From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 12:10:49 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: <Dehede011@aol.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 3:39 AM
Subject: Re: American Education
> In a message dated 8/25/2002 4:20:17 AM Central Standard Time,
> forrestb@ix.netcom.com quotes Griffin: "In our dreams we have unlimited
> resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our
> molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and
> unhampered by tradition, we work our own good upon a grateful and responsive
> rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children
> into philosophers of mental learning or of science. We have not to raise from
> among them authors, editors, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search
> for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors,
> peachers, politicians, statesmen of whom we have ample supply. The task we
> set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one: To train
> these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they
> are...in the homes, in the shop, and on the farm."
>
> Thank you Forrest.
You are most welcome.
. I was raised on what is often known as a raggedy
> pants cotton farm. ...
> I tell you this to set the scene. The local large scale farmers and
> merchants that served on the school board had decreed that kids like me were
> to be educated to be contented cotton choppers and cotton pickers. The local
> view of a boy that had made good was to elevate yourself to being known as a
> good "tractor hand."
> At the time I thought the local powers that be were very self serving
> in their attitudes. An aside, yes, things are open enough in a southern
> cotton farming community that I knew where the problem lay even at fourteen.
The attitudes may have been partly the culture of the farmers themselves. Boyd and Richardson,describe Sonya Salomon's study of two
proximate farm communities in southern Illinois in Aunger, pp145-6. Descendants of German-Catholics farm around 'Freiburg',
descendants of various Yanks farm around 'Libertyville'. The 'Freiburgers' tend to own the land and pass it on to the eldest, while
the 'Libertyvillers' rent. The Yanks would do something else if the money wasn't right. 'Freiburgers' sound much like what you
describe.
Aunger, Robert (Ed.) *Darwinizing Culture (the Status of Memes as a Science)*, Oxford University Press, 2000
Salomon, Sonya, *Prairie Patrimony: Family, Farming, and Community in the Midwest.* Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press,
1992
> Now I hear that the national powers that be want to educate our
> children in the same manner. This sounds an awful lot like England to me. A
> few very wealthy people exercising a custodial function over the lower
> classes while living very well themselves.
You may enjoy Daniel Pouzzner's analysis of "The New Feudalism".
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/
> The idea is that the uneducated worker doesn't give the manager the
> difficulties the educated worker does. I was an "efficiency expert" and
> spent a lot of my career eliminating large numbers of low skill workers. Of
> course this resulted in a higher proportion of highly skilled workers.
> Relatively speaking, the lower skilled workers were more docile but
> managing the highly skilled was like herding cats.
So why herd them in the first place?
> I wonder if Gatto is right and what we are seeing is an increasing
> imposition of the Indian education for caste system??
I don't know , this was a new angle for me. The Prussian system under Bismark furnishes direct historical links to the US system and
a close similarity. The robot-people it produced would later become the Nazis.
See *Are Our Schools Concentration Camps For Mind Destruction?* by Frederick Mann (who references Gatto, I see)
http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/wua3.shtml
at Frederick Mann's fantastic site-
http://www.buildfreedom.com/portal/category.php/130
http://www.buildfreedom.com
"...The ultimate solution I (FM] propose is complete separation between School and State, and the repeal of all laws regarding
education. Compulsory state education is a formula for the collapse of civilization. It must be abolished."
I'll second that.
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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