The Real Legacy of Education in the 21st Century or The Death of The Species!
Creature abuse for cash!
Over the past decade or so much has been written in the media and elsewhere about the issue of genetically modified organisms. And of course it’s a vital issue to get to grips with. The idea of tinkering with the core of any naturally evolved creature merely for profit is both repulsive and ignoble.
What have we done to our children?
However there is a far more dangerous practice underway, one that has state and societal sanction and has been happening for centuries. This practice is at the root of the causes of disease, war, greed, psychological insecurity, racism, sexism and much more besides.
I speak of the process of behaviourally modifying organisms, specifically, children.
Most of us are well aware of the religious inspired dictum “give me a child before the age of 7, and I will give you the man.” That this is now being done by the state is probably no surprise. We have, most of us, been to school. Sat exams. Failed or succeeded. We have been judged.
That it is now mostly being done by the state at the behest of Industry, an is not primarily for the welfare of the child, may come as a shock. That it is hardly ever clearly articulated, though current politicians and educationalists are quite brazen about this, as in describing education as a way of training a work-force, but is couched in terms of ‘opportunity‘ and ‘equality‘ is plain to all!
Work, as we all know, is well trodden path route towards opportunity.
That parents willingly submit their children to this process is, initially, far more difficult to understand. Though of course those parents themselves have been behaviourally modified, and having been told for many generations that it is for their own good, they concur. Swimming against the torrent is somewhat difficult. Ask any conscientious objector in Americas Armed Forces!
And these are the facts. Parents do send their children to be behaviourally modified by the state, primarily for the pecuniary benefit of rich industrialists, those who own the means of production of goods, be it steel or plastic, dull or colourful, toxic or otherwise.
And we all know that this incessant production of goods is causing damage to our environment in such ways that it’s very ability to support us is seriously threatened.
We know too from history that those who exercise power over others will not desist, that they are struck with a congenital madness that precludes change. There are the victims of their own behavioural programming. They are stuck.
And while we may appear to be stuck, that is not necessarily the case.
I don’t want to appear to trivialise the ‘achievements of civilisation’ or the ’sacrifice of past generations’, nonetheless it cannot be said that the rampant unhappiness of peoples in industrialised and developed nations is a form of thriving. It is more like mere survival. With abstract distractions a plenty to take one’s mind off the matter.
Entertainment, as the Roman Emperors well knew, has it’s value in an Imperial Society!
Nonetheless, like the so called weeds, we, the people, the plebeian masses, the proletariat, the consumers, require constant ‘pruning’ so that we do not thrive, other than in prescribed ways that serve the Empire.
That is so, and from the pint of view of Empire, must be so, because it is our very nature, as human beings, as natural creatures, to thrive upon this Earth. Empire knows this! Entertainment serves to distract our attention from that various pruning’s that occur.
Investigate your educational experience.
Look carefully at the literature you were exposed to at the various stages of your education. Look carefully at how you were made to feel about yourself, in comparison with what was presented as the ideal.
And whilst doing so, bear in mind the following quotes, from those that founded the education that you and I underwent. And that our children will undergo. If we allow it to happen!
What they wrote about us!
Excerpts from the first mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education Board as they occur in a document called Occasional Letter Number One (1906):
"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."
In a speech he gave before businessmen prior to the First World War, Woodrow Wilson made this unabashed disclosure:
"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."
From John Taylor Gatto :
If you have a hard time believing this revolution in the contract ordinary Americans (and Europeans) had with their political State was intentionally provoked, it's time to meet William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906. Nobody else who rose out of the ranks of professional pedagogues, other than Cubberley, ever had the influence Harris did. Harris standardized our schools and Germanized them. Listen as he speaks in 1906:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
-The Philosophy of Education (1906)..
Listen again to Harris, giant of American schooling, leading scholar of German philosophy in the Western hemisphere, editor/publisher of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy which trained a generation of American intellectuals in the ideas of the Prussian thinkers Kant and Hegel, the man who gave America scientifically age-graded classrooms to replace successful mixed-age school practice:
The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.
-The Philosophy of Education (1906)..
Nearly a hundred years ago, this schoolman thought that self-alienation was the secret to successful industrial society. Surely he was right. When you stand at a machine or sit at a computer, you require an ability to withdraw from life, to alienate yourself without a supervisor. How else could that be tolerated unless prepared in advance by simulated Birkenhead drills? School, thought Harris, was sensible preparation for a life of alienation.
Can you say he was wrong?
That was from John Taylor Gatto's essay.
These brazen statements of the hiddden agenda of Education belie the stated ‘commitment’ of the State and of many others, to the child’s welfare. Rest assured that nothing of this has fundamentally changed in the intervening years, the agenda is till firmly in place. Witness the charade of elections in the USA, the horror of wars in worldwide which we fund with our labour and taxes and the blood of our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, be they civlians or military. Observe the destruction of the environment. Join the dots!
Now, do the work, free your mind from all mental, psychologicl and emtional slavery. And do the real work of Revolution. Start with yourself and the rest is assured!
For inspiration I reccommend, if I may be so bold, my song about education.
Children are intelligent, Children are beautiful, Children are creators
Robust Version
recorded, at home, with Ableton Live
Hippy version
recorded around a fire, at a festival, by Tribal Voices.......
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
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