The Case Against Public Education at age two-and-a-half!

The family, which loves its child, is calibrated to guide that child out of his dependent condition and into mature adulthood. The state, which loves its power, is calibrated to prevent that development from occurring. That is why Dewey, like Fichte and all other progressive advocates of compulsory schooling, ultimately sees the family as an enemy. And that is why such men have spent two centuries slowly and deliberately destroying it.

— from “Pragmatic Totalitarianism,” in The Case Against Public Education

My analysis of the history, theory, and implications of compulsory public schooling, The Case Against Public Education: How Government Schooling has Dismantled Modernity and Prepared Us for Tyranny, is just about to turn two-and-a-half years old. Though a mere toddler, the book has now verifiably traveled to at least sixty countries around the world, thanks to recent forays into Indonesia (number 59) and Cyprus (number 60). And that’s all without so much as a zillionth of the carbon footprint Al Gore and Leo DiCaprio produce in a normal week.

My little guy (well, 130,000 words little) is growing up fast, but he is now, I think, at just the right age — the terrible twos, as they say — to cause the most havoc and angst within the heart of progressivism, so I hope that if you have not already done so, you will soon avail yourself of the opportunity to join the resistance by downloading the book for free, or reading it here online, before you lose the chance!

“Huh? When will I lose the chance?” you wonder anxiously.

Well, when you die, of course. The book will remain available and free forever — but you might not. Therefore, as a hedge against the possibility that the insight contained therein will not be made available to you automatically when you meet St. Peter — after all, who knows? — I recommend that you take advantage of your time here on Earth to learn what public education really is, what it was intended to be by its modern progenitors, and how essential its machinations have been to the civilizational implosion that, if you are still semi-resistant to the effects of the soma, you may clearly observe all around you daily.

From the final chapter of Part One, entitled “A Summary of Our Shame”:

Fortunately for Satan, modernity has produced plenty of self-styled “education theorists,” men and women of the intellectual class whose minds have become unmoored from what they dismissively label “traditional morality,” and who are certain they could design the perfectly ordered community, if only they had the means to universal social control. These education theorists are the real life mad scientists, disregarding all moral and rational limits in pursuit of that self-vindicating, immortalizing moment when they can see their artificial creature in motion and exclaim, “It’s alive!”

Such pseudo-scientists are the perfect tools of the corrupt ruling class, as the two groups’ goals are complementary. The wealthy and manipulative power-brokers seek a veneer of “new methods” and “social progress” to mask and justify their urge to control the mind and machinery of society for their own perceived advantage; the intellectuals would happily sell their souls for a chance to see their grand schemes put into practice. This symbiotic relationship is enhanced by the two factions’ awareness of a common enemy: the thoughtful, self-reliant man of character. Such an individual is a threat to the power-brokers because he will recognize what is behind their mask, and refuse to submit to their social manipulations. He is a threat to the mad scientists, because their need to be right has overwhelmed their interest in the truth, and hence their greatest fear is the appearance of living counterexamples, whose presence would refute their life’s work. The undermining of such thoughtful, self-reliant men is therefore a central goal of both the power-brokers and their intellectual lapdogs.

You may also like...