Exclusive Interview
Brett Veinotte on Horrors of State-Run Schools and Schooling
The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Brett Veinotte.
Introduction: Brett Veinotte has worked in private education for the last 10 years, in a variety of activities. As host of the School Sucks Podcast, every week Brett shares his discoveries about American schooling with thousands of listeners. He is also now the vice president of a tutoring and educational consulting company in New Hampshire. Brett worked as an Outdoor Education Leader at a boarding school lin Vermont in 2000, then taught at the Great Expectations school in Manchester, Vermont from 2004 to 2006, where he designed new curricula for all classes he taught, including American History, World History, Media Ethics, Film History and a variety of mathematics courses. While teaching at Great Expectations, he completed masters level coursework in educational leadership, and the secondary education certification program at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. After leaving Great Expectations in 2006, Brett began to work exclusively as a private tutor in the greater Boston area. Much of this work was related to standardized test prep but also included providing essay writing support to college applicants, leading training sessions for prospective teachers planning to take state certification exams and serving as a liaison between parents and public schools to address student needs and parent concerns. He also worked as writing consultant to a London School of Economics graduate student, advising on foreign policy issues and Austrian School Economics.
Daily Bell: Give us some background on School Sucks Podcast. How did it start? What does it do now?
Brett Veinotte: School Sucks Podcast began in 2009, and it was intended to be a sharp, comical and pop-culture-friendly exploration into something that most people couldn't care less about. Unfortunately, it's something that significantly affects us, in ways that most folks never even realize.
Our aim is to take the word "education" back from the state. Today that word is a euphemism for compulsory indoctrination funded by threats of force against property owners, designed to serve the needs of the power elite. What education really is: a lifelong pursuit of self-directed, intrinsically motivated and purposeful knowledge acquisition. Public school and education are more antonymous than synonymous.
Daily Bell: Give us some background on yourself and where you were born and grew up.
Brett Veinotte: I was born in Pennsylvania, in a town I later discovered was run by the mafia. I used to really like sharing what I thought was an exciting fact. So imagine my disappointment when I eventually realized that all towns, cities, counties, states and countries are controlled by some form of organized crime.
I grew up near the New Hampshire seacoast. After some moving around for college and career, I came back to NH. I highly recommend it as a place to settle down.
Daily Bell: You had ten years in education. Tell us about that.
Brett Veinotte: I was once on track to be a certified public school teacher in the state of Massachusetts. Despite my original career goals, I managed to avoid teaching in public school. However, I was trained to teach with public school teachers. My student teaching experience was in a public high school, and in even private school I was introduced to the burden of "state standards." When I left private school, I found that the system had followed me into private tutoring (grades, college pressures, student apathy, etc.)
At some point, around 2005, I began exploring the so-called "failure" of the public education system, how and why it "failed" and the subsequent widespread implications. Once I came to understand the history and intentions of government schooling, I realized that it is only a failure for those who believe its purpose was enlightenment. When we come to understand that the intentions were conditioning, handicapping indoctrination and control we have to acknowledge its success.
That being said, not only did I want to stop participating in the problem, I also wanted to find some means of evaluation and action that would be a dramatic departure from any previous educational reform debate. Those desires, after a few failures, eventually manifested in my tutoring company and School Sucks Podcast.
Daily Bell: When did you decide that education wasn't doing what it was supposed to do?
Brett Veinotte: It's an interesting question because what I eventually realized is that government school is doing exactly what is was supposed to do. I think many libertarians reach a point, probably early in their development, where they ask some variation of this question: "Is our society managed by the dumbest and most myopic people on the planet? Or is there just some other agenda we're not being told about?"
Up to this point, human history is basically playing in a loop. It's a continuous story of how a small group of people controls a large group of people, by fear or by force. And this is achieved by keeping most of the large group relatively ignorant and hopelessly dependent on the supposed leadership of the smaller group. It's predators and prey, and government school is just one of the predators' newer tools. And in 21st century America, if people don't believe this applies to them, they are simply the latest dupes in this cycle.
Daily Bell: When did public schools get their start − in Germany?
Brett Veinotte: While there are sparse examples of compulsory schooling going all the way back to ancient Greece, the pre-German-Unification Kingdom of Prussia is probably the most significant step. However, the system in Prussia was simply a new method of perpetuating a practice that was already thousands of years old, and that was the science of turning human beings into controllable and predictable resources. In Prussia, the goals were militaristic; the rulers and elites wanted a reliable fighting force, with soldiers who wouldn't be made less efficient by annoying habits like the exercises of volition and self-preservation.
Daily Bell: Tell us more about the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.
Brett Veinotte: Bismarck was a Prussian aristocrat, credited with masterminding the German Unification under Prussian rule in the latter half of the 1800s. He was like a brilliant chess player; he thought way ahead. However, like Hitler many generations later, he was able utilize an already existing momentum of German thought to ultimately achieve his goals.
Key to Bismarck's plan was a popular embrace of nationalism and a strong ethnic identity. At the time Bismarck began to implement his plans, the schools had been building that momentum for at least two generations. The success of his "Blood and Iron" speech speaks to the impact the schools were already having. In this speech, he criticized the ideas of diplomacy and multilateral decision-making, and argued instead for concentrated power and military aggression. And the people, who were ultimately the victims of this agenda, happily embraced it.
Daily Bell: Didn't he plan for Gymnasiums to educate children by grade to bond them for eventual warfare?
Brett Veinotte: Yes. And this is the genesis of the age-based sorting system we still see in schools today. Like I said, he thought way ahead.
Daily Bell: How did Bismarck's horrid system expand around the world?
Brett Veinotte: The Prussian system was imported to the United States in the mid-19th century by a Massachusetts politician named Horace Mann. He praised the system for its efficiency and regimentation but he was also forced to acknowledge the abusive nature of the Prussian model. Amazingly, he simply dismissed this concern by claiming that such a control structure could be used for good ("the perpetuation of republican institutions") in the United States.
Daily Bell: Didn't it get a foothold in America because of Irish prejudice?
Brett Veinotte: As early as the 1860s it was a factor. It was no coincidence that a system formed in Prussia to instill a sense of ethnic superiority and the mystical idea of nationalism would have the same effect in the United States.
Catholics and immigrants were big targets. There was a strong xenophobic desire to stamp out diversity in general, and the school system was even embraced by the KKK for that potential molding function.
From Massachusetts, it expanded quickly around the country. As a simple and general rule, when one government observes another devising a clever and subtle new way to control its subjects, the observer will imitate the doer.
Daily Bell: Give us some insight into John Dewey. What was his impact on modern education?
Brett Veinotte: Dewey was a so-called educational reformer who came along roughly two generations after the system's implementation. In retrospect, we could say that Dewey's reform was actually an acceleration of the existing system's worst features. In a nutshell, Dewey asserted that an individual's mind was essentially property of the larger society.
I believe that he believed he had the best of intentions but the actual results of his ideas were monstrous. Dewey believed in the eventual emergence of what he might have called a 'humanistic society based on the principle of interdependence.' Or state socialism, if you strip out all the euphemisms.
While Dewey helped introduce the look-say method of teaching literacy, or teaching illiteracy if again we strip out the euphemisms, that was not his most significant contribution. Dewey seemed to understand that the schools were a profound power for indoctrination in nationalism and ethnic superiority, and he wanted to use this power for an even 'greater good': the inculcation of collectivism. And to achieve this, individualism had to be significantly downgraded.
John Dewey was all about the greater good. That sounds nice. But what is it, who decides it and how many smaller goods should be sacrificed to achieve or maintain it? He once wrote: "Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth." Okay, so who defines "proper" social "order" and "right" social "growth" for all? Moral, mentally healthy people don't seek that kind of power.
Daily Bell: What is your mission going forward at the podcast?
Brett Veinotte: Simply put...expansion, empowerment and exposure. For the last few months I've been working very hard to tap into YouTube, where I believe there is a huge group of young people ready to embrace our message. In every podcast and video, I try to include a strong message about how demented and philosophically corrupt government schooling actually is. So no matter where a person starts, they get some introduction to this message. I hope that this realization helps rebellious or labeled (ODD, ADHD) students realize that it's the system that is defective. Not them.
Daily Bell: What are some of the big issues you will continue to cover?
Brett Veinotte: That's where the exposure comes in. One of the aims from the beginning of the show was to encourage critical thought. I want young people to have the tools to detect and deflect government and corporate propaganda. And they won't get these tools in school.
We recently began a series on logical fallacies, where we take a critical look at intellectually insulting ruses like Mitt Romney and the viral video, KONY 2012. I want to help young people build their intellectual self-defense, so they can identify and expose dangerous frauds. Between the schools, the mainstream media and politics there is no shortage of new dangerous frauds in need of exposing.
Daily Bell: How should people feel who work in the current system?
Brett Veinotte: That depends on how much they've discovered about it. I remember how I felt at different stages in my career, even in private school. From my own experience, it's a gradual process that begins with denial and rationalization. My only advice for these people is to be honest with themselves. However, they should also be realistic about what they can do.
Daily Bell: What should they do?
Brett Veinotte: People used to tell me: "if you want to change the system, you have to work within the system." And that is the world's worst advice. People who believe in that idea should try the following: Pick a place you really want to visit. Take a picture of that place and put it up on the wall. Set up a treadmill in front of the picture and then get on and start walking towards your destination. Call me when you arrive there and then I'll consider your advice.
First, a government, or government program, really can't change for the better. It simply grows and rots until it collapses on top of its dependents. It is designed to stay the same for the people who are benefiting from its current state – unions, service contractors and politicians in the case of the schools.
Second, considering the powers that such individuals would be up against, they should ask themselves: "How small and non-efficacious do I want to feel?" The whole work-within-the-system suggestion came right out of the system and is designed to make people feel worn down and powerless, so they will eventually give up and begrudgingly accept the status quo.
I can't tell others exactly what they should do but I can say that what I've done has been very rewarding and empowering for me personally. I got out.
Daily Bell: What kind of advice do you give to parents and children?
Brett Veinotte: To young people: Please don't take what I say as the final word on any of these topics. Please do you own research and carefully consider any course of action before you take it. Act in accordance with reason and individual purpose.
However, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. My advice would vary greatly on an individual-to-individual basis. One of the most frustrating encounters is with the people who want to me to talk to them like I'm a politician. They'll ask, "So what's the solution?" as if such a person exists who knows what is right for millions of strangers. People who ask questions like that seem to have absorbed all of school's most destructive messages: obedience to authority, trust for those in power and conformity to a single way of doing or thinking about something.
Here's something that I have in common with Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: I don't know how to solve complex social problems and I don't know exactly what is best for millions of unique individuals with a wide variety of needs, concerns and desires.
And here's the difference: I won't pretend that I do. I won't lie to you, promise you things, insult your intelligence and delude myself into believing I could have such wisdom or power. I'm not a politician.
Daily Bell: What kind of advisory services are you involved in?
Brett Veinotte: That's the perfect follow-up question. I am the vice president of a company that provides tutoring and college consulting services. In my work, I meet with people one-on-one, analyze needs and then make suggestions or take action based on those unique needs and goals. I try to present a wide spectrum of choices, to show young people that they have a myriad of options.
I have been shying away from college consulting in the last few years, because I was realizing it was more of a service for parents. I feel like a more accurate name would be "Let me present you to my son or daughter as an expert and then I'll pay you to tell them why they have to go to college..." consulting.
Daily Bell: Do you think this growing anti-public school movement you participate in is turning into a full-fledged power?
Brett Veinotte: First, I don't wish to present myself as anti-public school. I try to express my philosophy in the affirmative. I favor and value individualism, curiosity, critical thought and voluntary interactions. And school is a widely accepted institution that honors none of these things, and yes, that needs to be pointed out.
I'm also unsure about the word movement. I have identified many other individuals and projects working with a similar philosophy and towards similar ends. We are allies but we certainly do not speak with one voice.
Daily Bell: Who do you consider your colleagues?
Brett Veinotte: Accessibility is one of my favorite features of the new media; people you once admired from afar can quickly become your friends and collaborators. I have made some really meaningful connections with people like Richard Grove, Wes Bertrand, Gardner Goldsmith, Jason Osborne, Stefan Molyneux and Laurette Lynn. If I needed a cohost for a show, those names would be at the top of my list.
Daily Bell: Are there plans for a larger coalition?
Brett Veinotte: Not specifically. The only purpose of any cohesion would be to spread the message faster, further and more efficiently. However, I accept that any meaningful philosophic and social evolution is a very gradual process.
Whenever I hear the word coalition I picture political action. So I shy away from that because I do not believe the government is in any way legitimate. And according to government school textbooks it would appear that any complex social, economic or cultural problem can be solved quickly and efficiently by simply involving the state. That is fiction. There are zero major problems in this country today that were caused by not-enough-government-involvement.
Daily Bell: How are you making a difference?
Brett Veinotte: Most importantly, what I do makes a major positive difference in my life. That's the number one reason why I do it. Beyond that, I recognize that my impact has been modest as far as its reach. The show has millions of downloads but I know very little about what the results of those downloads are for the individuals on the other end. I have received roughly 1000 emails and comments from people who claim the show had a profound impact on their lives. It might not seem like too many but it's more than I ever could have reached if I had confined myself to a classroom.
Daily Bell: How can parents and children make a difference?
Brett Veinotte: I would suggest focusing on actions that can make a direct difference in their personal lives. For parents, offer your children alternatives to these government indoctrination centers. For students who are stuck there, ask questions. Questions are what can stop ridiculous and corrupt ideas from becoming world religions and political ideologies. Curiosity is very powerful if it's being practiced by enough people simultaneously.
Daily Bell: What kind of education SHOULD children have?
Brett Veinotte: The kind they would have without government school: a natural, intrinsically motivated, personalized and rewarding one. And that would mean a thousand different things for a thousand different learners.
Daily Bell: Where do you stand on home schooling?
Brett Veinotte: It depends. If it is used for the purposes I just described, it's great. That's unschooling. That's natural and respectful to the child. However, if it's used for Rick Santorum purposes – to shield children from reason and reality – I strongly oppose that.
Daily Bell: What do you think of higher education?
Brett Veinotte: I have mixed feelings. It depends on a person's goals. College is not the 13th grade, and it a very expensive place to figure out what you want to do.
In the last two generations, there have also been some hints of a scam. In school and society, we see all of this pressure for students to attend college, regardless of their long-term goals, or lack thereof. In government, we see heavy subsidies being shoveled into higher education – easy money that students who learned nothing about debt can get their hands on. These subsidies send a signal to the colleges that they can raise tuition. So now we have a situation where more graduates are finding themselves $150,000 in debt in an economy with no jobs.
Daily Bell: What is the real function of education? Isn't it to make somebody an autodidact?
Brett Veinotte: Education is a natural process, not a synthetic one; curiosity is the real teacher. We are all autodidacts until institutionalized schooling interferes.
Daily Bell: How does the US as an empire fit into public education?
Brett Veinotte: Everywhere. The schools produce obedient conformists who rarely question authority – the perfect fighting force. The curriculum is stocked with subtle but consistent messages of nationalism (we call it patriotism), just war (making the world safe for democracy) and geopolitical superiority (America is the best) – three rationalizations for military aggression.
Daily Bell: Do you have any thoughts on why education ended up like this?
Brett Veinotte: Because it's run by government. Because it is based on the threat of force. There was no other way for it to end up, and I believe it is exactly what it was intended to be. Education has too much potential a control tool to be left to individuals, families and markets.
Open oppression usually has a very finite life. When prisons are built everywhere and filled with people, revolution becomes inevitable. However, oppression can continue indefinitely when the prisons are built somewhere they can't be seen, like in the minds of people. And that's government school.
Everybody understands that there are aggressive and predatory criminals in this world. Some use myopic brut force to carry out their crimes – guns, knives or fists. But the smartest and most resourceful have always used government. It's the best place to hide criminality in plain sight.
Daily Bell: Is there a power elite pushing the world toward global governance?
Brett Veinotte: I'm not sure if it's one group or several but as a student of history I know what people in power want: more power. And we can certainly see evidence of that push in institutions like The UN, The Council On Foreign Relations, Bilderberg, The EU, IMF and the World Bank.
Daily Bell: Where does public schooling fit into this larger globalist focus? Aren't children being brainwashed into globalism?
Brett Veinotte: Even though there might be some messages that lead to an embrace of globalism, this indoctrination wouldn't have to be so direct. Because public schooling inculcates obedience, intellectual apathy and conformity, most people can be tricked into accepting or even embracing any agenda that powerful elites wish to pursue – welfare, warfare, corporate bailouts, fiat currency, progressive taxation, property seizure, the drug war, Homeland Security, etc. Globalism would just be one example of many.
Daily Bell: Websites and resources you recommend?
Brett Veinotte:
Daily Bell: Thanks for your time and keep up the good work.
This is a really interesting interview for those who want to confront the horror of public schools squarely. There is probably not a person alive in the Western hemisphere who has not been damaged in some way by state-run education or its ramifications. The segregation of children by grade over a long period of time guarantees certain pathologies.
Increasingly via standard tests and other measurements, the powers-that-be apparently want to cull the "top performers" as soon as possible and send them on alternative tracks, through Harvard, Yale and Oxford, from where they are thence seeded in various globalist institutions around the world.
Those who participate in this program may not actually know they are culled. In fact, that is the beauty of the current system. Those who are participative may rise as high as they want to and come, eventually, to realize the full parameters of what they are involved in ... or they may distance themselves or remove themselves entirely. In this way the current sociopolitical and economic system is self-selecting, with sociopaths who are the most willing to participate rising the fastest and going the farthest.
This gets into the larger issue that we have often discussed regarding the lack of authenticity that modern society inflicts on even its most successful individuals. If one accepts the reality of, say, a dynastic power elite with arms in London's City, Washington DC, the Vatican, Tel Aviv, etc., then one likely also accepts that elite's world-spanning agenda.
The ambition to create a so-called New World Order involves an entire program of destabilization and propaganda. In order to move the mass of people, especially in the West, toward this goal, constant manipulation is required. Almost everybody involved in "mainstream" professions is somehow entangled in this web. Doctors end up dispensing deadly pharmaceutical concoctions; lawyers end up ensnared in the judicial-penitentiary complex; teachers labor in school systems that poison the minds of children and cripple their spirits.
Gradually, we'd like to think, the Internet Reformation is changing all that. Increasingly, as people discover their own manipulation, they seek a way to overcome it. That's just what we think Brett Veinotte is doing. Here's a fellow who has traveled through the indoctrination of the current pedagogy and figured out a way to make a living that doesn't stifle his voice or sense of fair play. That's an accomplishment of itself.
Thus, even though parts of this interview may seem gloomy or unpromising, we'd like to think the overall message is uplifting. Like so many other elite promotions, state-run education is under attack and people like Veinotte are courageously leading the way to a less compulsory future without so much formalized mind control.
This is a big problem for the elites. As people discover they CAN lead authentic lives within the larger matrix of elite domination, they begin to try to do so, and it is highly improbable that they will voluntarily return to their old lives and lies. Again, this is a process, not an episode, and it is one that here at the Daily Bell we spend a good deal of time analyzing.
Veinotte is someone, in our view, who epitomizes this trend and we thank him for the good work he is doing. Every child salvaged from the viciousness of state-run schooling is a victory for decency and the potential of the human spirit.
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Posted by Charlie on 04/01/12 05:32 PM
EXcellent article. I have a quibble with the comment that "Rick Santorum homeschoolers" are shielding their kids from reaon, etc. (translation: "religious" people are devoid of reason and reality). I'm as far from a Santorum fan as you can get. People have the right to their own religions and worldviews, however. Having a spiritual worldview rather than a materialist one is hardly to be without reason or reality. Incidentally, I believe Santorum "cyberschooled" his kids, basically a statist curriculum. Veinotte is absolutely correct that you cannot really change the system by working within it. I tried, found that they want you to do that. They ID opposition then divide and conquer, pick out leaders and marginalize them using group dynmaics and the Delphi process, bribe and flatter followers. I took my kids and got out. Smartest thing I ever did.
A corollary to this article is Buckminster Fullers ("Education Automation")observation is that the brightest are tracked into specialized professions, having been trained that only experts in their fields can understand those fields they defer to others who are identified as experts. This leads to a fragmentation of knowledge and the failure of the brightest people to understand the whole picture. The less bright people are trained to be managers and the very bright end up managed by the not as bright. The system is quite ingenious in that people chain themselves with their own minds. That is how many are ruled by few. I would add Samuel Blumenfelds books and articles to the list.
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Posted by Hoss on 04/01/12 05:29 PM
Speedy, the shift from property to sales tax and 'schools of choice' has been tried here. The first thing that happened was local control was lost immediately, funds are assigned by the State. Second, funds were cut (in the areas that pay the most sales tax, btw) and so schools started taking students from outside the jurisdiction to get the state funding that comes with each student. The result: the State sends money to the failing big-city schools which scandalously squander the money, meanwhile thugs from those schools overrun the neighboring suburban schools to the point where they are not safe any more, so people who can afford to move out leave at the first opportunity. The big-city schools are losing State funding now, so they are promising a netbook to every student next year, I saw that in the paper just today. The amount of money the State sends is US $205,380.00 per classroom of 30 students. (It's not enough, ha!)
Bottom line: One communist funding mechanism is no better than another communist funding mechanism. It is based on FORCE, and the results are always the opposite of the stated goal. They are still graduating illiterates. And no amount of money is ever enough when it doesn't have to be earned.
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Posted by Hoss on 04/01/12 05:18 PM
Thanks, Bill.
Hope all is well on your end.
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Posted by Hoss on 04/01/12 05:17 PM
Thanks, Lara. I knew I was in prison from the first day. (Acted like it, too.)
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Posted by goldandsilverbug on 04/01/12 04:55 PM
Brett Veinotte:
The schools produce obedient conformists who rarely question authority - the perfect fighting force.
Larken Rose wrote a fabulous book on the most destructive horrifying myth of Authority and how we all bow down to it.
Click to view link
Great to see someone making a stand and opening doors to this conversation.
Good job DB for the introduction of Mr. Veinotte.
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Posted by seer on 04/01/12 04:53 PM
The kind they would have without government school: a natural, intrinsically motivated, personalized and rewarding one. And that would mean a thousand different things for a thousand different learners.
Virtually every school has an adopted agenda (curriculum). Thomas Jefferson early on saw the benefit of teaching the US version of democracy. Most US history/government texts do their best to present a favorable slant to often dubious actions. All countries do this. The real goal should be to allow for many personal electives in different subject areas and projects the students can pursue on their own. Unfortunately this must be instilled early on because too many students prefer to be nursed by the teacher.
Certainly Catholic, Mormon, and Evangelical private schools teach their agenda. Perhaps all that public schools should address are: reading, writing and mathematics and allow students to choose their own interests from there.
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Posted by Frank on 04/01/12 04:48 PM
"Once I came to understand the history and intentions of government schooling, I realized that it is only a failure for those who believe its purpose was enlightenment. When we come to understand that the intentions were conditioning, handicapping indoctrination and control we have to acknowledge its success." - B. V.
A very eye-opening interview that stated explicitly some of my more recent views on government run schools. I still think free competition among schools is the best way to go giving parents vouchers to use for whichever school they want to send their kids to (or even just keep the money & home school). All government funding of schools should be stopped (except for vouchers). Let the best schools win by getting the most & best students. Let the poor schools fail. If people can home school their kids better than local schools, let them do it. All this will also result in a drastic reduction in "conditioning, handicapping indoctrination & [State] control". Of course, the government won't want this to happen, but if the majority of American voters wake up, it can be done!
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Posted by Lara on 04/01/12 03:15 PM
Hoss,
Thank you for your brilliant comment.
"The most pernicious damage starts when the young child is thrust by his own parents into a cruel environment where the first thing he learns is that he is lowest on the pecking order and he can neither escape nor resist."
In my willful ignorance, I made my daughter and then my son go through that process. After an incredible long time, when my son was in 5th grade, I finally opened my eyes and willed myself to see the damage I inflicted on him by sending him to school, which was in actuality prison, most days. The happiest young child you had ever seen, left years later in the morning with hanging head, resigned to meet the daily ordeal. I ordered 10 books on Amazon, devoured them in five days and took my son out of school on day six. The plan was not to "school" him at home, but to give him a chance to recapture at least part of the joy he once felt at all times. In the 2.5 years he stayed home, the only formal learning he did was Math, which we did together.(thank you, Edward Zaccaro, for your brilliant basic math books). Most of the time, he was reading mystery novels. As he is a very social being, he decided to attend a high school. We chose a Waldorf school.
Overall, we are happy with our choice. Incredible as it may sound, my son has not encountered any bullying there, and girls and boys being friends and hugging each other is common and does not attract sneers.
Contrary to Brett V., I know the solution to the problem: Cut all state funding of education and students and parents would have many choices. And not only quantity of choice would rise, but quality as well. Just think Trabant in East Germany and Porsche, VW, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, etc. in West Germany and you get the picture.
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Posted by SoCal fellow on 04/01/12 02:19 PM
"Daily Bell: Do you have any thoughts on why education ended up like this?"
I think the best explanation is in Sutton's book, America's Secret Establishment, an Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones.
Click to view link
Sutton shows how the elite set up Skull and Bones, a U.S.-based offshoot of The Illuminati in Germany, in the 1830s, to, in part, dominate the training of professors in medicine, economics, and education, amongst other areas.
These professors then went on to found or be president of major universities, such as Johns Hopkins, Cornell, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and, of course, Yale. From these perches, these professors specified the curriculum, hired the professors, and ensured that their views were parroted by the professional societies which they also founded, such
as the American Medical Association, American Economics Association, etc.
I think Sutton's book does a great job laying out the flow, from the embryonic seed at Yale to, ultimately, the preeminent teaching institutions at Chicago and Columbia. From there, the flow down to secondary schools was as inevitable as gravity.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 04/01/12 01:50 PM
Only issue here is school tax. Why homeowners pay school tax? Why money for education ain't collected by sale tax and then redistributed for kidz to assigned school whenever one choose. And I gurantee ye that within 10 years Y'LL 'LL C positive result. Now we have monopol, state/corporate run monopol. What we need is free market. Let cooperatives play game. First needs 2B done cut money from state/corporate system to assign 'em for kid live within municipality jurisdiction and those money goes to school choosen by parents.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 04/01/12 01:38 PM
Try gibirudotcom Mandragon Corporation or Cooperatives Bologna, Italy. 2B honest with ye, Jesus was member Essene Commune, even he lives in Qumran.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 04/01/12 01:33 PM
Try to learn about Mandragon Cooperative in Spain, or Bologna, Italy cooperatives. These are real freemarket, non government institutions. Mandragon and other coo-ops got own educational system, even research center.People owns it.
Principles drive everyday practice at MCC companies. For instance, while most businesses determine voting power based on how many company shares a person owns, MCC cooperatives allocate each worker one vote. They also stick to an egalitarian pay scale-top management is rarely paid more than 6 times the lowest-paid worker. Profits and losses are distributed among all the members equitably because their efforts together determine the success of the company.
The town of Mondragón, population 23,000, is solidly middle class. There were neither mansions on the hill nor poverty in the streets. We didn't see wealth but everyone had a comfortable place to live, healthy food to eat, and the comfort of modern conveniences. Equally noticeable was their convivial, even joyful sense of community. The people we met were friendly, conversational, and trusting.
Click to view link
Government's Role in Co-op Growth
A key reason why Italian cooperatives are flourishing is their political support. The Italian constitution recognizes the social contribution of cooperatives and directs that legislation should promote them. Worker co-ops are nonprofits under Italian tax law, and are legally bound to invest their surplus for further job creation. So in exchange for favorable tax status, worker cooperatives are restricted from distributing profits among current members in favor of reinvesting towards new democratic employment. Another interesting aspect of Italian tax law is that it requires 3% of each cooperative's surplus to go into a fund to develop new cooperatives.
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Mondragon Comes to America
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Visit our conference september 2012 in Califa.
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Government can play a constructive role, they argue, by offering tax breaks to kindly, "responsible" corporations that work hard and play by the rules.
To see that there are other options, you have to travel to the richest city in Italy: Bologna -- Communist Bologna (six years ago the Italian Communist Party renamed itself the Democratic Party of the Left, or P.D.S.). Polls confirm it as the favorite city of all Italians. The historic center, with its soaring medieval towers, Renaissance palazzos and Baroque porticoes, is among the best-preserved in Italy. And perhaps even more remarkable, working-class Bolognese continue to live there. Since the anti-Fascist resistance came down from the hills and took power fifty years ago, Bologna and the surrounding Emilia-Romagna region have been transformed into a working left-wing model of a future Italy, an alternative to the alliance of media mogul Silvio Berlusconi (memeber of fascists Propaganda 2 lodge-main backer of Operation Gladio, Bilderberg, and other evil coorps) and neo-Fascist Gianfranco Fini. Here is a place where the left came to power and didn't make a mess.
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Jesus was member of Essene Commune, even he lived in Qumran.
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Posted by rossbcan on 04/01/12 01:28 PM
"Some day in the far future, film clips... "
Oh? Pink Floyd, "The Wall"
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Posted by Hoss on 04/01/12 12:53 PM
Quote of the day: "First, a government, or government program, really can't change for the better. It simply grows and rots until it collapses on top of its dependents."
We've discussed before how the reduction in cost of information is eroding the foundation out from under brick-and-mortar information restriction institutions. The first big bubble to pop was the credibility of the mainstream media, already far past any chance for resurrection. The second big bubble to pop is the hugely unsustainable university system, already crumbling due to perverted economics and the silliness and uselessness of most of what is 'taught' there. Last to crumble, but already showing signs of cracks is the compulsory schooling system.
Though some might object to parents indoctrinating their children in some religious cult philosophy, that is far less dangerous than any force-based shortcut to 'solve' that problem. Best to let them sink or swim on their own, allowing it to be the self-resolving problem that it really is.
The most pernicious damage starts when the young child is thrust by his own parents into a cruel environment where the first thing he learns is that he is lowest on the pecking order and he can neither escape nor resist. The young mind has no resources to deal with this situation and so only the most horrible strategies are available as coping mechanisms; cruelty and dominance or resigned victim, depending on who is above or below in the pecking order. The cruelty learned from above is compensated for by enthusiastic infliction of the same cruelty to those below. Teachers are not required to understand what they are doing or to intentionally inflict emotional damage on the child (though I'm sure most of us can remember a teacher or two who indulged in this cruelty with fetishistic enthusiasm). All that is required of any teacher is to believe that such an environment is good for the child, 'toughening them up for the real world'. The grading system automatically establishes a pecking order, the environment automatically places the child in a situation where physical attack and societal ostracizing are the means by which one's place in the pecking order is established, regardless of whether or not any adult in the system agrees with these mechanisms. People learn in kindergarten that wild baboon-like behavior is the natural social order, and they must adapt or suffer cruel consequences. The result is that psychopathic behavior traits are favored from the first day of school. Cooperation is only tolerated if it is forced, property rights are denied, privacy is violated, pride is squashed, and any differences from the norm are punished. Close bonds between children are forbidden. And that's before the adults impose their own rules. All this paves the way for militaristic programs in later grades, better known as sports.
The system doesn't vacuum up all minds, but it doesn't matter, those who are born with a rebellious streak can be safely ignored, silenced by their peers until they wait it out and escape the system. As long as the system held absolute control of the information that reached its dumb conformists, the few percent of outliers did not pose a threat. But now that the internet is presenting information unchecked, and now that the truth or falsehood of any assertion no longer relies on authority but on whether it has the ring of truth to it, and now that this is impressing by default the responsibility for judgement of truth on the individual (because the authorities have discredited themselves), slowly but surely the conformists are beginning to doubt some of the most basic tenets they were raised with. Little by little, they are experiencing the shock of realizing that they were lied to by everyone in their lives and by everything they were taught. In response, the system clamps down harder to keep control, which only serves the opposite purpose, waking even more people up. The process is slow but inexorable; people who wake up can never go back to being the way they were.
And so the system rots, and its collapse onto its dependents grows nearer.
My thanks the The Bell for bringing this man to our attention.
Some day in the far future, film clips of mass-produced children being taught conformism at the feet of a master will be shown right before the film clips of goose-stepping soldiers as an example of the lunacy of crowds. And people will wonder aloud how people could be so stupid, how they could accept so many lives wasted -- dashed -- for such obviously insane fairy tales.
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Posted by speedygonzales on 04/01/12 12:50 PM
The capitalist cabal is destroying American public education by attacking its principles and infrastructure and also by brainwashing a dumbed-down American public to believe that the debt crisis demands that public schools be turned over (not necessarily sold) to private, free-market-oriented capitalist corporations.
It's no accident that America's schools have slowly eroded and that the intelligence of the average American has become so debilitated. American learning has plummeted and public school performance has nose-dived ever since the middle of the twentieth century because it was planned that way.
Some thirty million adults in the U.S. do not have the skills to perform even the most basic tasks such as adding numbers on a bank slip, identifying a place on a map, or reading directions for taking a medication. Eleven million Americans are totally illiterate in English.
Only twenty-nine percent of Americans have basic reading and computing skills. One out of every twenty Americans lacks the ability to understand what is going on in the world or to develop an informed opinion for voting.
Thinking American citizens must always be aware that what goes on in this society is the result of the planning of its rulers; they create precisely the social, psychological, economic, and ideological conditions which will realize their goal of obscene wealth for themselves and impoverishment, homelessness, and death for the working class. With an illiterate, uneducated American citizenry, unable to understand what's happening in the world, it's no wonder that a fascist cabal has been able to take over the United States.
Meaning is truly a magical element. Perhaps the best way to grasp the mystery of meaning is by thoughtfully viewing the movie "The Miracle Worker," the story of the early life of Helen Keller.
How Meanings Are Lost. In each culture, the public meanings, ideas, and skills transmitted through educational institutions (schools, academies, monasteries, universities) and through the media (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, Internet) have always been determined by the small ruling elite (politicians, financiers, warriors, priests, scholars, scientists, corporations).
As early as 1913, cabal leaders made it clear that they wanted American schools to produce compliant laborers, not "authors," "poets," or "men of letters."
"In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions 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 science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."
Rockefeller Foundation Director of Charity, Frederick Gates, 1913
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How to Become a Serf? Man is a pathetic creature; a brute trying to be god but traveling in the wrong direction. Educational systems now train workers to fulfill the needs of companies. A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved.
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In my view Usaic education loox like picture which was cut into pieces and then randomly put together. Good job
Private education is lots worse than state. Only gr8 aducation is achieved by cooperatives. Like Mandragon cooperative in Spain or cooperatives arround Bologna, Italy.
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Posted by budwood on 04/01/12 12:41 PM
Public schools:
Organizations in which those who financially benefit are those who are the administrators, customers who participate are those who are rounded up by truant officers and property owners who provide the money are those who submit because of threats of force.
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Posted by Danny B on 04/01/12 12:12 PM
We can consider "society" to be a half-machine & half-beast construct that is semi-self-aware. It knows that it must continuously produce new cogs. The cogs must fit and function well. Society does not want a monkeywrencher in the cog factory.
There is a new problem on the horizon. These little warm-blooded cogs can never produce as reliably as machines. The PTB prefer machines over people. Machines are FAR easier to control.
Many of the new cogs, recently departed from the cog factory can't seem to find a niche in the machine. The "machines" are the perfect slaves. They're purchased once and require very little ongoing expense. Every "machine" is a multiplier of the efforts of a cog. The cog factories make endless rosy promises to their units but, the society-beast prefers machines.
This is a line from the movie, "Maid to Order"
"I didn't take 6 years of junior college to work in a doughnut shop".
China has taken steps to cut back on the number of college grads.
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As the net becomes even more pervasive and English becomes even more of a lingua franca, there will be even more research collaboration. As artificial intelligence moves into more areas, this means more leverage to the cogs.
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All of this means less need for cogs.
The society-beast can CLAIM that it cares for each and every cog but it can't deliver for very much longer.
The enforcement-arm of the society beast continually invents new destructive measures to create make-work niches for compliant cogs. The resource-depletion rate for this scheme is on a level that isn't sustainable.
The youth worldwide are discovering that the society beast is a fraud and can not provide for them. Their cog factory taught them rote, not, how to think.
A perfect example of this is; Even though many INDEPENDENT people predicted the economic collapse, the Harvard economic big-brains did NOT say a word. The Harvard endowment trust lost TONS of money. The brains could NOT entertain any ideas that were outside what they all agreed on. One has to keep in mind that there was lots of historical precedence pointing to a collapse.
As AI takes over even more of the work done by cogs, the cog factories will have to change their methods or lose all relevance. The youth will not just fade away into irrelevance.
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Posted by kenn on 04/01/12 11:37 AM
"There is probably not a person alive in the Western hemisphere who has not been damaged in some way by state-run education or its ramifications."
From this one has to assume the Eastern hemispheric schools are better. How?
DB: What kind of education SHOULD children have?
Brett Veinotte: The kind they would have without government school: a natural, intrinsically motivated, personalized and rewarding one. And that would mean a thousand different things for a thousand different learners.
Wow, That's a mouthful. "without government", would that be corporate (say, with a well learned professor, from an education consulting company) I mention this because of the dance he did while answering the home school question. He may be anti government school but he doesn't think much about parental homeschooling. Of course being vice president of a tutoring and education consulting company may be the connecting dot.
Indoctrinating whether it's corporate or government is still indoctrinating. I would much prefer a parental schooled individual indoctrinated with individualism than a corporate/government indoctrinated individual with the 'for the good of the many' BS.
Why?
Usually whatever is good for the individual is probably good for the rest of us individuals. vice, Whatever is good for the many usually turns out good for the corporations and government but very bad for most individuals.
Block, localized schools paid and run by those most concerned for their young,,, the parents,,, seems the best solution but even that has limitations,,, see next paragraph.
I can hear the screaming regulating, standardizing, antithis and antithat zealots from the peanut gallery ,,, because you see,,, it's not only the government and corporations wanting to indoctrinate our young... hmmmmmmmmmmm
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Posted by 0vigia on 04/01/12 11:16 AM
i don't like too much government rulling my life but when the gov doesn't have a hidden agenda, like dumb down people ("I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers."), the things work quite well, just look at the Finland example.
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success Click to view link
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Posted by rossbcan on 04/01/12 11:16 AM
If you want a population of slaves (and, THEY do), the very first thing you must do is Pavlov condition children (while they are still innocent and impressionable) regading the absolute authority of self-proclaimed "experts" and arbitrary power so they CANNOT CRITICALLY THINK and, consider those who can THINK as ENEMIES, interfering with alleged "social good".
People who can THINK must and will consider their servitude and conclude: UNACCEPTABLE, the last thing our slavers wanted, but, they are getting it, "good and hard".
So, think ABOUT IT:
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