Go To School To Get..... Dumber

Our government, money, property, media, freedom to travel, to marry and to have children, to conduct business and to make purchases, healthcare options, etc., are all under the control of a select few plutocrats. How did this enemy gain control over us? They do so by carefully controlling our systems of education - - what we are taught, by whom, what values are presented to us as correct -- and by slowly, methodically, painstakingly withdrawing from our "public" schools any academic instruction of quality and replacing it with nonacademic values instruction designed to "socialize a skilled workforce" (so says the US Department of Labor.)

The "deliberate dumbing down of America" has been exhaustively documented by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt in her book by that title. Her work is vitally important in that it establishes an indisputable concerted effort on the part of government, bankers and industry leaders not to educate American children in the classical sense, but to retard them academically in order to train them to become good sheep -- "human resources" -- to support their political ambitions (the New World Order), their banks and their factories.

At the turn of the twentieth century, bankers and industrialists, namely Rockefeller and Carnegie, started to endow foundations to study and built the American state-supported education system. Psychology and other ""behavioral sciences" were inserted into the education equation through the efforts of people like John Dewey.

Frederick Gates, director of charity for the Rockefeller Foundation, wrote; "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 rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of 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."

They created the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) - "an invisible government....the true ruling power of the country." The CFR promoted "Modern Math"- "....a math the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school...(because) the results are supposed to be worthless."

They promoted not the study of true American history, but "social studies." The Carnegie Corporation, another CFR group, called for the end of "the age of laissez faire in economy and government...and a new age of collectivism" to take its place. "Organized public education in the United States, much more than ever before, is now compelled, if it is to fulfill its social obligations, to adjust its objectives, its curriculum, its methods of instruction, and its administrative procedures to the requirements of the emerging integrated order." (The New World Order.)

The United Nations, through its UNESCO arm, called for "instruct(ing) kindergarten and elementary grade teachers in the fine art of preparing our youngsters for the day when their first loyalty will be to a world government, of which the United States will form but an administrative part."

The 1960's brought new educational focuses; on the group, rather than the individual; on "emotional health rather than academic learning;" on behavior modification" rather than academic excellence; on national rather than local control.

Today's "No child left behind" sounds compassionate, but it is dastardly in its implications, and not just the academically slower students, but for all. Thus focusing on the group, teaching to the lowest end of the class, holds many students back and denies personal excellence. It allows children to be trained like animals to make widgets, which the plutocrats want, rather than educated to be thinkers, which the plutocrats do not want.

The Carnegie Foundation developed a plan to "track conformity to government-generated goals," then , to "evolve a nationwide (education) policy," then, got monopoly control on administering national tests, tracking academic progress of all students while collecting and storing other personal data.

One daring government school superintendent, Dr. Ray I. Powell of South St. Paul, Minnesota, spoke out in 1975. He asked: "Is the the prime concern in education today not to impart knowledge, but to change 'attitudes,' so that children can/will willingly accept a controlled society? Are the public schools being unwittingly reshaped to accomplish this and without realizing it?

Yes, we've been dumbed down to not question war or taxes or...

ATG: Read more of Ben Graydon's articles or contact him via links at www.pureducation.com

This article appeared in The Times Examiner - April 30, 2003