Article by Founding Headmaster, "How did the Education Scene Get in This Condition?"
HOW DID THE EDUCATION SCENE GET IN THIS CONDITION?I am often asked what it is that is so wrong with education today and, as you probably have much opportunity in you own community to notice the effects of today’s education, I thought that I would address this subject a bit in this letter. Although it may be obvious to all of you that the level of literacy and knowledge in your environment is becoming abysmal, I don’t know how many of you are certain that this represents an actually plummeting statistic—that the educational level (especially in the United States) used to be very high indeed. As an example, I can tell you that Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, at the time of its original publication (January 1776), was a best seller in the colonies with over half a million copies sold amongst a population of 600,000 white families. I would encourage you to personally read a few pages so that you can see for yourself the level of literacy possessed by the men who stood and fought in order to make of this country a free republic. HISTORY Throughout approximately this first 100 years of this nation, education progressed along the lines generally influenced by the values the Founding Fathers placed on education. Undoubtedly, the expansion of the school systems was slower than it might have been but, generally speaking, the industrial, economic, agricultural and cultural growth experienced by the U.S. during this period was a tribute to these values and the educational networks they inspired. American schools were demanding and the level of skills in language and mathematics required of a high school graduate were sufficient to awe the average college graduate of today. PSYCHOLOGY The nation’s second 100 years saw the great changes that have culminated in our present scene. These changes were forged from three new social ingredients: Fabian Socialism, the great corporation foundations, and Wundtian psychology. You can get quite an illuminating perspective on the evolution of this change by reading the book The Leipzig Connection (copies can be obtained here at the school) but I thought I’d fill you in a bit on where these changes have taken U.S. education and what seems to lie ahead. It must be said at the outset, the psychology’s hold on education is presently complete, and that, with very few exceptions, there is in the nation no education which is not psychology. This is regardless of whether the school be public or private. The production statistics are impressive: 42% of our high school graduates today are “functionally illiterate” which is an encoded way of saying that they can’t (or won’t) read or write; in one year, recently, 72,000 American teachers were physically assaulted by students; 10% of U.S. school children are currently on Ritalin, a prescribed central nervous system stimulant—this is given to keep them quiet; according to one survey, 80% of central Los Angeles teachers are on Valium. Impressive. Three types of psychology emerged from the ferment of the early years and these are brands you will find on sale in your local schools: behavioral, developmental, and humanistic. Behavioral psychology is a tool for modifying behavior to socially desirable patterns. It is the type of psychology that does its homework with white mice and monkeys and now advocates mood-altering drugs and brain implants. This is some hard core stuff. Developmental psychology is largely traceable to the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, who “discovered” that a baby’s intelligence develops in physiologically determined stages and that the baby is the only animal who doesn’t inherit all his survival traits (finding food, etc.) so these have to be drilled into him at these different stages. Humanistic psychology is the most insidious and perhaps the most evil of the three. Here are some typical statements by humanistic educators: “Some changes are desperately needed. Schools can no longer be permitted to carry out such a horrendously effective program for drying up students’ sense of their own sexual identity. The schools must not be allowed to continue fostering the immorality of morality. An entirely different set of values must be nourished.”1 “…the concept of learning a particular amount of content as a preparation for life is obsolete, and must be abandoned…Emphasis on content is outdated…”2 “…how a person feels is more important that what he knows.”3 (Emphasis added.) All psychology postulates the individual as being impacted by his environment and views its own job as one of helping the individual find and accept a “behavior pattern” that will allow him to adapt to the environment. And that’s where “education” comes in. In fact, that’s what “education” is nowadays. It is the “science” of training people to “receive” their environments rather than training people to be able to causatively and effectively deal with their environments. Among the results, we have disco zombies, conditioned by advertising and media to live out their lifetimes preoccupied with sensory gratification, rather than exercising their spiritual strengths. This is the current scene—politically, economically and culturally. THE CURRENT SCENE AND THE FUTURE Symptomatic of the national condition is the created and well-publicized shift in the popular attitude to drugs. The situation is rapidly deteriorating and our children must be educated to be able to deal with the world they will confront as adults. By “deal with it,” I mean they must be able to really take it on as its core and turn it around, either at our sides or where we leave off. And so we must build up our schools—we must invest in them with our time, with our goals, with our best methods and with our money. If we do this, we will have a future to talk about. It’s not a small project and I believe all educators will welcome your help. I can tell you right now that what I want are the best, most able, most responsible and ambitious students you know and can help get here. We must educate our future leaders. |
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