Why Do Socialists Hate Education?

AmericanChronicle.com ^ | August 6, 2010 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

All the way back in 1848 (the year Karl Marx published his Manifesto), Alexis de Tocqueville captured the essence of socialism in this short paragraph:

“Democracy extends the sphere of personal independence; socialism confines it. Democracy values each man at his highest; socialism makes of each man an agent, an instrument, a number. Democracy and socialism have but one thing in common—equality. But note well the difference. Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude.”

I don’t know how this Frenchman got so smart, but I’m comfortable with saying he wrote the book-- in only 57 words -- on this complex subject.

The key phrase is: “a number.” Socialism’s big promise is to turn you into a tiny cog in a huge machine. Nominally you’re a comrade; in reality you’ll be a serf or a slave. So socialism’s brave new world turns out to be filled with “constraint” and “servitude.” Are there people somewhere yearning for this?

Once you strip away the rhetoric and slogans, socialism is promising dirt. Who would willingly participate in this stupid project? Short answer: very few.

Long answer: very few who haven’t first been indoctrinated, frightened, lied to, or otherwise tricked into believing that less is more.

You might be already ahead of me. It’s easy to see now why “progressive educators” starting with Dewey circa 1900, George Counts and Harold Rugg in the 1930s, and all the rest of this gang to the present, ended up in the unsavory business of teaching less and less in order to prepare kids for socialism.

These so-called educators discovered a simple formula: the more people know, the more resistance they put up. (Values, traditions, history, religions, knowledge of whatever kind--these are the enemy.) Conversely. the less people know....

[jessduntno]

“Why Do Socialists Hate Education?”

Same reason Magicians hate people who know how their tricks are done ... they can’t baffle them anymore. It only thrives with ignorance and superstition and those who are willing to suspend any rational thought.

[cartan]

Because they know that some people are more successful than others in education, and good education comes with more success in life. They want people to be equal, and the only way to keep them equal is keeping them all down at the same gutter level. If one guy can’t read, nobody must be allowed learning to read. If one guy is an imbecile, everybody has to be an imbecile.

[smokingfrog]

They pretend to be pro education, but are actually pro indoctrination. It makes the sheeples more easy to be controlled.

[FrankR]

The more ignorant the beast, the easier it is to herd.

[tophat9000]

Freedom allows voluntary "socialism" IE Individual people can voluntarily pool there resources in the way the see fit...

But involuntarily Government Socialism allows no freedom of individual person

As I've said before it the difference between love and rape...

Voluntary between the persons ...love..

Involuntary and forces on any one person..rape...

and the act is really about power and force

[goodwithagun]

i m a innur sity publik scewl teechur. I have been battling with myself for some time now. Am I wrong for continuing to teach in the public sector, since many issues occurring in education go against my conservative beliefs? I like to think that the my students need me because I present them with the truth and encourage them to investigate instead of taking all information at face value. For example, my American lit students investigated whether or not Franklin and Jefferson were deists as the text book claimed. What to do, what to do.
I now plan on homeschooling my son. After reading The Well Trained Mind, I decided it had to be done. The authors just put it out there. Progressivism has destroyed public education. Instead of sticking with classical methods that have been successful for centuries, John Dewey came along and encouraged socialist concepts including the idea that education must be meaningful. Unfortunately, if students never memorize the basics they can't continue on with larger concepts, meaningful or not.

[donna]

“Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton and the other early American colleges were established to train ministers. If there was room, they sometimes took students with no intention of entering the ministry; more often, the non-ministers had enrolled with a religious vocation but drifted away from it.”

Harvard, 1638
It only took eighteen years from the time the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock until the Puritans, who were among the most educated people of their day, founded the first and perhaps most famous Ivy League school. Their story, in brief, is etched today in an entry way to Harvard Yard:

“After God had carried us safely to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government; one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance learning, and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”

[haroldeveryman]

“Same reason Magicians hate people who know how their tricks are done”

Great post!

[GenXteacher]

“Am I wrong for continuing to teach in the public sector, since many issues occurring in education go against my conservative beliefs?”

Absolutely not. A conservative country requires conservative institutions, and that means conservative educators are needed- public or private. Abandoning an entire profession to liberals is the same as throwing down your arms and fleeing the field.

[GenXteacher]

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesom discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” - Thomas Jefferson

“The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”- Thomas Jefferson

The second quote has most to do with why socialists (and their communist brothers) have some problem with education done well. Those of us who go about this business of education should always keep Jefferson’s words in mind as we work. Jefferson’s first quote illustrates why education is a necessity in the first place.

[goodwithagun]

Thanks for the comment! I know it sounds silly, but what I go through at school makes me so angry. I became a teacher because I love teaching. Many, not all, of my colleagues are ex-high school athletes that want to relive their glory days, or lazy asses who want off three months of the year. And many, not all, are flaming libs who love to regurgitate obama and Governor Strickland campaign slogans. I will admit though, I love calling out all the hope and change when they get pissed about something.
We no longer teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. We teach gov’t. created standards mandating tolerance, acceptance, and socialism. I have seniors who can't read because we have abandoned phonics for a whole word reading program that encourages cooperative learning instead of mastery. Ugggg! Sorry, rant over!

[newfreep]

BUMP for socialism-education link.

[GenXteacher]

You’re welcome. I got into teaching because I like history. I’ve got some far-left colleagues myself- including one genuine went-to-college-to-get-out-of-Vietnam guy. They can be a bit hard to take, although it is fun to mess with them. Most of the liberalism I see is not overt- something on the mass of garbage from Raleigh, or some day celebrating something in the announcements.

“I have seniors who can’t read because we have abandoned phonics for a whole word reading program that encourages cooperative learning instead of mastery.”
You know, that’s one thing that I’ve noticed over the years- no one teaching method works all the time for all subjects. And yet, we get “consultants” and “experts” telling us “Method X works all the time for all students!” The snake-oil salesman analogy comes to mind.

“Many, not all, of my colleagues are ex-high school athletes that want to relive their glory days,”
I work in a department with 9 teachers. Six of my colleagues are coaches. I can’t say they want to relive anything but it means I don’t have to watch ESPN to keep up with the world of sports- I just have lunch with my department.

I notice you mentioned the inner city in your first post. Best of luck to you- those can be pretty challenging schools.