In my last education article, Oh The Hubris. The Sneering Elitism Of The ‘Educated,’ I illustrated the vast difference between being “educated” and being “learned.” Today’s article is on primary education and the idiotic notion that mandatory government schooling is the pathway to a learned citizenry.
The four essential guides to truly being learned are 1) intellectual curiosity, 2) an understanding of history, 3) an understanding of the immutable aspects of human nature and 4) an innate moral compass that seeks truth. Without these tools one is aimless to understand the past, present or future events.
A paradigm is a general and accepted framework of thinking and acting shared by a collective group. It’s a state of mind, usually where no one even questions, “why are we doing what we are doing.” If one understands human nature and history, one also knows that collective mindsets exist because the psyche of most people is a desire to fit in and be socially accepted by a larger group. Therefore, who in their right mind would question the necessity of public education? That person would be yours truly, Mr. Rob Is Right himself, lover of freedom and great American. I don’t care to live in the paradigm, I care about reality.
The idea of massive funding of public education is relatively new in the history of the world and perhaps no government “do-gooder” initiative has ever been such a colossal failure. It’s not that kids don’t graduate from high school; the $64,000 question is what do they know? And the answer for most is “not jack shit.” Have you ever watched Jesse Watters interview young people on Jones Beach? It is absolutely astounding that these 20 somethings (college grads) can be kept in public schools for 13 years at a cost of $300,000 and be so amazingly stupid. To not know who we fought in the Revolutionary War or who our first president was defies belief! It is easier to believe that Elvis is still alive or that Pamela Anderson’s boobs are real. In many respects, the public education apparatus retards learning and makes kids worse off than if they never went to school. Have you noticed that kids with older parents seem to be more mature and better behaved? When you dump hundreds of children into a collective group, the natural tendency is for conduct to sink to the lowest common denominator. When kids are around adults, they act and behave above their age group. Then there’s the extraordinary waste of time and productivity in the modern school system. Likely 2 hours/day in travel time, waiting around for classes to get started and the mindlessness of everyone having to learn the same subject matters at the same speed. Perhaps the most repugnant aspect of all this is the government chooses the curriculum (chosen by a committee of dunces at the “State Capital,”) instead of parents, and often the “teaching” is either wrong or insults the values of the child’s family. Every state mandates that your children must attend these rotten ass schools, unless you fit into one of their very narrow exceptions.
Remember Rob’s Rules? Rob Rule # 1 is the government fu#ks up everything it touches. It is absolute lunacy to think that a child is going to become learned because the local government builds $100 million school buildings and spends $20,000 per pupil per year/on teachers and administrators. There is no public policy issue that has failed more miserably than public education.
The paradigm of public education has lulled parents to sleep such that they have abdicated their innate responsibility to educate their children, thinking that it is the government’s role to do this for them. This is the lethargy Hayek warned us when he coined “The Road to Serfdom.” If the schools were shut down, the vast majority of parents would take individual responsibility and find ways for their kids to learn. Some parents don’t care and neither do their kids. Better for them to sell apples on the street corner and learn life skills.
It’s not that hard to teach a child reading, writing and arithmetic and costs practically nothing. Almost anyone, even high school dropouts, could easily teach themselves how to be an effective teacher.
You might say “Smith you are crazy. Shut down the schools! The kids would not be educated! The “E Schools” would be vacant!” Snore……zzz..zz. “How can you possibly make this ridiculous claim?” Here’s another VIDEO for you to watch.
I make my claim because I understand history and human nature. Necessity is the mother of invention. Do you think Americans care so little about educating their children that they would just do nothing? Don’t Americans create softball leagues, book clubs, build churches, create charities, form social clubs, build houses, start businesses, save for their retirement and a million other totally privately funded activities with absolutely no help from the government? It costs nearly $1 trillion/year of taxpayer money to operate K-12 schools. I’d love to see that money put back into the private economy, spurring capital investment and innovation.
“But Smith you fool, the average family can’t possibly pay the costs to educate their children!” That assumes education is delivered under the current brain-dead paradigm, delivered by an army of fat, faceless bureaucrats who do not love your children. Colonial America (and Scotland) had the highest literacy rate in the world with absolutely no government money. New England towns did levy taxes, but it was towards the established church where the local parson was also the school master. Often deadbeats were run out of town and not allowed any town services, so this method of funding was no different than private funding. Throughout the colonies, it was the norm among wealthy and middle-class families for private tutors and governesses to tutor children, but always under the authority of parents; the folks that actually loved those being taught. Even poor families had tutors. Extended families living together was the norm. There was always a matronly aunt, a widow or a grandmother who could instruct children in their lessons. Virtually every family belonged to a church and many churches offered free education.
By far the largest group of tutors were mothers. Back before there was an income tax, where hard working people could keep the money they earned, most women stayed home with the children and were their school masters. Millions of children learned to read through Mom reading them bible stories. Older siblings taught younger ones. Once children learned reading, writing and arithmetic, they often went to work. But that didn’t mean that their education stopped. They continued to learn, reading by candlelight at home, joining literary societies, going to lectures, and a myriad of other learning avenues.
My first draft of this article had an extra 1,000 words conveying the multitude of different educational delivery systems from early colonial times through the advent of the modern public school system and many of the great minds this system produced. Studying my own family’s history since early colonial times, I am blown away by what these guys knew. They read by candlelight. There was no internet, no public libraries, no cars, no trains, no public funding, but they knew Greek and Latin, they knew classical history and their journals are full of references to Greek and Roman historians, philosophers and statemen. They of course knew the bible backwards and forward. They were on the cutting edge of science. They did their own experiments. They did not watch Homer Simpson cartoons at night. How is it that previous generations that had so few resources compared to today and no public funding knew so much more than our current generation, where every student has the Library of Alexandria on their Smartphone. Answer: Convention. There was an ethos dedicated to learning. If you wanted your kids to be educated, you did it yourself, you had skin in the game.
Before free public education, the consumer made all the decisions, thus parents and students were in control of learning. Now, it’s one size fits all. Top down, not bottom up. The government now tells the parents what their children can learn, and how and where it must happen. Christianity is verboten, and in many instances, schools are left wing indoctrination centers. To provide jobs for union members, students must go to school for 13 years. I daresay under the conventions of the past, our colonial ancestors were much more knowledgeable at 14 than most public-school teachers today. The modern government funded system encourages sloth and entitlement. Many schools are just babysitting services. Sure millions of kids study and do well, but it is in spite of and not because of public education.
The system is insane. It is broken and inefficient at every level. In every community, there are armies of smart people willing to tutor children for free, but forbidden to do so in the public school system. It’s a modern-day ransom racket. The kids are hostages. Like Dr. Evil, the Educrats bellow their wicked laugh, “the children belong to us, they are our meal ticket, you are not allowed to help them!” There’s only one solution. Shut’er down!
I’m not a fan of school vouchers, tax breaks, choice initiatives, etc. because these initiatives don’t go far enough; they tacitly admit that our children belong to the government. The real issue is LIBERTY. Did you like it when the government closed your business down and locked you in your home during the hyped up Covid non-crisis? How about when it told you that you couldn’t go to church or visit your mother in the hospital? Well wake up folks. Under the current system, the government is stating that it owns your child. You and your child will do what it says. It is the parent, and not you. Well, I say F#CK them.
See this VIDEO and ask yourself how it could be any worse? Get out of the paradigm. Freedom does not exist without personal responsibly, but slavery does.
