US Government encourages ignorance.

This opinion may not comes as news to ATS members but I thought it's a worthwhile thought to share with you.

Congress, the president, and the department of education are only grandstanding when they declare that they want to improve the American educational system. In fact the American system of democracy can only function efficiently if the general population, especially the middle class has a medium amount of education. That is to say, the middle class must be educated only to the degree that is as little as possible to allow them to reach consensus in a simplified two party system. Too much education would breed independent thought and to little generates an apathetic poverty class.

We are often reminded of how ignorant the ordinary American citizen is. Not only through statistics but also through those "man on the street" kind of media clips where no one knows their state capital.

This state of relative ignorance is by intent. It is what allows not only for a two party system and oversimplifications like red state/blue state, but also for a population to be easily manipulated and placated by it's government. A middle class disinclined to question it's government as long that they have the relative safety of their green backyards.

From birth the American educational system breeds mediocrity, intellectual laziness, discourages inquisitiveness, creativity and independent thought. I'd like to point out that this dynamic does not make the American" public any smarter or dumber than anywhere else in the world. That is not a issue here. The issue is it to recognize the systemic conditioning of the American population from childhood which discourages and marginalizes questioning and intellectual ambition. I call it the "so you think you're better than me?" syndrome.

There is of course irony in the act of making this point on ATS, since by definition we are a marginalized community attempting to deny ignorance.

reply to post by schrodingers dog

Yep. The 'gov will embrace ignorance forever until the truth discloses itself.

reply to post by ParaFreaky


It's hard to "embrace" ignorance as one is usually not aware that they lack information. That's why it's not accurate to say Americans are ignorant or dumb. There is a educational system in place guaranteeing that we taught just enough to agree with each other on at least one the two political parties.

I believe the department of education was formed to dumb the masses down.
When I went to school there was no dept.of education.We at least learned a little about the constitution.I have a granddaughter that has heard of the constitution but she has no idea of what it is.The department of education needs to done away with and resonsibility needs to be put where it belongs on the parents and teachers.

reply to post by schrodingers dog


The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

Actually prior to that in 1888 in an acessment of the emerging quality of education to the regular masses the the Senate Committee on Education at he time noticed that localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education was making the population very advance in reading, writting and math skills.

This was not good because the labor population of the time was to carter to the upper classes.

This could cause uprising among the labor class and discontent if the labors were to become more educated than their masters.

Tha's when the school system was to be introduced, not to educate the people but to control the kind of education they were to get.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

resistancetraining.wordpress.com...

I am afraid that you are very much right, it was an agenda by the ruling class to intruduce the school system to control and manufacture the adults of today's society.

I always tell this to the people with school age childre, if could afford to educate your own children at home by all means to it.

Our school system is a scam set up by those that wants control.











[edit on 4-8-2008 by marg6043]

I don't believe the government has anything to do with it, it's society in general and bad parenting. I went to a public school in a medium sized city. I don't keep in touch with that many of my classmates, but the ones I do keep contact with did fine. There are a few doctors (one of which is a brain surgeon), a mechanical engineer, and a bunch of tech guys (me included).

Sure a large percentage of the students probably are living what you would call an "ignorant" life. Perhaps that's what they want though. The fact that many from the same school went on to be successful professionals removes the blame from the shool itself in my opinion.

reply to post by BlueTriangle


I agree with what you say, but your point is not that relevant to the point I am trying to make in the OP. That is to say that my point was not addressing the quality of the American educational system from it's ability to generate "successful" citizens. In fact the system works relatively well in that way.
The point I'm making is more broad. Think of it this way, let's say you grow up in France, which by the way I did from the ages of 7-12. The typical high school curriculum includes many more classes, more art, philosophy, and more politics and literature. Also, I never ever saw a multiple choice exam. When you come home from school, on any given night on the French airwaves, there is at least one political forum tv show and at least one literature and social debate tv show. What that leads to in terms of political consequences is that that they have a much more complex form of democracy and many more political parties.
This is not to say that French kids are any smarter than American kids. All I am pointing out is that there is a causality between educational policies and political sophistication. And these policies are intentionally set by the government in order to serve itself.

I was not educated in the US mainland, my education was actually the best compare to what my children in public schools learned here in the states.

It is pitiful that as a Spanish teacher when I came to the south I actually had teachers with master degrees that were asking me if Puerto Rico was attached to Mexico and if I needed a green card to be in the US.

That alone will tell you the extend of the educational system in this country including higher learning.

It is pitiful.