since the worst of humanity will always work hardest and most violently to attain power (this will always be the case), the only way to achieve lasting, positive change is to systemically move to a different model for human activity. Trying to get decent people at the top of a highly centralized power structure is counterproductive and merely a short-term solution if it can even be achieved in the first place. What we need to do is tear down and reduce centralized power as much as possible in the first place. If power becomes distributed far more widely across the planet, the ability for mass control and consolidation becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.”

    As far as education goes, I think I can fairly state that the greatest advantage I had in mine was the degree to which my parents and grandparents encouraged my natural curiosity and desire to learn, and provided me with the simple, basic resources to pursue those instincts. Only later did I become aware of the degree to which those same qualities were absent in so many family environments, due to whatever causes.

    Reply
  15. For those who wish to show appreciation for John Taylor Gatto’s work, as of November 2017 he and his wife are in need of help:

    http://www.thejohntaylorgattomedicalfund.com

    “You can help John:
    John is humbly asking for help with:

    Financial assistance, for daily meals, medical needs not covered by medicaid, computer supplies and all of the other ongoing expenses of daily life. Details on how to donate are on the right of this page.

    Your cards and letters for both John and Janet offer terrific support at this time of low mobility, challenging verbal communication and general frustration. Please reach out to them with your love notes, special somethings you or your kids have drawn or created, etc. Mailing address is to the right.

    John says, “It’s hard for an old fellow who lived an independent life to become a beggar, but I’d like to render more service to my fellow human beings in the time I have left.”

    with love and gratitude to all,
    john (taylor gatto)

    a few of John’s wise words …

    “The goal of real education is not to primarily deliver facts, but to bring you to the truths which allow you to take responsibility for your life.”

    Reply
    • Thank you for linking to John Taylor Gatto’s work. I arrived at his website very late in my Social Studies Ed program. I left the program after reading his work. I very much appreciate the life/medical update here.

  16. I was part of a program run by Edward De Bono to bring back thinking skills into the classroom and the government pulled the rug, at the eleventh hour.

    The critical parts of the Trivium were removed back in the mid 19th century, under an excuse of factories wanting those that can do the work, without asking to many questions.

    The outcome of removing the ability, to ask well formed questions, filled the asylums in in the late 19th century. (YES! you have an ‘inner’ voice too)

    Parts of the Trivium were reintroduced, in the mid 20th century within cognitive therapy and the results were truly amazing. (Albert Ellis and Beck)

    Reply

Leave a Reply