To begin to grasp the extent of the social experiment standing behind the visible structures of mass compulsion schooling, it isn't necessary to conjure up conspiracies of the classical variety, but only to look at child-rearing from an engineering point of view, as animal training beyond the reach of the animal to fully comprehend. As when a falconer shrouds his bird to prevent it from obeying its nature, or when a horse-racing association dictates that lead be attached to a fast horse's saddle to bring its performance in line with the rest of the pack.
In both cases, bird and horse are less than they would have been, having been reduced to instruments of another species' design. With schooling, too, it shouldn't be difficult to understand that from certain perspectives it might also be desirable to alter the behavior of human children negatively, in the interests of some managerial goal. Whether a thing is good or bad depends on someone's value system; we all understand that. How otherwise could we begin to understand the bald statement made by the famous Dean of Teacher Education at Stanford in 1919 that the term of childhood had been deliberately extended for four years, because important people wanted it that way? What could the dean, that's Elwood Cubberly, have meant? He didn't bother to elaborate. You seldom get to hear the problem of modern schooling framed as a conflict between the purposes of social managers and the purposes of individuals, families, and communities, because the 23 global corporations which control most of the flow of ideas, news, and information worldwide seldom find it convenient to encourage such speculation. Nor do academics in general, because it's a very bad way to get tenure. But nonetheless, this is the thesis that I'll be pursuing tonight: THAT ENORMOUS NUMBERS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN HAVE BEEN DUMBED DOWN AND MADE MORALLY INCOMPLETE IN THE INTERESTS OF A COMPLEX THEORY OF SOCIAL MANAGEMENT, ONE WHICH EMERGED FULL-BLOWN AMONG CORPORATE PLAYERS SOMEWHAT OVER A CENTURY AGO.
School is the principle forge for handicapping mutilations. I'm using that term as you'd use it with a horse race. You handicap it by hanging lead weights on it. School is the central mechanism of its effectiveness. The central mechanism of its effectiveness lies in its ability to extend childhood far beyond natural bounds. Extending childhood was not originally the American way -- just the reverse. Back in 1839, Alexis de Tocqueville, author of "Democracy in America," and if you haven't read it, read it, it will be in every library in Boston and in every library in the United States, Tocqueville tried to put his finger on a fantastic difference he had discerned between American young people and the European variety. "In America," he said, I'm quoting now, "there is strictly speaking no adolescence. At the close of boyhood, the man appears," and by inference, at the close of girlhood, the woman. That early responsibility, according to Tocqueville, imparted such a great a figure to our society that other nations could not compete, and he predicted it would be progressive, and the gulf would enlarge between American power and the power of other nations, which of course it has. Where Europed inhibited the range of the young and rendered them incomplete by imposing an intricate class consciousness, age consciousness, gender consciousness, whatever, America was jettisoning such handicaps to productivity, and it roared into global prominence as a result of the advantage this conferred. Tocqueville's analysis at the beginning of the 21st century has the quaint ring of something like Alice in Wonderland, doesn't it? Could.. could some...ah you see him up there.
American young people are unrecognizable from Tocqueville's description. Childhood here has been artificially extended, well into the 20's and beyond. That picture behind me I assume was a 13-year-old boy, because I taught 8th grade for 30 years, but someone in the hall tonight said, "No, I think it's 17." But whether that's a 13-year-old boy, a 14, a 15, a 16, or a 17, no one in the audience, nor myself, finds that anything out of the norm. American teenage boys are, if they're well-behaved, are goofy, daffy, they put funny things in their ears, and we all assume that this is natural, a natural stage in child development.
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I can't recommend his newest book highly enough:
There's a perfectly good reason why kids are kept ignorant and immature: it makes for easily-controlled adults. Ignorance means Dependency means Control. Christians putting their kids under the control of the National Center for Education and the Economy, the Ford Foundation, and their anti-American, anti-intellectual comrades, will not win. You can't compete. Get your kids out.
