The Real Purpose of Schooling
When I woke up the morning after my first post went out, I received a wonderfully reassuring email from a dear, old friend of mine, of nearly 40 years, whom we’ll call “Jenny” because that’s her name. In part, it read:
“You literally make me want to pull my kids out of school TOMORROW! This madness must end. My first question is how do I start? People are so programmed to be told what to do, that I feel no one can even think for themselves anymore (including myself *sigh*). What are the steps to take? I seriously think the fundamental issue is that no one thinks for themselves, we are literally programmed, and by extension, our children are. We have to regain control. But how? How do we do it ? And then I immediately ask myself, have I been selfish all this time? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I'm thinking in ink right now.”
When trying to create cognitive dissonance in someone, you should strive to get 3 “fucks” in a row outta their response. Then you know you’ve hit a nerve. However, her email also created a sense of righteous indignation in me. Just look at what 12 to 16 (or more) years of schooling does to someone’s capacity to make decisions for themselves! I know because I’ve been there. This, unfortunately, is the implicit goal of public education that few dare to discuss. It’s not about democratizing education for the masses; offering opportunities to brighten every child’s future. It’s about neutering people’s decision-making process so that they become mindless automatons, capable of performing mind-numbing jobs for decades, and thinking they’re living a meaningful life, while questioning nothing, and then sacrificing their children to it.
System - 1; Humans - 0.
Before we delve into more specific proof of intentional systemic control (fun), let’s pause and consider how public education functions. The concept of schooling, where an expert in a specific subject matter stands before students and lectures them about a topic, has been outdated since the invention of the printing press, close to 600 years ago. Lectures made sense before there were books. Someone had information and they disseminated it in the lecture format. This was the only way data could be transferred, transcribed, and internalized. But now, especially in the internet age, do we need someone standing there and reading to our kids from government-approved textbooks? We do not. These same kids can simply teach themselves anything they want from books and the internet. I know this to be true because I watch our son do it every weekday morning.
For more concrete evidence of a ruse of global proportions, I will once again point you towards John Taylor Gatto’s book, “Weapons of Mass Instruction.” In the chapter, Everything You Know about School is Wrong, he introduces readers to William Torrey Harris, who was US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, at the time when Horace Mann’s idea of “public” education was gaining traction nationally, an idea he got from copying the Prussian education model. According to Gatto, Harris was intensely radical, regarding children as property of the political state, and he was a personal friend of Andrew Carnegie, the steel man, who nourished a hope that all work could be, “yoked to cradle-to-grave schooling.” How else could we convince generations of men to work in the horrendously hot and dangerous, blast-furnace conditions of a steel plant?
To build such a society, according to Harris, psychological alienation is paramount. The government must alienate children from themselves so they can no longer turn inward for strength, to alienate them from families, traditions, religions, cultures - so no outside source of advice can contradict the will of the political state. In Harris’ own words:
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 great purpose of school [self alienation] 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]
Is there any wonder why my friend Jenny, and so many others, don’t know what to do with themselves? I mean, my God, what a twisted and nefarious axiom (that school is in your kid’s best interest) to have to crack and counteract on your own. As a parent, you’re rowing into a tidal wave of more than 100 years of dense propaganda. My wife and I too faced an uphill battle when we first started to question the idea of handing our kid off to government workers. Public school isn’t free if you own a home, as about 80% of someone’s annual property tax goes towards funding these behemoths. But, if you happen to be one of those people who live in an apartment or rent a home (like us) then your child’s tuition is free, like it has to be for all kids in the US, as stipulated by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. But as most of us know from “Business 101,” if something is free, then the ostensible consumer (your kid) is probably the product.
Obviously, there are thousands of teachers and administrators in this country who believe they are doing good work (and are good people at heart). Many have no awareness that their primary directive is to “school,” as opposed to educate or teach. That’s the problem with hierarchical structures. Oftentimes subordinates have no understanding what it is they’re actually being paid to do. This is called compartmentalization. For example, I’m sure many people who worked for Bernie Madoff, the infamous Ponzi-scheme hustler, were positive they were doing something beneficial for their company’s clients. Traders, secretaries, cooks, drivers and more, who were all part of a money-making mechanism, and thought it was above-board. These were normal people convinced they were doing good work. The pyramid scheme metaphor is intentional, however, since it succinctly conveys (in a visual sense) what I’m talking about…a top-down, hierarchical scam.
The beauty of educating your child in the home is that there are no confusing layers of obfuscation. Regarding homeschooling, what about Jenny’s more pointed questions from above? “How do I start?” and “What steps do I take?” She has 3 truly adorable boys who range in age from 2-to-7, and she just wants to do what’s best for them. I’m sympathetic to these questions, as these are things my wife and I pondered when we first thought about extricating ourselves from the apparatus. The good news is the answer is simple:
All you need to do is believe that you can do anything you want - especially when it comes to your kids : )
And here’s the bad news:
All you need to do is believe that you can do anything you want - especially when it comes to your kids : (
The system is designed to instill this dissonance, as we learned from the words of William Torrey Harris above. It’s meant to create an army of Jennys, more than 100 years later, who will first hand their children off to the government, and then question themselves when the first tender tendrils of revolt start to germinate in their minds. This is called conditioning (i.e. brainwashing) and it’s always been very effective. Unfortunately, this kind of thing runs rampant in our top-down, “expert”-led, technocratic hierarchy. A useful way of viewing the situation would be to distill things down to the microcosm; into the realm of the interpersonal. Don’t abused spouses run similar narratives in their heads when they’re trying to make sense of their situation? “Why do I even stay with him?” or “I can’t make it on my own!” That’s the rub of the aspiration above. It sounds easy, but in reality, it’s one of the hardest things to do (to extricate yourself from abuse).
But there are simple and pragmatic steps you can take. Just as an abused wife can pack up her bags and leave, parents too can take back control of their lives. A great start is to simply email your kid’s school with a slightly more diplomatic version of the following:
Dear School,
I am reclaiming my child. Buzz off.
However, once you’ve given your rights away to the local school district, like Jenny and pretty much everyone on earth has, extrication can, at times, be challenging. As opposed, to say, if you moved to a new state and just never reported to the superintendent (you don’t have to report to homeschool in some states, but you do in most). Think about that…you actually have to obtain permission from some derpy bureaucrat to teach your own kids! What a messed up, inverted world we live in. If they can get their hands on your kids at age 5 or 6, and keep control until they’re 18, there’s nothing they can’t do to them. You have ceded your authority. Please know, this is the same apparatus that can, and has, conscripted people’s children into military service (the draft) where said citizens might end up slaughtered in some abysmal war. Sounds like our children are the product indeed.
The System tries to browbeat people into submission with credentials, codes, rules and requirements, but in reality, you simply don’t have to comply. Shrewd individuals during the Vietnam era, for example, could get a deferment from the draft for being a “conscientious objector”- someone who opposed the war due to a conflict of conscience. A prospective soldier could write an essay to the draft board and prove that they were a sovereign entity…but only if they were a good enough writer (i.e. convincing). Otherwise, they’d go to jail. As far as school goes, it’s not always as difficult as they make it seem. When we lived in Portland, OR, for example, we put our son in public school for first grade, because we were testing it out. But when we realized how awful the school was (shocking amounts of violence, inappropriate sexual behavior, bullying, abuse, etc.) we pulled him out without interference.
But making decisions for yourself isn’t always easy, as friends of ours in California learned, when they received a truancy letter which threatened them with fines and jail-time (sound familiar?) all because they took their kids on vacation for 3 days. So…if you’re a parent and you want to homeschool, and you want to do it “by the book,” here’s a helpful resource which breaks the requirements down in each state (so you won’t end up in the clink).
Click here for: Homeschool laws by state.
You’ll see that there’s significant discrepancy between the states. For example, if you live in New York, and want to homeschool, you must: give notice through the proper channels, submit a plan for approval, comply with requirements (like 900 hours of instruction and adherence to the prescribed curriculum), file quarterly reports, and assess your child annually with standardized testing. Whereas, if you live in Oklahoma (like we have), there’s no reporting, approval, curriculum, nor testing requirements. The only guideline is that you teach something for 180 days.
The above is part of the reason, we as a family, have lived in: Oregon, New Hampshire, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma and now Arkansas. We have worked diligently over the years to find the right fit. Yes, weather, access to nature, cost of living, and quality of life also factor into this decision-making matrix. But there’s something beyond the idea of replicating the school environment in the home, or what is cleverly called, “homeschooling.” There’s also the notion of jettisoning the whole dang thing, and living life completely free of these prescribed constraints. Some people call this “unschooling,” but generations of people prior to the advent of compulsory education simply called it…living.
Any parent might balk at the idea of removing their kids from a system that can yield positive results. If you go to the “right” schools, get the grades, do well on standardized tests, get into a “good” college, get the grades again, make connections, get a job with a reputable company and work your way up…you too can be a success. No doubt having a corporate job is a lot better than working multiple minimum wage jobs just to keep your head above water. No parent wants the latter for their children. The good news is…now that homeschooling has gained acceptance, kids educated in this way can prove competency relatively easily if they choose to go to college. As a parent, though, you have to ask yourself what’s the cost of the “traditional” path to success, especially if your child doesn’t like to go to school (like ours). If you force him to go to school every day, a place he hates, what does that teach him about himself?
The System snatches our kids when they’re young and hammers their exquisite minds into a flat mold of obedience. It’s a bureaucracy without a conscience - not necessarily one with evil intent - but one that does whatever it takes to keep the system humming. It’s efficient and effective. It takes our children and processes them, injects them, evaluates them, sorts them, incentivizes them, reprimands and controls them. This is the psychology of schooling (not to be confused with learning) and it’s very effective. As William Torrey Harris, the US Commissioner of Education from above said, “This is not an accident but the result of substantial education which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.” Subsume, by definition, is to encompass as a subordinate, to absorb. Is that what you really want for your kids? Do you want that for yourself?
I had my doubts too when we embarked on this journey as a family. I wondered if removing our son from The System would have negative long-term consequences. But then I just observe him as he moves through the universe. He’s healthy, smart, capable, successful, intuitive, ambitious, loving, and most importantly…happy. He’s a success without school. So, it’s okay to bring your kids home, if you can. Trust me, there will be no better reward in your life than helping your child reach the fullest expression of himself. The only thing it requires to start is courage.