Our Schools, No Child Left un-Brainwashed?

Ignatius Loyola said, “Give me a child for his first seven years and I'll give you the man.”

Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And, he wrote, “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

In Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy, the children were not taught to think, they were fed propaganda until it came out of their ears. The result was millions of obedient robots who would do what they were told, follow orders without question, turn on any student who showed independence and report him to the authorities.

In due time, they became good obedient cannon-fodder, concentration camp guards, knowing that, in following orders, they were doing the will of their leaders.

At one time, the US had an envied educational system. All children had an opportunity for an early education. Those with abilities could continue on to college. They were taught to think, to evaluate, to discover, to create. The system was very successful in creating an educated populace that could think for itself. It could see errors in government and try to correct them. It had enough talent to select leaders who likewise felt an obligation to leave the planet, or at least their office, better than they found it.

The Oligarchy and the Pentagon made use of its stable of “lone crazed assassins” to get rid of most of our leaders. As the Oligarchy slowly gained control, they stayed in the shadows, always acquiring more power. They bought politicians, jurists, the Media, and others of influence, until they gained control. Meanwhile, they attacked the school system, dragging it down, dumbing it down, until it produced few thinkers, few critics. Schools are now reduced, for the most part, to indoctrination centers where children are taught to memorize the party line and regurgitate it on command.

Now that the Oligarchy has about 98% of the wealth, and has bought a vast majority of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the government, it is coming out into the open. As Hitler said, when you control the courts, whatever you do is legal, whatever your enemies do is illegal.

We are seeing that in the latest SCOTUS decision to remove restrictions on how much money the Oligarchy can use to buy or bribe legislators. We are watching as the civil rights, obtained at so much sacrifice by We the People, are being slowly eliminated by SCOTUS.

In my article If it was Good Enough for Hitler..., I pointed out the fact that the courts have repeatedly backed the school boards as having the right to fire any teacher who doesn’t toe the line and teach only what the school board tells it to. Teachers in many districts can no longer answer student’s questions except by giving them predigested answers, approved by the school boards, or telling them to ask their parents.

When the case I mentioned in my above article hits the Supremes, we will probably see the death of any independent thought in the school systems.

Then, indeed, Loyola, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Big Brother and the Oligarchs will have won. We will have a generation of brainwashed little robots to do the bidding of the government which, they will be absolutely certain, knows best. They will have been taught to hate foreigners, worship the flag, enlist in the military to help purge any different thought or customs of our “enemies” around the world. And above all, they will have been taught to root out any deviance of thought or action in their friends and neighbors, “enemies of the state.”

When I was a little boy, I only knew one definition of “concentration.” So when I heard of concentration camps, it sounded like a place where you could think. Later, I realized it was a place where they put the thinkers. Bush had KBR build a lot of them here. I’m sure Obama and the Oligarchy will find a use for them.

Remember, NorthCom is training combat brigades in the “suppression of civil dissent,” at the same time that government policies are creating still more homeless, hungry, thirsty, sick people. I fear that when the kettle finally boils over, they will be ready.

Years ago, I read that one of the Founders of this Nation stated that, “We would have freedom as long as these letters remain on this parchment.” I looked at a recent photo of the original document and the ink has faded to near illegibility. Perhaps he was right.

By the way, if you can read this blog, thank a teacher.

If it Was Good Enough for Hitler...

I wrote and published the article below on 27 March, 2006. The incident happened on 10 January, 2003. The case has wound its way through the courts, each time getting even more control over the schools by the school boards and limiting the teaching ability of the teachers. I am reprinting it in reaction to Obama's latest attack on education. i.e., Fire the teachers, close the schools.

Since 2003, the educational situation has steadily worsened, the teachers reduced to teaching their kids to be parrots, memorizing and regurgitating by rote, the answers to the tests demanded by the government. Read this carefully, the situation is more insidious than you think.

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If it Was Good Enough for Hitler...
by
Steve Osborn
28 March 2006

Back in 1950, my wife was fourteen and in the eighth grade. The subject was History or Current Events. The Cold War was in full flower and Joe McCarthy was in his ascendancy. She had been told that Communism was evil and she was scared to death of Stalin, as she and the world had heard many tales of his murdering or imprisoning millions of his own people. The teacher was holding forth on the evils of Communism when Adrienne asked, “What is Communism?”

The teacher hushed the class, went to the intercom and called the Principal’s Office. Then she told Adrienne to go to the Principal’s Office.

“What for,” she asked?

“You’ll find out,” was the answer.

When she got to the office, she was told to wait, that the principal had called her mother to come and get her and take her home. When she arrived, Adrienne and her Mom were taken into the principal’s office. Adrienne and her Mom were told she must never ask that question again. The Principal told her that answering that question could get the teacher fired and the school in trouble. All Adrienne needed to know was that communism was evil and that we had to hate it and fight it. Talking about communism apparently made you a “Pinko.”

Eventually, McCarthy and HUAC overreached themselves and passed into history. People were again free to discuss political systems and philosophy without being pilloried. People remembered the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech.

Since the appointment of der Bush as President by the Supreme Court, the Constitution and Bill of Rights have been under increasingly heavy fire. The fraudulent election of 2004 has increased the pressure. The revised PATRIOT ACT has further eclipsed the founding documents of our country. Unfortunately, little attention is paid to the Constitution and Bill of Rights in school classrooms today, so most people don’t know what they are having stolen from them.

Today, an article by Matthew Rothschild in the Progressive Magazine published on Monday, March 27, 2006 by the Progressive caught my eye.

Judge Rules Teachers Have No Free Speech Rights in Class

On January 10, 2003, a teacher of fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Clear Creek Elementary School in Bloomington Indiana was leading a class discussion on an issue of Time Magazine’s “Time for Kids.” This was a regular routine and part of the school’s curriculum. Some of the articles related to the imminent Iraq war and one mentioned a peace march.

One of the children asked the teacher if she would attend a peace parch. She answered that she usually honked her horn when she went by a local demonstration that said “honk for peace.” She said she felt it was important to seek peaceful solutions before resorting to war and that was why they trained the kids to mediate disputes on the playground, to seek peaceful solutions to their own problems.

According to the records, apparently a student mentioned the conversation to a parent, who complained to the school that her teacher had advocated “peace.” The teacher was told never to discuss the war, or “peace “ in her classroom again.

At the end of that day, Principal Rogers circulated a memo, entitled “Peace at Clear Creek,” that said: “We absolutely do not, as a school, promote any particular view on foreign policy related to the situation in Iraq.” And she canceled the annual “peace month” that the school had been holding.

The case has now been tried with the above verdict. The ostensible reason for her termination was a poor work evaluation, though the evaluation before the incident had been effusive in its praise of her as a teacher. The poor evaluation was written and entered into the court records two years later, long after her dismissal.

On March 10, Judge Sarah Evans Barker dismissed Mayer’s case, granting summary judgment to the defendants.

The judge said the school district was within its rights to terminate Mayer because of various complaints it received from parents about her teaching performance.

But beyond that, Judge Barker ruled that “teachers, including Ms. Mayer, do not have a right under the First Amendment to express their opinions with their students during the instructional period.”

The judge ruled that “school officials are free to adopt regulations prohibiting classroom discussion of the war,” and that “the fact that Ms. Mayer’s January 10, 2003, comments were made prior to any prohibitions by school officials does not establish that she had a First Amendment right to make those comments in the first place.” The judge also implied that Mayer, by making her comments, was attempting to “arrogate control of the curricula.”

And the judge gave enormous leeway to school districts to limit teachers’ speech in the classroom.

“Whatever the school board adopts as policy regarding what teachers are permitted to express in terms of their opinions on current events during the instructional period, that policy controls, and there is no First Amendment right permitting teachers to do otherwise,” Judge Barker wrote

So, it is now official. Teachers can teach only the approved party line, with no interpretation, discussion or opinions expressed.

Hitler said the same thing to the teachers in the Third Reich and I'm sure Kindly Uncle Joe Stalin made the same thing clear to his teachers in the CCCP. We can hope that this will be reversed by a higher court, but when I read the article to my wife, who is a retired teacher, she said, "I would never have believed this could happen again in the United States."

Every little thing that can be done to chip away at the Constitution and Bill of Rights is being done by the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature. If the children are now to be taught only the approved curriculum, to be accepted without comment, we may wind up with the equivalent of a Hitler Jugend or a Soviet Young Pioneers here in the United States.

It is way past time to Wake Up, America or lose what has made the United States great, and respected, throughout most of the world. If der Bush and his gang can stifle independent thought and discussion even in our schools than we are truly lost. As Adrienne has said since 2001, Bush and his gang are like the bullies on the school playground that all the teachers hate and the children fear.

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As I mentioned above, each hearing has upheld the school board's rights and restricted the teacher's right to teach, and by inference, the student's right to learn.

If this ever hits the Supreme Court, we know how it is going to go, don't we?