- "That erroneous assumption is to the effect that
the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge
and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties
of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could
be further from the truth.
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- "The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment
at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same
safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent
and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions
of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its
aim everywhere else."
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- --H L. Mencken
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- Comment
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- By Alfred Lehmberg
Lehmberg@snowhill.com
www.alienview.net
2-25-2
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- This bitter writer (me) should be as baffled as most
regarding the state of our American public education system -- it aims
and desires or goals, especially in light of the fact that he arduously
satisfied the requirements for teaching professionally within it, yet...
he has -not- found a job. This is despite a long certified record of exceptional
performance, awards and decorations, tip-top academic accomplishment, and
absolutely superb references. This is despite a much balleyhooed and allegedly
critical shortage of trained personnel in the public education sector!
It's clear he's not wanted. How does this irony work?
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- This writer thinks he might know. Fresh off a 23 year
professional military career where he had functioned splendidly as a member
of a team in an organization that had to work (emphasize -had- to work!),
he was oil in water as regards the public education community. Why?
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- Forget this writer's interest in twitchy social issues,
better cited historical revisionist positions, and UFOs with all their
associated subjects. Forget this writer's rational support for unpopular
positions, difficult causes, and cleaner ideals. These are not germane
to the discussion at hand...
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- The reason this writer has not found a job in public
education is that he is all too well aware that (contrary to a military
system) the public education system, by design, does NOT -have- to work!
Moreover, the -power- people engaged in it are busily prosecuting their
dictated social imperative to discourage critical thinking and intelligent
leadership (to facilitate the production of docile "employees"),
for as little as is humanly (and inhumanly!) possible!
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- Public education (as it is now practiced) is a likely
sham and an evil hypocrisy, this writer continues to discover. It does
its part to fill the nations prisons, it celebrates only bland mediocrity,
and it vigorously discourages creative individuality. Its work is to disempower
the individual, corrode our personal autonomy, and produce, ideally, an
ignorant but malleable American citizenry with artless souls as dry as
as old chalk dust in a decaying classroom.
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- This writer has the number of the public education system,
and it is a number that stands contrary to every valid educational ideal
presently getting lip service (only) in our American culture today. It
doesn't -have- to work, reader! That's what slums and prisons are for!
Moreover, "polite society" is loath to spend coveted dollars
producing a creative and intelligent society more difficult to betray,
mislead, and otherwise manipulate or conveniently control.
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- The perspective of our public education system includes
the jealous maintenance of an old guard's status quo, the continued resuscitation
of outmoded ideals benifiting the few, and the production of the lowest
of low common denominators. It lacks art, has no music, prosecutes the
homogenization of individual souls, and is the shame of an entire first
world...
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- It's just the way we want it, apparently.
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