iustitia
12-08-2013, 10:50 PM
A Review of the State: Do You Trust Government?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C. S. Lewis
“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” - Plato
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H. L. Mencken
Education
Compulsory education. Not the wisdom gained from life experience or the knowledge gained from independent study, inquisitiveness, thrift and dedication. Most are probably unaware of the true origins of public education in America. The kind we have today. Those who've read anything about modern education have probably heard of the great progressive educator John Dewey - "Father of Modern Education". They also probably didn't know he was a democratic socialist. However if we delve into the history of this system we will find that, like the welfare state, its origins are with that of government's (Prussia's) need to maintain control of the population. We will find that mandatory education is not truly for educational purposes, nor to provide the youth with morality, knowledge or civics. Instead we will find that, whether we like it or not, like so many things this system exists because of the statist notion that you live to serve the state.
Prussians pioneered compulsory education in Europe
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
-Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Prussian University in Berlin, 1810
After the defeat of the Prussians (Germans) by Napoleon at the battle of Jena in 1806, it was decided that the reason why the battle was lost was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves on the battlefield instead of following orders.
The Prussian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others, wrote “Addresses to the German Nation” between 1807 and 1808, which promoted the State as a necessary instrument of social and moral progress. He taught at the University of Berlin from 1810 to his death in 1814.
Using the basic philosophy prescribing the “duties of the state”, combined with John Locke’s view (1690) that “children are a tabula rasa (blank slate)” and lessons from Rousseau on how to “write on the slate”, Prussia established a three-tiered educational system that was considered “scientific” in nature. Work began in 1807 and the system was in place by 1819. An important part of the Prussian system was that it defined for the child what was to be learned, what was to be thought about, how long to think about it, and when a child was to think of something else. Basically, it was a system of thought control, and it established a penchant in the psyche of the German elite that would later manifest itself into what we now refer to as mind control.
The educational system was divided into three groups. The first group was the elite of Prussian society. They were seen as comprising .5% of the society. Approximately 5.5% of the remaining children were sent to what was called Realschulen, where they were partially taught to think. The remaining 94% went to Volkschulen, where they were to learn “harmony, obedience, freedom from stressful thinking and how to follow orders.” An important part of this new system was to break the link between reading and the young child, because a child who reads too well becomes knowledgeable and independent from the system of instruction and is capable of finding out anything. In order to have an efficient policy-making class and a sub-class beneath it, you’ve got to remove the power of most people to make anything out of available information.
This was the plan: to keep most of the children in the general population from reading for the first six or seven years of their lives.
In the lowest category of the system, the Volkschuelen, the method was to divide whole ideas (which simultaneously integrate whole disciplines – math, science, language, art, etc.) into subjects which hardly existed prior to that time. The subjects were further divided into units requiring periods of time during the day. Because education was so compartmentalized, and students were only learning parts of the whole, so no one would really understand the concepts of they were learning. They also replaced the alphabet system of teaching with the teaching of sounds. Children could read without understanding what they were reading, or all of the implications.
In 1814, the first American, Edward Everett, obtained a PhD from a Prussian university. He eventually became governor of Massachusetts. During the next 30 years or so, a whole line of American dignitaries came to Germany to earn degrees (which in itself, was also a German invention). Horace Mann, instrumental in the development of educational systems in America, was among them. Those who earned degrees in Germany came back to the United States and staffed all of the major universities. In 1850, Massachusetts and New York utilize the system, as well as promote the concept that “the State is the father of children.” Horace Mann’s sister, Elizabeth Peabody (namesake of the Peabody Foundation) saw to it that after the Civil War, the Prussian system (taught in the Northern states) was integrated into the conquered South between 1865 and 1918. Most of the “compulsory schooling” laws designed to implement the system were passed by 1900. By 1900, all the PhD’s in the United States were trained in Prussia. This project also meant that one-room schoolhouses had to go, for it fostered independence.
In America after the Civil War, one of the conditions placed on the southern states for re-admission into the Union was that they had to replace their system of education with the national public school curriculum. Instrumental in this process was a man named Jabez Curry, who was in charge of the public school curriculum in the south. Later in life he realized just how insidious this system was, and that in fact, instead of being a system of education, it was instead a system of control.
One of the reasons that the self-appointed elite brought back the Prussian system to the United States was to ensure a non-thinking work force to staff the growing industrial revolution. In 1776, for example, about 85% of the citizens were reasonably educated and had independent livelihoods – they didn’t need to work for anyone. By 1840, the ratio was still about 70%. The attitude of “learn and then strike out on your own” had to be broken. The Prussian system was an ideal way to do it.
One of the prime importers of the German “educational” system into the United States was William T. Harris. He brought the German system in and set the purpose of the schools to alienate children from parental influence and that of religion. He preached this openly, and began creating “school staffing” programs that were immediately picked up by the new “teacher colleges”, many of which were underwritten by the Rockefeller family, the Carnegies, the Whitney’s and the Peabody family. The University of Chicago was underwritten by the Rockefellers.
The bottom line is that we had a literate country in the United States before the importation of the German educational system, designed to “dumb down” the population. Part of this whole paradigm seems to originate from an idea presented in The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon (1627). The work described a “world research university” that scans the planet for talent that will be trained to serve the State and make it even more powerful.
The Birth of Experimental Psychology in Germany
By the middle of the 19th century, Germany had developed a new concept in the sciences which they termed “psycho-physics”, which argued that people were in fact complex machines. It was the ultimate materialist extension of science that would parallel the mechanistic view of the universe already under way. This new view of people became more or less institutionalized in Germany, and by the 1870's the field of experimental psychology was to discover the nature of the human machine and how to program it.
The main proponent of this new experimental psychology in Germany was Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who is today widely regarded as the “father” of that field. He is described by orthodoxy as having “freed the study of the mind from metaphysics and rational philosophy.” Wundt obtained his PhD in medicine from the University of Heidelburg in 1856, and embarked on the study of sensory perception. His most famous work was “Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception”, done between 1858 and 1862. It is described by orthodoxy as the first work of experimental psychology. In 1875, Wundt was appointed to a chair in philosophy at Leipzig, where he instituted a laboratory for the “systematic, experimental study of experience.”
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C. S. Lewis
“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” - Plato
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H. L. Mencken
Education
Compulsory education. Not the wisdom gained from life experience or the knowledge gained from independent study, inquisitiveness, thrift and dedication. Most are probably unaware of the true origins of public education in America. The kind we have today. Those who've read anything about modern education have probably heard of the great progressive educator John Dewey - "Father of Modern Education". They also probably didn't know he was a democratic socialist. However if we delve into the history of this system we will find that, like the welfare state, its origins are with that of government's (Prussia's) need to maintain control of the population. We will find that mandatory education is not truly for educational purposes, nor to provide the youth with morality, knowledge or civics. Instead we will find that, whether we like it or not, like so many things this system exists because of the statist notion that you live to serve the state.
Prussians pioneered compulsory education in Europe
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
-Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Prussian University in Berlin, 1810
After the defeat of the Prussians (Germans) by Napoleon at the battle of Jena in 1806, it was decided that the reason why the battle was lost was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves on the battlefield instead of following orders.
The Prussian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others, wrote “Addresses to the German Nation” between 1807 and 1808, which promoted the State as a necessary instrument of social and moral progress. He taught at the University of Berlin from 1810 to his death in 1814.
Using the basic philosophy prescribing the “duties of the state”, combined with John Locke’s view (1690) that “children are a tabula rasa (blank slate)” and lessons from Rousseau on how to “write on the slate”, Prussia established a three-tiered educational system that was considered “scientific” in nature. Work began in 1807 and the system was in place by 1819. An important part of the Prussian system was that it defined for the child what was to be learned, what was to be thought about, how long to think about it, and when a child was to think of something else. Basically, it was a system of thought control, and it established a penchant in the psyche of the German elite that would later manifest itself into what we now refer to as mind control.
The educational system was divided into three groups. The first group was the elite of Prussian society. They were seen as comprising .5% of the society. Approximately 5.5% of the remaining children were sent to what was called Realschulen, where they were partially taught to think. The remaining 94% went to Volkschulen, where they were to learn “harmony, obedience, freedom from stressful thinking and how to follow orders.” An important part of this new system was to break the link between reading and the young child, because a child who reads too well becomes knowledgeable and independent from the system of instruction and is capable of finding out anything. In order to have an efficient policy-making class and a sub-class beneath it, you’ve got to remove the power of most people to make anything out of available information.
This was the plan: to keep most of the children in the general population from reading for the first six or seven years of their lives.
In the lowest category of the system, the Volkschuelen, the method was to divide whole ideas (which simultaneously integrate whole disciplines – math, science, language, art, etc.) into subjects which hardly existed prior to that time. The subjects were further divided into units requiring periods of time during the day. Because education was so compartmentalized, and students were only learning parts of the whole, so no one would really understand the concepts of they were learning. They also replaced the alphabet system of teaching with the teaching of sounds. Children could read without understanding what they were reading, or all of the implications.
In 1814, the first American, Edward Everett, obtained a PhD from a Prussian university. He eventually became governor of Massachusetts. During the next 30 years or so, a whole line of American dignitaries came to Germany to earn degrees (which in itself, was also a German invention). Horace Mann, instrumental in the development of educational systems in America, was among them. Those who earned degrees in Germany came back to the United States and staffed all of the major universities. In 1850, Massachusetts and New York utilize the system, as well as promote the concept that “the State is the father of children.” Horace Mann’s sister, Elizabeth Peabody (namesake of the Peabody Foundation) saw to it that after the Civil War, the Prussian system (taught in the Northern states) was integrated into the conquered South between 1865 and 1918. Most of the “compulsory schooling” laws designed to implement the system were passed by 1900. By 1900, all the PhD’s in the United States were trained in Prussia. This project also meant that one-room schoolhouses had to go, for it fostered independence.
In America after the Civil War, one of the conditions placed on the southern states for re-admission into the Union was that they had to replace their system of education with the national public school curriculum. Instrumental in this process was a man named Jabez Curry, who was in charge of the public school curriculum in the south. Later in life he realized just how insidious this system was, and that in fact, instead of being a system of education, it was instead a system of control.
One of the reasons that the self-appointed elite brought back the Prussian system to the United States was to ensure a non-thinking work force to staff the growing industrial revolution. In 1776, for example, about 85% of the citizens were reasonably educated and had independent livelihoods – they didn’t need to work for anyone. By 1840, the ratio was still about 70%. The attitude of “learn and then strike out on your own” had to be broken. The Prussian system was an ideal way to do it.
One of the prime importers of the German “educational” system into the United States was William T. Harris. He brought the German system in and set the purpose of the schools to alienate children from parental influence and that of religion. He preached this openly, and began creating “school staffing” programs that were immediately picked up by the new “teacher colleges”, many of which were underwritten by the Rockefeller family, the Carnegies, the Whitney’s and the Peabody family. The University of Chicago was underwritten by the Rockefellers.
The bottom line is that we had a literate country in the United States before the importation of the German educational system, designed to “dumb down” the population. Part of this whole paradigm seems to originate from an idea presented in The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon (1627). The work described a “world research university” that scans the planet for talent that will be trained to serve the State and make it even more powerful.
The Birth of Experimental Psychology in Germany
By the middle of the 19th century, Germany had developed a new concept in the sciences which they termed “psycho-physics”, which argued that people were in fact complex machines. It was the ultimate materialist extension of science that would parallel the mechanistic view of the universe already under way. This new view of people became more or less institutionalized in Germany, and by the 1870's the field of experimental psychology was to discover the nature of the human machine and how to program it.
The main proponent of this new experimental psychology in Germany was Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who is today widely regarded as the “father” of that field. He is described by orthodoxy as having “freed the study of the mind from metaphysics and rational philosophy.” Wundt obtained his PhD in medicine from the University of Heidelburg in 1856, and embarked on the study of sensory perception. His most famous work was “Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception”, done between 1858 and 1862. It is described by orthodoxy as the first work of experimental psychology. In 1875, Wundt was appointed to a chair in philosophy at Leipzig, where he instituted a laboratory for the “systematic, experimental study of experience.”