Don't Seek Education, Seek Knowledge
by
Jeff Berwick Previously by Jeff Berwick: The Rise of the Anarcho-Hippie?
Many words make me cringe. "We" and "our", when not specifically pertaining to the people you directly know or associate with on a personal level, top the list. Probably third is "education". The word, just like so many, has been twisted, turned and co-opted over time. Just like the word "liberal" used to mean someone almost of anarchist leanings, but now signifies almost the exact opposite: a leftist statist. Or how the word "anarchism" has also been skewed through propaganda to connote the opposite of what it is. Education can mean one of many things depending on who you talk to. Education has a different meaning depending on who is doing the educating. William Torrey Harris, the once US Commissioner of Education, probably best defined education in the US in 1906 when he said that "substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual." H.L. Mencken explained further in arguing that 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 a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." That is why, really, the only education that matters is to teach someone how to think critically. Once someone is armed with that ability, then they can seek knowledge in whatever they wish to learn, and be able to think critically in order to separate what is truth from what is fabrication. Note that the last thing a child would ever be taught in a public school is logic, rationality, and critical thinking, which would be counter to the intended goal. Margaret Mead put it simply when she said, "Children must be taught how to think, not what to think." Richard Dawkins expanded on that, stating, "Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you." What masquerades as education today in public schools in the Western world is, for the most part, brainwashing, subjugation, and mass control. What students do absorb in terms of basic math or language skills is minimal, as can be seen from the near-universal dumbing-down of Western society.
Look no further than the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry on Education to realize that, "Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next." If education is the means to pass along the "aims and habits of a group," no one should ever want to be educated. What we should want is knowledge. Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, communication, association, and reasoning. What your kids are getting, and getting good, in public school is education, not knowledge. PRISON PREPORATORY SCHOOL What is currently happening in the US is education is preparing students for a lifetime as a wage slave or imprisonment. Harris further stated that the intention of the system was schools that "have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role." For preparation for prison, as this article from the UK's Guardian argues, more and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors, and young children are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. 10 year-olds are, according to the article, criminally responsible and can be prosecuted as such with a record for the most basic of childhood activities. Tommy punched Billy? Assault! Tommy is now a convicted felon.
Melinda Harmon, a US Federal Judge, explained whose property your kids are when she stated, "Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school." And when they aren't being arrested, teased, bullied, hazed, taught to submit, or memorizing propaganda, they'll be taught how to fill out a W2 tax form as in this educational program from the Federal Reserve "finance curriculum". PUBLIC SCHOOL IS CHILD ABUSE Sending your child to public school in the Western world is child abuse. If you must live in the Western world you have to do whatever it takes to avoid this system. The answer generally lies in homeschooling. But, many families, forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars into the black hole of government every year for "services" such as the education system, feel trapped as most have to have both parents work just to keep the household afloat. Mothers are forced to work due to the systematic impoverishment of the family via taxes and inflation. Furthermore, they are encouraged to work through the promotion of "feminism". Nicholas Rockefeller told Aaron Russo that his family foundation created women's liberation using mass media control as part of a long-term plan to control humanity. The hidden goal of feminism is to destroy the family because a strong family unit interferes with state brainwashing of the young. Side benefits, for the global elites, include depopulation and widening the tax base. Displacing men in the role of providers also destabilizes the family. THE STATIST LIFE OF JULIA This anti-family message is constantly promoted by the state. The most obvious example of this comes from Führer Obomba, in his "Life of Julia" propaganda piece. In this animated slideshow, he takes a girl (Julia) from childhood through to old age to show her how "under President Obomba" he will help her along the way. You see, the state is the father now. He helps her through the Head Start Program to begin her brainwashing in public school. He then helps her continue her indoctrination via an "Opportunity Tax Credit", with stolen money, to get her into college. Then, once out of college, father Obomba helps her again via the "Ledbetter Fair Pay Act" where he forces people at gunpoint to pay her more than she is worth at her new occupation of being a web designer, something, by the way, which likely didn't need 12 years of brainwashing followed by four years of further programming and crushing debt to learn, but that's besides the point. The propaganda continues: "under President Obama, Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under healthcare reform." Yes, you can even have children without a man in your life, perhaps artificially inseminated by the seed of the great Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obomba? It doesn't say, but Julia has not had a man in her life throughout the entire slideshow. This continues on until she retires without a partner and, thanks to Obomba, doesn't have to worry about running out of savings, she volunteers at a community garden. HOMESCHOOLING/UNSCHOOLING As stated above, the answer lies in homeschooling and unschooling. And, if you find you just cannot afford to have either the father or mother stay with the kids during the day then you should be finding a way to escape from the system. You are already enslaved. You think I'm exaggerating? Well, if you were allowed to keep the money that is extorted from you each year by the state, would you be able to afford one parent staying with the children during the day? If the answer is yes, you are a slave and you need to break away from the system. How? Start up a small agorist enterprise. Perhaps a small restaurant. Become your own boss and avoid paying into the state whenever possible. You can't, you say, because the state will come after you if they see you operating a restaurant and not paying their myriad of extortive taxes? Then, why are you living there? Get out and go somewhere where that is much less likely to occur. The citizens of most countries on Earth take great pride in not paying taxes. Just look at Greece, as just one example. WHY STAY IN THE WEST? Except for the 1%, almost anyone in the West today is a slave to the state, so why stay there? They've got you coming and going. You pay them to live in your house (property tax), making you a renter not an owner, you pay sales tax, gasoline tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, hotel tax, the list is endless. When you drive too fast they fine you. When you drive too slow they fine you. If you do one of thousands of different things including having more than two glasses of wine and driving or having certain dried flowers like marijuana in your pocket they will kidnap you and throw you in a cage. If you don't stop when demanded by the state, they will beat you to within an inch of your life, as they did to this man just last week. If you wish to travel, you and your family will be groped and irradiated. And they'll be watching you from their $2 billion data center in Utah or from 20,000 drones in the skies. If you do not want to leave the West then, at the very least, find places like the Free State Project in New Hampshire and live amongst likeminded people who are striving for freedom. DON'T SEEK EDUCATION, SEEK KNOWLEDGE But, don't my kids need twelve years of education, you ask? As stated above, that's the last thing they need. What they need is knowledge, and all knowledge is free, thanks to the Internet. A fourteen year-old at PorcFest last week told us how he has been learning Austrian Economics from Tom Woods, online at Liberty Classroom. Sign up your kids to Liberty Classroom and they will know more real knowledge than PhDs of history from the statist education system. My own eight year-old son already speaks Spanish and German fluently and is currently learning English. Within 1-2 years he will speak fluent English and he'll be signed up at Liberty Classroom. We have a number of tutors in Mexico who come to our house, averaging about $10 per visit, including a boxing instructor, a martial arts instructor, and a music teacher. He also goes to tennis lessons four times per week for about $100 per month. The best part? He's not forced to do any of it. He wants to. We just ask him what he wants to learn and he tells us. Kids want to learn, it is only the child prison camps that rob children of desire. Soon it is our intention to start a small restaurant where my wife can spend more time with the kids and teach them how to work and operate a business. They'll bus and serve tables, learn how to treat clients, and how to change the menu to attract more clients. All before 10 years old. We do all this from Acapulco where a number of anarchists and libertarians have gravitated, and as the community grows we may start up our own homeschool groups. They've already done that at Doug's Gulch in Argentina where other libertarians have settled and started their own private homeschool style system of education. The International School of Cafayate is headed up by TDV correspondents Gary Kinghorn and Meghan Kofod. Once you get outside of the mindset that most have in the Western system, the sky is the limit in terms of the knowledge you can provide for your children. Maria Montessori said that learning "is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment." In the environment provided by the state a child is exposed to subjugation, indoctrination, and imprisonment. You owe it to yourself and to your child to find a better environment for them to learn naturally. "Getting Your Gold Out of Dodge" is available here. It is free to TDV and TDV Golden Trader subscribers or for a one-time price of $44.95 USD. It may be the best use of your fiat Federal Reserve Notes you've ever spent. Reprinted with permission from The Dollar Vigilante. June 29, 2012 Jeff Berwick [send him mail] is an anarcho-capitalist freedom fighter and Chief Editor of the libertarian, Austrian economics grounded newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante. The Dollar Vigilante focuses on strategies, investments and expatriation opportunities to survive & prosper during and after the US dollar collapse. Copyright © 2012 The Dollar Vigilante
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