Education or indoctrination?
The best days of our lives?
Day 1
Eyes wide with fear. Crying and screaming. Being dragged from their parents who, by this stage are often crying and screaming too.
I may be using hyperbole here, from time to time I may get a little hyperbolic, I’m the Gonzo Journalist after all!
Not every child spends their first day crying and screaming. We all got and get to see at least one child and more parents in tears every time that fateful first day comes around and you all just remembered exactly that memory right?
The point I am making is, that the perception of the first day of school being traumatic and causing everyone involved anxiety, is not an isolated opinion.
Apparently I said at the end of day 1 that it was OK but that I wouldn’t want to go back !
As I discovered, as we all discovered, day 1 is day 1 of the next 14 years!
As an 18 year old school leaver, that felt like a big chunk of my life to date being spoken and shouted at.
And verbally humiliated by teachers in front of my classmates.
And physically assaulted by teachers in front of my classmates.
So I gave up on education and focussed on the sports side of things.
As captain of the football and cricket teams, the teachers stopped hitting me.
Except for one guy. Even though I was never in his class, there was one teacher who took great delight in ‘catching’ me committing some heinous transgression such as walking on the grass or having my hair 3mm to long. Or having my hair too short.
All of these wicked deeds saw me summoned to his class room to be caned. Usually in front of an all girl class. Little did he realise that his plan to humiliate me backfred and the sympathy generated amongst thhe girls led to me finally havig sex. Most 16 year old boys I know would take ‘6 jacks’, as we used to call a stroke of the cane, if they knew they would have sex as a direct consequence!
The crazy thing is that I don’t think I missed out on anything by focusing on sports and being the class clown. I paid attention in History and English and got an A in both. I captained the school football team to national honours, won provincial colours for what was then Northern Transvaal in football and cricket and scraped through Maths and Chemistry that were taught via means of handouts to copy over and over in the hope that we would somehow memorise the script, even if we didn’t learn a damn thing and then there was Chemistry.
I had two Chemistry teachers in high school. One hated teaching but loved blowing the lab up and one, Mr van Schaklwyk could hit you on the nose with a board buster from anywhere in the lab and if you dared to duck, would flick your nasal apex with such precision and enough force to make your eyes water.
He had a great sense of humour, was a brilliant chemistry teacher and fought hard with the Transvaal education board to get me the exemption from having to pass Afrikaans in my final year, based on my immigrant status.
He didn’t have to. It was just the right thing to do.
I guess I had as good a school time as anyone could hope for.
I can't think of a single thing I learnt at school that I have needed. Need. Or will ever need. Which is a good job because, like many of in our 50’s and beyond, I remember what I read 40 minutes ago, never mind 40 years!
Except for Pythagoras. Right angles rock dude!
Imagine if Geometry was taught the way Pythagoras taught his pupils. Using art, music and crucially nature to physically demonstrate it in action.
I’ve been to plenty of job interviews. No interviewer has ever asked me what my grades were at school. Every interviewer who hired me knew I captained the school cricket and football teams.
Anyway, meandering gently to my point, ask yourself this question;
Does the Rockefeller school system produce a generation of:
Option 1
- compassionate, loving, emotionally mature, intellectually aware, inquisitive, society focused, peaceful, nature loving, non bigoted, non judgemental individuals that you would want to create the society your grandchildren grow up in.
Or
Option 2
- worker ants and cannon fodder.
If you are in any way unsure of your answer. Turn the news on.
There will be very few items about compassionate, loving, emotionally mature, intellectually aware, inquisitive, society focused, peace loving, eco-friendly, non bigoted, non judgemental behaviour like the kind of society that you would want your grandchildren to grow up in.
School’s been around a fair while now.
As the most ‘advanced’, civilisation in our planet’s history, shouldn’t we have been able to turn school from the traumatic, dangerous place it is for most children into something better?
Shouldn't we have figured out how to teach children stuff that will benefit them and the rest of society and help maintain a peaceful world filled by human beings who understand the need to live in such a way that best protects our natural enviroment.
AND IS FUN
Could we at least find a way to stop the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children by teachers and other children?
I’m a glass half full sort of guy. I think we could.
I know we fucking should!
Hands up all those who don’t want their children to be traumatised, beaten and / or raped at school. Either by teachers or pupils.
Thought so.
All of you.
Hands up all of you who would like school to produce young adults who are able to work together to build a better reality for all Anatomically Modern Humans?
Thought so.
All of you.
Isn't it counterintuitive to want the institution of education to produce individuals who aren’t able to build a better world?
So who wants the status quo to be maintained?
The people who sit on the top of the pile under the current status quo.
The 1 %. (Actually the richest 1% of the 1%)
Key kids how’s week 1 going.
We're doing pronouns;
I am
You are
Blah blah blah.
Yeah. That's the first lesson. You are not connected to anything. Its all separate.
I am an individual
You are different
He / She is like me
He / She is different
We are similar
They are different
You are all different.
Once we’ve learned the basis of separation, we may as well graduate. You know who and what your allowed to eat, buy, fuck, fear or hate. Here’s your diploma, mortgage and credit card.
Off you go to begin your life as a slave.
Indoctrinated to ask no questions.
Educated enough to work.
Taught not to apply critical thinking.
Traumatised enough to believe that everyone is a threat.
War is Peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
1984 is being used as a blueprint!
It takes them a little longer to ensure that upon release we are good little worker ants who know our place and and grateful for the scraps we are thrown.
As the architect of the modern education system, John D Rockefeller stated, ‘I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers ‘.
The education we still subject our children to, both in the US, the UK and much of mainland Europe, was designed, in the early 1900s, to restrict the curriculum, discourage critical thinking, standardise the narrative and ensure the working classes were taught to believe that they were only capable of manual work.
Aspiration is suffocated by a rigid teaching system with as much paperwork as teaching.
Rockefeller claimed to be producing good productive members of society. The reality is that he was ensuring a constant supply of cattle and cannon fodder.
Guilt is a big part of the plan. Remember during covid 19 when they tried to force us to have the vaccine so that we didn’t kill Granny?
The same guilt that they play on when they ask us to tighten our belts for the common good.
So they tell us how they want us to think the world works before they test us on how well we have listened to what they told us.
High school, matriculation or 6th form certificates are only issued when we can demonstrate that the programming has worked.
When the answers we give to the 6 Perennial Questions match the mainstream answers and thereby mirror the reality that the elite want us to believe in.
They want to be sure we will fit in, that we wont make waves and that, most of all, that we wont ask too many questions.
Questions like, ‘why do you teach us THIS is right when there is a mass of evidence and data to say THAT is right? ‘Why does being born a white male mean that you are statistically more likely to have a better paid job?’ ‘Why do we need to bomb that country’ and for me the most pressing question of all, ‘why does a tiny group of elites still hold all the wealth and power, when they clearly don’t give a damn about the rest of the planet and her inhabitants?’
Inbetween? Shouting. Lots of shouting.
Let’s take a closer look at that first lesson and yes it may not physically be lesson one, it is however very high on the list of things they want us to learn.
We are going to talk about pronouns.
