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To: Aquinasfan
A universal and compulsory system of instruction has for its first and main effect uniformity. It produces to a pattern. It fills the millions of a nation (at the age when the mind is being fixed) with one set of ideas to the exclusion of others. No mere limited freedom of choice in textbooks and teachers can prevent this effect, when the whole system is subject to State regulation, supervision, examination and test. Indeed, it can be verified by experience that there is sometimes even more diversity of result in a centralized system of education than in one where local authorities and various religious bodies have power of selecting books and instructors. Thus in France it is a frequent complaint, on the part of those with a passion for national unity, that the elementary school does not provide it, while in England, where the system is theoretically far less rigid, no one can or does complain of stray differences in its results, for there are little or no differences apparent. It is not the particular form of the system, it is its universal character which is of this effect. On reflection we see that it must be so. A body of national teachers will come into being and will be informed with a corporate spirit. They will be trained all in much the same fashion to the same fixed "standards" and with the same ends in view. They will teach under the shadow of a vast bureaucracy and to ends set them by an army of inspectors, examiners and departmental officials.

You have, therefore, here one essential condition of the "Modern Mind"; its lack of diversity; its mechanical deadness. This, when it is achieved, reacts in turn upon the elementary school, and each, the agent and the object, the school and the scholar, increases the sterility of the other. Uniformity acquired by the second makes easier the action of the first, and both conform to a common fixedness.

Indirectly but more strongly still this mechanical uniformity tends to exclusion of ideas. That which is not taught at all to a child, or is taught as something subsidiary, falls out of his consciousness or is diminished therein. For the most part what is not emphasized is not believed to exist. Often, from its unfamiliarity, that which is a stranger to education in childhood, is thought incredible by the grown man.
-Hilaire Belloc, Survivals and New Arrivals

Belloc goes into detail about the injustice of forcing families to subject their children to state education. Also, check out The Dewey Legend in American Education
5 posted on 11/02/2001 9:07:40 AM PST by Dumb_Ox
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To: Dumb_Ox
bump
6 posted on 11/02/2001 9:10:17 AM PST by Tribune7
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To: Dumb_Ox
Indirectly but more strongly still this mechanical uniformity tends to exclusion of ideas. That which is not taught at all to a child, or is taught as something subsidiary, falls out of his consciousness or is diminished therein. For the most part what is not emphasized is not believed to exist. Often, from its unfamiliarity, that which is a stranger to education in childhood, is thought incredible by the grown man.

When I read this I feel physically ill. You know why? Not just because it's true, but because many people I know and love dearly are still laboring under the "false consciousness" imparted to them in their years in government detention centers, and they show no signs of awakening.

I will check out your link.

Some other great education reads are:
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
Dumbing us Down by John Taylor Gatto
NEA: Trojan Horse in Education by Sam Blumenfeld

Blumenfeld in particular describes in detail how government schools were designed to bring about the effect described by Belloc above.

7 posted on 11/02/2001 9:45:01 AM PST by Aquinasfan
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To: Dumb_Ox
-Hilaire Belloc, Survivals and New Arrivals

Is this available online???

18 posted on 11/03/2001 9:24:08 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
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