Monthly Archive: October 2016

  All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.[i] Sir Walter Scott   i. A Shot Across the Bow   Here, stated as directly as possible, is my thesis: If the institution of government-controlled education is allowed to survive, all efforts to resuscitate the inert bulk of modern civilization will fail. It is time...

  The issue at hand is of the utmost importance, as we are talking about the most determinative institution in any society. It therefore behooves us to quit our stale practical realm for a moment—our degraded reality of teachers unions, political correctness, relativism, entitlements, and the trashy combination of exhibitionism and voyeurism that we pass off as culture—and breathe the fresh mental air...

  When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of...

Thank goodness my education was neglected. I was never sent to school…it would have rubbed off some of the originality (if I had not died of shyness or been killed with over pressure).[i] Beatrix Potter   Of all the arguments public school advocates have used to hoodwink generations of parents into condemning their own children to years of state-controlled subservience training, one of...

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,...

  Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread.[i] Thomas Jefferson   i. Standards vs. Standardization   As in most areas of late modern politics, wherein the “liberal” and “conservative” factions of the progressive ruling elite fight their turf war over the future of a general population for which they have little or no...

  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.[i] H.L. Mencken   A loving mother teaching her child to read would never be so foolish as to cordon off an arbitrary...

  One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.[i] Albert Einstein   Making grades and the tests that produce them...

  [Periander] had sent a herald to Thrasybulus and inquired in what way he would best and most safely govern his city. Thrasybulus led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field. As he walked through the corn, continually asking why the messenger had come to him from Corinth, he kept cutting off all the...

  [T]he rulers’ interest in the welfare of their own nation instead of in what is best for humanity, will make them, if they give money for the schools, wish to draw their plans. We have in this view an express statement of the points characteristic of the eighteenth-century individualistic cosmopolitanism. The full development of private personality is identified with the aims of...