Quoting Thomas Jefferson: Public School Snob?

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” *

What a snob. What an elitist! What a Republican… wait. Oops. He was a Democrat, wasn’t he? I was looking through some quotes from President Jefferson, because I had been hearing way too much about how Jefferson was the master planner of the modern public school system, and how he wanted every child to be educated at the expense of the state. If Jefferson is your hero in this regard, please read on.

But if you want to remain ignorant to the fact that Thomas Jefferson was an education snob that really couldn’t imagine the idea that all children should complete their education and go on to college… maybe you should move on.

Let’s take a look at what I found! We’ll warm up with several quotes that make Sara Palin seem like a moderate:

Thomas Jefferson: Education Snob

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Holy cow! Jefferson was a Tea Party hate monger!

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Now this is where we get into the subject of Government Run, Taxpayer Funded Schooling. Taxpayers are subsidizing the propagation of ideas they find abhorrent. They have been doing so for generations. And now it’s time to think about going back to the type of public schools Jefferson really wanted.

At BigEye.com, in a post called, Thomas Jefferson’s plan for “Public” Schooling, Albert Jay Nock was quoted extensively. Nock gives us a different–and probably more accurate–perspective of how Jefferson thought public education should work: [emphasis added]

For some reason that I have never been able to discover, Mr. Jefferson seems to be regarded as a great democrat; on public occasions he is regularly invoked as such by gentlemen who have some sort of political axe to grind, so possibly that view of him arose in this way. The fact is that he was not even a doctrinaire republican, as his relation to the French Revolution clearly shows. When Mr. Jefferson was revising the Virginia Statutes in 1797, he drew up a comprehensive plan for public education.

Each ward should have a primary school for the three R’s, open to all. Each year the best pupil in each school should be sent to the grade-school, of which there were to be twenty, conveniently situated in various parts of the state. They should be kept there one year or two years, according to results shown, and then all dismissed but one, who should be continued six years. “By this means,” said the good old man, “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually” – a most unfortunate expression for a democrat to use! At the end of six years, the best ten out of the twenty were to be sent to college, and the rest turned adrift.

(Read Nock’s entire essay at the Ludwig von Mises Instutute)

Well! I am certainly all for Jefferson’s plan for educating the youth of America! I’ll fill you in on all the particulars next time you get all excited about how Jefferson wanted our schools to be just like they are now.

 

* Special thanks to the first person to comment on this article for the clarification of the first quote attributed to Jefferson. The actual quote, found here, says pretty much the same thing, only with a lot more words. But since the quote I found above is getting enough traction to warrant an “official” site to make the corrections… I thought I’d let it stand.

Quoting Theodore Roosevelt

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society”

~Theodore Roosevelt

This is kind of what I’ve been saying all over the place it seems. This is why I say — in general — that public, state schools suck so much. We are seeing right before our eyes, the education of menaces to society.

Can we deny it?

Can we point to a few schools and a handful of teachers who are exceptions to this rule? Sure. Does it mean that our state controlled, taxpayer funded, industrialized factory-model education system is doing a stellar job at educating a little over 50% of the millions of children force-fed through the system, and because of that, it is worth maintaining?

Hell no!

So what are you going to do about it? (I mean, besides writing pithy retorts on internet forums about how your teachers are great and the schools that your kids go to are top-notch and how people like me shouldn’t be so mean-spirited.)

What Would Teddy Do?

Maybe he’d tell you go yank your kids out of public school, teach them a little “morals clarification” in what it’s like to be a family and to work for your existence.

Maybe then, your head might clear and you will realize how our Government Schools have taken our children and trained them, not to be well educated, but rather trained them to be a menace to society.

Quoting H. L. Mencken

“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 down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”

For an interesting article that includes an impressive valedictorian’s graduation speech… check it out here.

Tolstoy Paraphrased: Ignore the State and Skip School

Perhaps I went a little too overboard? Posting a huge essay by Tolstoy was a little too much for most people to handle, I’m guessing. I know… homework that’s too hard can be a little tiring and really, who needs to know what some old dead white Russian guy said over a hundred years ago? All I can say is you got one thing going for you: Since this isn’t compulsory public school, you can CHOOSE to not enlighten yourself, and you won’t be punished with a bad grade or a detention.

In the school of life, you can choose to be as enlightened or as ignorant as you wish. However, please be aware that many people will choose otherwise. They will take the time to read and think and make connections between what Tolstoy said about his tyrannical government then, and maybe what’s going on today. In other words, they will be ahead of the game “educationally” because they took the time to enlighten themselves on something they weren’t assigned to learn by the state.

So don’t go crying about how some people are getting a better education that you or your kids. Some people are taking more liberties with the expansion of their brains than you are.

I guess this is one of my major points for this blog: State Schools, and the taxpayer billions they pour into them, really do nothing to EDUCATE people; they SOCIALIZE people into thinking they are educated and ready for the “real world” which, ironically, they have been forcibly kept out of for about twelve years! (Some would say State Schools indoctrinate children, but I know how that word sets some who are sensitive to what they call hate speech… so I avoid it. You’re welcome.)

What you are about to learn today (if you are still reading, and if you are, God bless you!) is something you or your children will never learn in school. It’s just not available. And you won’t learn as much with this post, as you would if you had read my previous post with the full text of Tolstoy’s letter. But this particular point is important, so I’m paraphrasing in the event that Tolstoy’s name gives you a headache and makes you want to watch Discovery or History Channel for a break.

Now, for a more concise look into the meaningful point of Tolstoy’s Letter to Liberals or “What is to be done?”

Ignore the State

The government in Tolstoy’s day wasn’t allowing people to have much liberty and freedom. The people were complaining. Some thought violence was the key. Some thought that working within the system to make it better was the answer. Neither were working for reasons Tolstoy goes into in his letter. He notes that government will never allow its authority to be undermined. They will anything to keep the people thinking they are making productive changes, and ignorant of the fact that they are not changing things at all:

[Working within the government to bring about change is], in my opinion, even less effective or rational. It is ineffective and irrational because government, having in its hands the whole power (the army, the administration, the Church, the schools, and police), and framing what are called the laws, on the basis of which the [people] wish to resist it — this government knows very well what is really dangerous to it, and will never let people who submit to it, and act under its guidance, do anything that will undermine its authority. [The government will never consent to the people's real enlightenment.]  It will sanction all kinds of pseudo-educational organizations, controlled by itself: schools, high schools, universities, academies, and all kinds of committees and congresses and publications sanctioned by the censor — as long as those organizations and publications serve its purpose, i.e. stupefy people, or, at least do not hinder the stupefaction of people.

Note that State Schools are integral to the stupefying of the people. Think of every nation that devolved into dictatorship in history, and you’ll find a state controlled education system, by which the youth were institutionalized by the state and not free to become educated outside of the purview of the state. I’m not saying we have that in America. What I am saying, however, is that we are close to a consensus among many Americans that schooling outside of the purview of the state is wrong and in some cases, should be illegal. How soon before that idea becomes law?

Tolstoy continues:

But as soon as those organizations, or publications, attempt to cure that on which the power of government rests, i.e. the blindness of the people, the government will simply, and without rendering account to any one, or saying why it acts so and not otherwise, pronounce its “veto” and will rearrange, or close, the establishments and organizations and will forbid the publications. And therefore, as both reason and experience clearly show, such an illusory, gradual conquest of rights is a self-deception which suits the government admirably, and which it, therefore, is even ready to encourage.

As long as the self-deception is encouraged, the people will blindly keep working hard against their own self-interests to infringe upon their liberties in the name of the peaceful democratic process.

The point he ended up making towards the end was that if moral people simply stood up, did what was right and ignored the State, then the State couldn’t do anything about it without tipping its hand to the fact that they were oppressive, violent and did not respect human rights.

What is to be done?

What Tolstoy came up with is simple, yet the hardest thing for many people to do:

[People must continue with] the simple, quiet, truthful carrying on of what you consider good and needful, quite independently of government, and of whether it likes it or not. In other words: standing up for your rights, not as a member of [some special government] Committee, not as a deputy, not as a landowner, not as a merchant, not even as a member of Parliament; but standing up for your rights as a rational and free man, and defending them, not as the rights of local boards or committees are defended, with concessions and compromises, but without any concessions and compromises, in the only way in which moral and human dignity can be defended.

And what can government do against such activity? It can banish or imprison a man for preparing a bomb, or even for printing a proclamation to working-men; it can transfer our “Literature Committee” from one ministry to another, or close a Parliament — but what can a government do, with a man who is not willing publicly to lie with uplifted hand, [work within the government, lying in order to get certain laws passed] or who is not willing to send his children to an establishment which he considers bad, [schools among other places] or who is not willing to learn to kill people, [conscripted for the purpose of killing state enemies] or is not willing to take part in idolatry, [the state sanction religion of the time] or is not willing to take part in coronations, deputations, an addresses, or who says and writes what he thinks and feel? By prosecuting such a man, government secures for him general sympathy, making him a martyr, and it undermines the foundations on which it is itself built, for in so acting, instead of protecting human rights, it itself infringes them.

And it is only necessary for all those good, enlightened, and honest people, whose strength is now wasted in revolutionary, socialistic, or liberal activity, harmful to themselves and to their cause, to begin to act thus, and a nucleus of honest, enlightened, and moral people would form around them, united in the same thoughts and the same feelings; and to this nucleus the ever wavering crowd of average people would at once gravitate, and public opinion — the only power which subdues governments — would become evident, demanding freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, justice, and humanity. And as soon as public opinion was formulated, not only would it be impossible to close the “Literature Committee,” but all those inhuman organizations — the “state of siege — against which the revolutionists and the liberals are now struggling would disappear of themselves.

So, what would happen if all parents suddenly stood up, and stood against the practice of compulsory state schooling? What if they started educating their children otherwise? The Public Schools as we know them, would probably not disappear, but they would certainly change. Would they change for the good? I submit they would HAVE to, for if they didn’t, then surely they would disappear, as all things do that are not wanted, needed or worth purchasing — within the free market.

BbB

Quote: Homeschoolers are Breeders

Sometimes people write things that are just too good not to share.

I participated on a newspaper’s comment forum this month, taking them to task for suggesting that Home-school transfer students must be held accountable (and regulated.)

There were a couple of the usual trolls (people who make wild claims but refuse to put their own names to them) that make these kinds of forums fun, but rather unpleasant for people who are sincerely trying to understand a situation.

The topic was — to my mind — about how a school was encouraging parents to transfer their children out as homeschoolers, rather than dropping out. In then end, everyone is happy, since the school’s dropout record improves while they also get rid of trouble-making youths that are too young to legally drop out anyway.

As for the parents and kids? They get out of a school that was at best, a lose-lose situation. They couldn’t do any worse if they sat in front of the TV watching PBS and Discovery Channel all day. In fact… they would probably do better.

Now the school officials are looking like miracle workers with their new awesome-low dropout record, when it’s more than likely several of those transfers were encouraged by the administrators to leave. I call them Ex-schoolers.

Meanwhile, posters to the comments section of this particular op-ed article have these nice things to share about homeschoolers:

[Richmond Community Schools] is clearly using the phony, but legal, loophole created by the very powerful home-school industry lobbyists that allow the garden variety breeder to “home-school” their child in order to avoid prosecution for, among other behaviors, educational neglect.

I know of two or three educated adults who do a clearly commendable job providing a great education for their children, but they do so while supporting, tacitly or otherwise, the much more prevalent practice by negligent, uneducated breeders who simply wish for their child to get knocked up, or moved out, while protected by the unaccountable practice of designating one’s self as home-schooled.

Knocked it out of the park!!

We can keep laughing only as long as people like this aren’t taken seriously. I suppose once they start using their real names, watch out.