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Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Don’t Assume Your Neighbors Have Thought Of This
Professor Walter Williams makes a point that too many people miss:
Politicians have a field day misleading Americans who, as a result of having been dumbed down by our education system, can’t think, reason or analyze. How many times have we heard the political lament “There are 43 million Americans without health insurance”? While that observation might very well be true, what are we to make of it? Does it mean that there are Americans dying on the streets for want of medical treatment? Were that the case, you can bet the rent money that the major TV networks would feature nightly stories of medically indigent Americans in various stages of pain, suffering and death.
Indeed. One of the central functions of the “public” schools is to suppress the spirit of independent inquiry and individual judgement, in favor of docile acceptance of what one is told by “authorities.” This is not accidental, but a designed-in feature of the system. It dates back to John Dewey and before him.
It could not be any other way. Schools are authoritarian institutions; government-run schools are doubly so. One cannot reasonably expect an authoritarian institution to encourage independence of any kind.
When the government is dominated by statists, the schools and the government will collaborate on the docilization program. When the government is dominated by the freedom-minded—rare these days, yes, but it happens now and then—the schools will work to undermine its pro-freedom initiatives by prejudicing students against them, so that future generations of voters will be likely to overturn them.
Obvious? Yes, of course. But most Americans have never thought about it. If introduced to the concept baldly, in the language of conspiracy rather than of incentives and the processes they drive, they would snort it away. That’s the cast the NEA and its minions try to give it.
If you want to raise free men, keep them out of the “public” schools.
