While parents, schools, provinces and states across North America bicker about the democratic process of running public schools, forces are manipulating education from behind the scenes – sexualizing, dumbing down, and indoctrinating children as early as they can. Major international players are reshaping public education to suit their own self-serving agendas, without regard for the wants of parents and the welfare of their children. Compared to 34 other modernized countries, the United States (formerly ranked #1 in all) currently ranks 20th in literacy, 30th in math, 23rd in science out of 34 industrialized nations according to the recent report put out by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). (Source) The United States has fallen to rank 49th in life expectancy of 120 countries while maintaining the dubious rank of being number one in incarcerations, military spending, childhood obesity, hours of television watched, student debt and the highest national debt any country has ever incurred in history. These continual poor performance rankings persist despite spending more on education than any other country with the exception of Switzerland, who ranks in the top five in education.
Currently, only 64% of students who begin college graduate within six years. Those who do graduate have collectively amassed over one trillion dollars in long term student debt. It is of no surprise that over 72% of students who have finished college in the past three years have moved back in with their parents. Additionally, young adults between the ages of 18-26 also have the highest unemployment rate in this country putting further strain on middle class families.
The U.S. topped the world list in 2010 in spending $860 Billion dollars on public education which is a 30% increase from the $660.5 Billion spent in 2000. All of this increase has come from the Federal level while in the same period state and local government spending has been relatively flat, between $28-29 Billion per year. So if hundreds of billions has been spent on public education over the past decade by our Federal government then why are schools so desperately in need of more funds and we are seeing staff size being reduced across the country in our public schools?
*****
“Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether education is fulfilling its purpose.
A great majority of the so called educated people do not think logically or scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us the objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education.
Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society.
The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
Much of the blame for the failure in our public schools has been unfairly placed on local staff and educators. What few outside the public school system realize is that more and more of what material the educators can teach and how they must instruct to achieve standardized national test scoring is tied to the schools receiving critical funding each and every year.
School administrators spend copious amounts of time and energies applying for grants and reviewing, comprehending and complying with yearly changes in federal and state codes and regulations while annually having to pink slip staff each Spring not knowing how much funding will be cut the following school year.
Since 2004, federally directed programs like President Bush Jr.’s “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) and President Obama’s “Race to the Top” (RTTT) have married critical public school funding to school average test score performances. The governments stated goals of these programs was to get a national standardized education performance system in place set to a standard benchmark as well as to develop a one-size-fits all nationalized education system so that if a family relocated to another state the curriculum and testing would be equalized and consistent.
Teachers and administrators across the nation who fall below this federally mandated benchmark and then fail to show significant improvement in their schools annual yearly performance are threatened with the loss of their jobs and reduced school funding. The benchmark set by NCLB was determined by a formula known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). By 2010 the national failure rate was over 50% with Florida ranking the worst at 89% and California towards the low end at a 26% failure rate. Principals and teachers were put on notice that if the numbers did not come up to benchmark standard, their jobs could be in jeopardy.
While public media hails each new Presidential educational initiative, over the past few years our public schools are quietly being foisted with a new business global educational “product” called Common Core (CC). Common Core is a subsidiary of Core International, a publicly traded (only on the India Stock Exchange) IT tech company based out of India. Over the past several years CORE International has been the fastest growing company in India with an amazing annualized 52% growth rate in net income.
For years, liberals have imposed their revisionist history on our nation’s public school students, expunging important facts and historic figures while loading the textbooks with liberal propaganda, distortions and clichés. It’s easy to get a quick lesson in the virulent leftwing bias by checking the index and noting how textbooks unfairly describe President Ronald Reagan and Senator Joseph McCarthy.
When parents object to leftwing inclusions and omissions, claiming they should have something to say about what their own children are being taught and how their taxpayers’ money is spent, they are usually vilified as “book burners” and belittled as uneducated primitives who ought to allow the “experts” to make all curriculum decisions. The self-identified “experts” are alumni of liberal teachers colleges and/or members of a leftwing teachers union.
In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state’s board of education, department of education, and curriculum committees.
Zinn’s textbook deprives young readers of the opportunity to learn that they are part of the great story of American exceptionalism. His book inspires guilt and the belief that success comes only through exploitation. He belittles patriotism, never allowing pride in America. Zinn told one interviewer that his goal in writing this textbook was to start a “quiet revolution” of people taking power from within the institutions.
After several decades of use in schools and colleges, new information emerged about the author. In 2010, the FBI released 400 pages of files on Howard Zinn, and it turns out that he was an active member of the Communist Party. He was vice president of a group in Brooklyn, New York run by the Communists and attended Communist Party meetings in Brooklyn five nights a week. He was so important in the Communist Party that he taught a class to his comrades on “basic Marxism.”
The FBI interviewed many fellow Communists who confirmed Howard Zinn’s longtime Communist Party membership. Publicly, Howard Zinn lied and denied his Communist Party membership, which was the common practice of Communist Party members in those years. Howard Zinn’s textbook is worse than anything he ever did as a member of the Communist Party. His textbook was specifically written to present a Marxist version of U.S. history based on the Communist strategy of the “class war.”
Greta van Susteren of Fox News interviewed a former Tucson high school teacher, John A. Ward, who was removed from teaching the Mexican-American Studies class and reassigned because he questioned this Raza curriculum. Because he raised concerns, Ward was called a racist and, since he himself is of Mexican heritage, he was also called vendido (Spanish for sellout). The state of Arizona requires students to take a course in American history in order to graduate, but Ward said this course is actually not about American history at all. He said it focuses solely on the history of the Aztec people, which is the group to which Mexican-American activists ascribe their lineage.
Others who have looked at the books used in these courses say they refer to Americans as “Anglos” or “Euroamericans” rather than as “Americans.” The books do not recognize the United States as a country, but claim Arizona is part of “Aztlan, Mexico” (even though the Aztecs never lived in what is now the United States).
*****
The Devil is behind the public school system… “The Masons/Communists/Humanists/Illuminists all want the government to train the children of the nation in government run schools.
Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, wrote:
‘They [the Illuminati] contrived to place their Members as tutors to the youth of distinction.’ (Proofs Of A Conspiracy, pg. 75)”
‘We must acquire the direction of education — of church — management — of the professorial chair, and of the pulpit.’ (Proofs Of A Conspiracy, pg. 109)
‘We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools.’ (Proofs Of A Conspiracy, pg. 111)
The indispensable key to using the educational system to dumb down the US populace was compulsory school attendance for as long as possible and from the earliest age possible, If children are free to attend non-state schools or to avoid formal schooling altogether, the state’s control efforts could be thwarted. The state’s seemingly benevolent goal of universal education is actually an insidious effort to capture and propagandize all children in its social engineering matrix. Accordingly the indispensable key to using the educational system to create a compliant and ignorant citizenry is compulsory attendance.
The aim of compulsory state education in Prussia and in the US from its inception at the macro or social level was the creation of a homogeneous, national, Protestant culture: the Protestantization of all citizens. In the US this was also aimed at the Americanization of the disparate ethnic and religious elements (especially Catholics) and disparate groups that populated the US. At the micro, or individual, level the aim was the creation of conformist citizens, people who trust and defer to government in any areas it chooses to claim. In this context Americanization presupposes the remaking of the individuals who comprise population.
The actual means for achieving this national dumbing down of the US population from its place at the pinnacle of global educational achievement at the turn of the 20th century to the current situation in which Americans must rank among the least educated people in any economically advanced country at the beginning of the 21st century is the story of the rise of Wundtian psychology and Rockefeller finance in the intervening century.
Very few have any idea how our modern public educational system was born as to who drafted, funded and designed our current education system and what their stated plans and goals were for public education. Many feel that given the amount of money we spend on public schools that we should be producing much higher quality students that are equal to, or superior to, education in other countries. Yet that was never the intention of the original framers of our education system, as you will read below. In fact the system is working exactly as these few men of enormous wealth had planned it all out more than a century ago.
“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their 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 men of learning or philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters, great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, statesmen, politicians, creatures of whom we have ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
~ First mission statement of the J.D. Rockefeller-endowed General Education Board in 1906
The first state education system (the Gymnasium high-school system) was set up by King Frederick William I of Prussia in 1717. His son, Frederick the Great, following in his father’s footsteps, said: “The prince is to the nation he governs what the head is to the man; it is his duty to see, think and act for the whole community.” But the compulsory state system wasn’t fully implemented until later.
In 1755, Schlabrendorff took over the Prussian region of Silesia (now part Germany, part Poland). In January, 1756, he toured the region he was now responsible for, and discovered poverty and discontent which he considered dangerous. Among other things, in 1756, Schlabrendorff suggested to Prussian King Frederick II that a system of state-run, compulsory schools be established. He said that extraordinary benefits could come from it.
Schlabrendorff reckoned that:
- By molding young minds, it would be possible to create the belief that work was a necessary and moral imperative. Work was Good, even if the fruits of it ended up with a corporate or royal dynasty, even if it meant five or six days of toil a week just to provide basic essentials for the family.
- Schools could inculcate proper political opinions in children: there would never again be a generation who would grow up to revolt against their government.
- Children would learn not to question authority or authority figures, be they governmental or corporate. (The practice of forcing pupils to raise their hand to ask a question, essentially asking permission to ask, was pioneered by Johann Hecker in 1740 in Prussia.)
- Children would learn to accept their lot in life and to limit their aspirations: the needs of the factories for workers and the army for soldiers would be met with compliant recruits.
- Children’s primary loyalty and fear would be shifted from their mother and father to the king and the state. This would be ensured by the children learning very early that if they didn’t attend school, special truant police would come after them, a force their parents were powerless to stop.
Initially Schlabrendorff ideas were not implemented, but in 1763, at the end of the Seven Year War, King Frederick II was willing to try them. Many of the early schools were educational facilities in the morning, factories for making wool or silk in the afternoon. They were known as Spinnschulen. Prussian Minister von Schlabrendorff issued an edict in late 1763 that every Silesian town must provide such compulsory instruction to all children ages seven to fifteen (with the exception, of course, of the children of the landholding royal families). In 1765, Queen Maria Theresa of Austria passed an identical law in Austria.
The use of compulsory, state-controlled education as a replacement for the gallows, the rack, the whip, and the prison cell as a way to keep the peasantry in line was suddenly popular across Germany and Austria. A leading German, Chrisian Frchtegott Gellert, believed this would not only lead to a more docile populace, but a more moral one as well. A student of his, philosopher Karl Heinrich Seibt, wrote in 1771: “If laws are to be faithfully observed, the subject of the state must obey them freely and willingly. The enlightened state which educates each subject in the duties of his profession, a state whose subjects fulfill their duties willingly and out of love this is a powerful, invincible, and blessed state.”
The Prussian and Austrian authorities were proud of the fact that their public compulsory education was designed to create a compliant citizenry. In 1774 when the Gymnasium high-school system was reformed in Prussia, its main architect, Mathes Inaz von Hess, suggested that class, and not ability, should determine the quality of a child’s education. This would assure stability, he said: ‘If bright children of low social class were only to learn to be compliant labourers, it would be “no loss to society.”‘ The Prussian Education Edict of 1776 demanded that children of high social class be admitted to higher education even if they were of “only mediocre talent and little proficiency,” keeping the “children from the lower orders” in the state-run compulsory system. Children of wealth could attend private schools: the overt goal of the compulsory public educational system, wrote Johann Ignaz von Felbiger, was to make lower-class students “content with the station into which they are born.”
As the Industrial Revolution gathered pace after 1800 due to increased manufacturing stimulated by imported gold from South America, and money made in the rum, tobacco and slave-trading between the Americas and Africa, adults in Europe began to resent the competition of children for jobs. By 1805, fewer than half of all employed skilled workers in Berlin were members of guilds. Concern began to arise about “child labor.” As a consequence, and no doubt stimulated by the defeat of the professional Prussian army by Napolean’s army of volunteer farmers in 1807, King Fredrick William III replaced The Spinnschulen with full-day educational programs.
To strengthen the state’s hold on society King Frederick William III decided, among other things, to revamp Prussia’s school system to improve its ability to indoctrinate children to become obedient soldiers and workers. He instituted certification of teachers and abolished semi-religious private schools. High-school graduation examinations were necessary to enter the learned professions and the civil service. Children aged 7 to 14 had to attend school. Parents could be fined or have their children taken away if the children did not attend. Private schools could exist only as long as they kept to the standards of the government’s schools. An official language was imposed through the schools, to the prejudice of ethnic groups living in Prussia.”
This Prussian compulsory schooling model became praised and echoed by German and Austrian philosophers, leaders, and educators (such as Fichte, Raab, Hitler, and others) for the next 150 years. In 1910 Ernst Troeltsch pointed out the obvious: “The school organization parallels that of the army, the public school corresponds to the popular army.” The German philosopher Johann Fichte was a key contributor to the formation of the German school system. It was Fichte who said that the schools “must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.”
Around 1850, the legislature of the State of Massachusetts was grappling with a problem that had an explosive potential similar to that faced by King Frederick and Queen Maria Theresa a century earlier. Millions of Irish Catholics had poured into Boston largely as a result of the Irish Potato Famine, and their numbers were threatening the Protestant power structure in the state legislature. At that time, there was no compulsory or state-controlled education in the US and yet (unsurprisingly) USans were regarded even by the Germans as the most well-educated and well-read people in the world.
To break the back of the growing Catholic power base in the Boston area, in 1852 the Massachusetts legislature, encouraged by Horace Mann, enacted the first compulsory US education law. Over the next six years many parents were jailed and thousands of children marched off to school by the state militia, as entire “revolting” towns were militarized when they refused to take their children out of their locally-run schools or home-schools and place them in the state-run, state-controlled institutions. The last town to fall, Barnstable, Massachusetts, capitulated in 1858 after a massive invasion by police and the state militia: compulsory public state-run education had begun in America.
By 1900, nearly every state had government schools and compulsory attendance. At first, only elementary education was provided by the state. Later, the government system was extended to high school. These days, the many advocates of public schooling want the state to provide day care beginning at an early age and year-round schooling. The trend is unmistakable.
Sheldon Richman says of US education in 1900:
‘At the time schooling was plentiful, innovative, and well within the reach of the common people in the US. Jack High and Jerome Ellig say that 80 percent of New Yorkers leaving wills could sign their names. Other data show that from 1650 to 1795, male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 percent and female literacy went from 30 to 45 percent. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. And in the South during the same span, the rate grew from 50-60 percent to 81 percent. Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s office issued a paper stating that the literacy rate in Massachusetts has never been as high as it was before compulsory schooling was instituted. Before 1850, when Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to force children to go to school, literacy was at 98 percent. When Kennedy’s office released the paper, it was 91 percent.
Continued on next page…
