Ever since compulsory attendance laws passed in the late 1800s, students have been forced to go to school with no questions asked. We assume that children are learning all the basics that we did, reading, writing, arithmetic, but something I believe is that quite a few of us underestimate the worldview, the assumptions, and the varying biases that the schools “teach” them.
Textbooks
All textbooks, curriculum, and materials are vigorously controlled by school officials and by the force behind them, the teacher’s unions. The teachers unions exert a tremendous amount of influence on what teachers can say or do at school and in the classroom.
Take for instance your average American history book and compare one from this recent decade to one at the beginning of the 20th century and you will notice a distinct difference in what is covered as well, what is emphasized and what people are portrayed as positive figures in history versus negative figures in history. You will get a very different history of the philosophies behind the American Revolution in a modern textbook. Why is this? It seems that the driving forces of various ideologies and worldviews in the educational sphere, specifically public education, have changed quite a bit in only 100 years of time.
A current American History college textbook that I had to use for an American class I had last year stated that the American Revolution and the French Revolution were quite similar. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth. While French Enlightenment philosopies were prominent in the French Revolution, the same can’t be said of the American Revolution. The same could be said of the methods that were employed in both the Revolutions.
The French Revolution, as most of us should very well know, was bloody, very very bloody. The guillotine was king, and everyone was subject to it’s wrath. The French populace lived in terror as neighbors with grudges and grievances denounced each other as enemies of the revolution. People were hauled away in the middle of the night and executed in droves the next day. The governing body of the new french republic routinely switched hands and the former leaders in power would then be executed for crimes they had “committed” against the republic. But, I digress.
Horace Mann
Instrumental in the establishment and founding of the American public school system was a man named Horace Mann. Lets take a look and see what he actually had to say concerning the matter of education.
“I have abandoned jurisprudence, and betaken myself to the larger sphere of mind and morals. Having found the present generation composed of materials almost unmalleable, I am about transferring my efforts to the next. Men are cast-iron; but children are wax. Strength expended upon the latter may be effectual, which would make no impression upon the former.”
That sneaky bastard realized how easily children can be manipulated and didn’t hesitated to take advantage of this fact, rather he employed it in the matter of public education, and made known this intention in his writings such as the following, “Let the next generation be my client.”
Other historical figures in American public education had writings which followed Mann’s line of thinking. For instance, Archibald D. Murphey, founder of the North Carolina public schools, wrote in 1816: “In these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and habits of subordination and obedience be formed …. Their parents know not how to instruct them…. The state, in the warmth of her affection and solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children and place them in school where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts trained to virtue.” Notice the words “inculcated” and ” subordination” in this quote.
Observe what Noah Webster, who has justly been deemed “the school master of America” had to say about public schooling and education:”I should rejoice to see a system adopted that should lay a foundation for a permanent fund for public schools, and to have more pains taken to discipline our youth in early life to sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties. I believe more than is commonly believed may be done in this way towards correcting the vices and disorders of society” (Note that Webster was a deeply religious man, but he saw the benefits of education as a tool to indoctrinate students with a christian mindset. (Well today it’s obviously something different then a “christian” mindset.
How about the founder of the progressive educational movement, John Dewey? (Who I really don’t like.) “I believe that … education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”
John Dewey
Basically the school was to be anointed to prepare children for a progressive society, which for Dewey meant a group orientation rather than an emphasis on the individual’s intellectual development. Here is another “interesting” quote of his.
“The social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results…. Through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.”
This kind of thinking is common in today’s “balanced” academia. (And we all know just how balanced academia is today when professors dare not to present facts against global warming in fear for their jobs, to state just one small example.)
William H. Seawell, who is a leading professor of education at the University of Virginia, in a speech he gave stated the following: “We must focus on creating citizens for the good of society.” But most startlingly, he said, “Each child belongs to the state.”
Think closely about that last statement of his and you will realize just how scary it is. Communist Russia was a thorough practitioner of this statement. As long as every child “belonged to the state”, children could be fed a steady diet of whatever propaganda and indoctrination that the Communist state wished, and therefore raise up a generation of children who had been thoroughly soaked in communist ideology. This made sure that the next generation would be communists who believed every word of state doctrine without question and of course follow it’s laws. North Korea does this same exact thing. Children are at school from the earlier hours of the morning till about 5 P.M. When they return home parents are allowed about 3 hours with them before the electricity is turned off at 8 P.M. This is an excellent system for making sure that the children spend the large majority of the day being taught the states ideology.
Now I realize that essentially, someone’s bias/propaganda/worldview is going to be taught to the youth of today. What we need to ask is, “Whose bias/propaganda/worldview is being taught, and do we approve of it?” Parents always teach their worldview and bias to their children, just as the school system does. What we need to realize is that the parents are the only real counter and alternative to the state when it comes to education. This is why parental rights are so important in regards to the sphere of education. There must be something to counter the grasp that the state has on education or else just one worldview and bias will be taught to the youth of today, the States.
Remember, what children are taught today will become the laws in the next 20 years.
