For Your Own Good, Stay Ignorant

Paula wrote: My understanding is that homeschooling is illegal in Germany to prevent the rise of fascist or neo-nazi groups rising again.

Ned responds: One of the many sad results of government schooling is total gullibility. The forcible prevention of homeschooling is a good example of Fascism in action. It is supremely ironic that anyone would give such an excuse for the limitation or elimination of individual educational freedoms. It tells us just how dishonest government is. The true motive, of course, is total control of the population -- the very goal of Fascism -- never an enlightened populace.

Germany was once considered the epitome of an educated people. The US government sent hundreds of "scholars" (under Horace Mann) over there in the 19th century to examine its schools and copy the system as the politicians planned our universal schooling system.

Prussia, which became Germany, had been badly defeated by Napoleon and the reason was that Prussian soldiers were mercenaries (free thinking) while the French had been indoctrinated in patriotism and trained to fight, not for mere money, but for their fatherland. Germany wanted to emulate the French system of turning out good soldiers, not educated citizens.

The Prussian/German schools were designed to teach obedience and uniformity, and their goal was to turn out soldiers and factory workers. The result was a fine-tuned war machine and an incredibly disciplined, but "inside the box" type of thinking and acting. The country was "educated" to become a nation so obedient that its government could employ many millions of them in the carefully planned murder of six million of mostly its own citizens - their very neighbors.

To this day, no one dreams of jay walking in Germany, even on an empty street. As I see it, Germans will need many more generations to overcome their unspeakable shame at being such obedient, horrific sheep.

Growing up, I knew a man from Austria who told of the "old Russian army." There, the motto was, "Let the horse think!" In other words, "Do what you're told – don't think for yourself."
American politicians—arm in arm with industrial tycoons—wanted just such a school system, by which they could fill the factories and military ranks with dependable, predictable people. The school system was the government's mechanism for turning a diverse population of independent farmers, craftsmen, immigrants and freed slaves into a uniform mass of workers for repetitive tasks. The process was the homogenization of America. It's still going on of course.

Today, that part of the process has the name, "School To Work," whereby the schools act as employment agencies for the students, following orders and filling quotas set by the US. Dept of Labor, channeling students into certain (mostly menial) jobs and giving "Certificates of Mastery" instead of academic diplomas to the students who conform. The goal in this is to force all children into the system, and re-capture all homeschoolers for the state treadmills. Children are seen by the school system as economic "resources" to be used for government purposes.

Before about 1840, America's schools were locally controlled, run by and for the benefit of the families and the larger community, and their purpose was to make sure that the children learned the basic skills plus, in most cases, especially in early New England, the gospel of the major Christian congregation in town. That was before the Constitution which separated church and state. Gradually, government schooling became the norm. Since everyone was required to pay for it, it became more and more accepted, but not without resistance. The Catholics didn't like the secular nature of the schools, and wanted schools that taught their children according to their beliefs. The schism caused the Catholic Riots in Philadelphia, and led to that church setting up its own private school system.

Today, the state-run schools are controlled from Washington. Local control is now a myth kept alive by lying politicians. "The slob" (the name for the interlocking education bureaucracy) is still trying to create a homogeneous, predictable, obedient mass of workers/taxpayers who will support the millions of unproductive activities that are promoted in the schools and elsewhere.

Heck, we can't have actual educated people when there's so little for them to do -- they'll go crazy. We need simple-minded people by the millions who don't know what they're missing and who feel too dumb even to teach their kids any more than elementary skills. (That was, in so many words, announced by the first US commissioner of education at the turn of the 20th century. See it Gatto's, "The Guerilla Curriculum”)

The states have joined with the teacher unions to produce an almost seamless bureaucratic web that controls not just the children, but their families and communities. The schools have also become centers for medical "services" and psychological intrusions into the personal lives of all citizens. The Prussian dream of total control is becoming a reality in America, compliments of your local "public" school. And we even pay for it.

Ned Vare