The development of character was the primary part of education in early America, which is quite a big contrast from what children are taught today. In fact, character development was a large part of education until around the 1960s, then, due to a convergence of interests between powerful people, the script completely flipped. Suddenly, reading, writing, and arithmetic gained significant prominence in the curriculum.
Now, this may seem like a good thing, after all, reading, writing, and arithmetic are all incredibly useful. However two more things started to change around the same time: literacy rates and the idea of what it means to be educated.
Here you can see the significant decline in literacy rates as quoted from John Taylor Gatto’s book “The Underground History of American Education”:
“At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted. The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to1944; the fighting force had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away. Of the 18 million men tested, 17,280,000 of them were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate. Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it didn’t worry anybody.
WWII was over in 1945. Six years later another war began in Korea. Several million men were tested for military service but this time 600,000 were rejected. Literacy in the draft pool had dropped to 81 percent, even though all that was needed to classify a soldier as literate was fourth grade reading proficiency. In the few short years from the beginning of WWII to Korea, a terrifying problem of adult illiteracy had appeared. The Korean War group received most of its schooling in the 1940s, and it had more years in school with more professionally trained personnel and more scientifically selected textbooks than the WWII men, yet it could not read, write, count, speak, or think as well as the earlier, less-schooled contingent.
A third American war began in the mid-1960s. By its end in 1973 the number of men found noninductible by reason of inability to read safety instructions, interpret road signs, decipher orders, and so on—in other words, the number found illiterate—had reached 27 percent of the total pool. Vietnam-era young men had been schooled in the 1950s and the 1960s—much better schooled than either of the two earlier groups—but the 4 percent illiteracy of 1941 which had transmuted into the 19 percent illiteracy of 1952 had now had grown into the 27 percent illiteracy of 1970. Not only had the fraction of competent readers dropped to 73 percent but a substantial chunk of even those were only barely adequate; they could not keep abreast of developments by reading a newspaper, they could not read for pleasure, they could not sustain a thought or an argument, they could not write well enough to manage their own affairs without assistance.”
Today the literacy rate for adults in the U.S. is 79%, and 54% of those adults have a literacy below sixth grade. I believe that the literacy rates will continue to decline within the next 10-20 years.
Early Americans had a very high literacy rate, the average man was a proficient reader and thinker. It was absolutely shameful to not be able to read at that time because even the most poverty-stricken man could usually read. These Americans would read Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Thoreau, Sir Walter Scott, George Washington, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, and many others like them.
Here’s the catch: They could read these in-depth books on everything from philosophy to economics, and understand the contents of the writings, with little to no compulsory schooling.
Why?
Their minds weren’t confined by compulsory education.
The idea of what it means to be educated also changed in the 60s and 70s, there was a new objective for the education system. No longer could the individual, free mind be tolerated, the new idea of education was meant to install a Hindu-like caste system and drive people to become factory workers to emulate the Prussian model of education. Anyone who has ever had a menial job knows the complete lack of true thought which is required to complete whichever tasks you’re assigned. Nearly everyday is the same: run through a set of tasks. If, on the off chance, you get presented with a challenge, you end up having to hand it off to a superior. You are confined to a certain space and the same thought process.
There are a number of reasons why there has been a drastic decline in privately-owned small businesses, but I believe that the increasing inability for individual thought is one of the largest reasons. Of course, there are economic reasons as well. My hypothesis is that the inability for individual thought is also a main contributing factor for the growth of large corporations such as Walmart, Target, or Apple. The early Americans would never have to settle for working at a Walmart, they simply couldn’t stand the overwhelming meaninglessness a job like that brings, plus they had unquestionable competency in numerous areas which would allow them more opportunities.
If a child were to receive a more formal education in the 18th and 19th centuries in America they would only be at school for a couple of hours a day. School was a very short lasting thing, it would have been rare to find someone who had received more than a few years of formal education. Yet nowadays, kids spend around 7 hours a day in school, and on top of that, they usually spend at least 13 years in school.
Sounds like the perfect setup for a future factory worker doesn’t it?
There are so many pieces of the puzzle to understand just how evil our “education” system is. This is just a fraction of it.
A couple things we must remember in order to oppose this evil:
We have to un-educate ourselves as much as we possibly can to rekindle our flame of free thought.
Homeschool your kids.
A rotten plague of meaningless ideas have been slowly pushed into your mind over years of schooling. It takes years to reverse the effects of the school system and un-educate yourself. In a future article I will try to give a helpful outline of how you and I can undo our schooling and start our education.
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The Destruction of Character-Based Education
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The development of character was the primary part of education in early America, which is quite a big contrast from what children are taught today. In fact, character development was a large part of education until around the 1960s, then, due to a convergence of interests between powerful people, the script completely flipped. Suddenly, reading, writing, and arithmetic gained significant prominence in the curriculum.
Now, this may seem like a good thing, after all, reading, writing, and arithmetic are all incredibly useful. However two more things started to change around the same time: literacy rates and the idea of what it means to be educated.
Here you can see the significant decline in literacy rates as quoted from John Taylor Gatto’s book “The Underground History of American Education”:
“At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted. The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to1944; the fighting force had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away. Of the 18 million men tested, 17,280,000 of them were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate. Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it didn’t worry anybody.
WWII was over in 1945. Six years later another war began in Korea. Several million men were tested for military service but this time 600,000 were rejected. Literacy in the draft pool had dropped to 81 percent, even though all that was needed to classify a soldier as literate was fourth grade reading proficiency. In the few short years from the beginning of WWII to Korea, a terrifying problem of adult illiteracy had appeared. The Korean War group received most of its schooling in the 1940s, and it had more years in school with more professionally trained personnel and more scientifically selected textbooks than the WWII men, yet it could not read, write, count, speak, or think as well as the earlier, less-schooled contingent.
A third American war began in the mid-1960s. By its end in 1973 the number of men found noninductible by reason of inability to read safety instructions, interpret road signs, decipher orders, and so on—in other words, the number found illiterate—had reached 27 percent of the total pool. Vietnam-era young men had been schooled in the 1950s and the 1960s—much better schooled than either of the two earlier groups—but the 4 percent illiteracy of 1941 which had transmuted into the 19 percent illiteracy of 1952 had now had grown into the 27 percent illiteracy of 1970. Not only had the fraction of competent readers dropped to 73 percent but a substantial chunk of even those were only barely adequate; they could not keep abreast of developments by reading a newspaper, they could not read for pleasure, they could not sustain a thought or an argument, they could not write well enough to manage their own affairs without assistance.”
Today the literacy rate for adults in the U.S. is 79%, and 54% of those adults have a literacy below sixth grade. I believe that the literacy rates will continue to decline within the next 10-20 years.
Early Americans had a very high literacy rate, the average man was a proficient reader and thinker. It was absolutely shameful to not be able to read at that time because even the most poverty-stricken man could usually read. These Americans would read Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Thoreau, Sir Walter Scott, George Washington, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, and many others like them.
Here’s the catch: They could read these in-depth books on everything from philosophy to economics, and understand the contents of the writings, with little to no compulsory schooling.
Why?
Their minds weren’t confined by compulsory education.
The idea of what it means to be educated also changed in the 60s and 70s, there was a new objective for the education system. No longer could the individual, free mind be tolerated, the new idea of education was meant to install a Hindu-like caste system and drive people to become factory workers to emulate the Prussian model of education. Anyone who has ever had a menial job knows the complete lack of true thought which is required to complete whichever tasks you’re assigned. Nearly everyday is the same: run through a set of tasks. If, on the off chance, you get presented with a challenge, you end up having to hand it off to a superior. You are confined to a certain space and the same thought process.
There are a number of reasons why there has been a drastic decline in privately-owned small businesses, but I believe that the increasing inability for individual thought is one of the largest reasons. Of course, there are economic reasons as well. My hypothesis is that the inability for individual thought is also a main contributing factor for the growth of large corporations such as Walmart, Target, or Apple. The early Americans would never have to settle for working at a Walmart, they simply couldn’t stand the overwhelming meaninglessness a job like that brings, plus they had unquestionable competency in numerous areas which would allow them more opportunities.
If a child were to receive a more formal education in the 18th and 19th centuries in America they would only be at school for a couple of hours a day. School was a very short lasting thing, it would have been rare to find someone who had received more than a few years of formal education. Yet nowadays, kids spend around 7 hours a day in school, and on top of that, they usually spend at least 13 years in school.
Sounds like the perfect setup for a future factory worker doesn’t it?
There are so many pieces of the puzzle to understand just how evil our “education” system is. This is just a fraction of it.
A couple things we must remember in order to oppose this evil:
We have to un-educate ourselves as much as we possibly can to rekindle our flame of free thought.
Homeschool your kids.
A rotten plague of meaningless ideas have been slowly pushed into your mind over years of schooling. It takes years to reverse the effects of the school system and un-educate yourself. In a future article I will try to give a helpful outline of how you and I can undo our schooling and start our education.