“You are moving into the most competitive age the world has ever known. All around you is competition. You need all the education you can get. Sacrifice a car, if necessary, sacrifice anything that is needed to be sacrificed to qualify yourselves to do the work of the world. That world will, in large measure, pay you what it thinks you are worth, and your worth will increase as you gain education and proficiency in your chosen field…You will bring honor to yourself and to your family, and you will be generously rewarded because of that training. There can be no doubt, none whatever, that education pays.” – Gordon B. Hinckley, Way to Be

Sigh

Parents I know actually believe the state should make kids go to school. Most of them decide that, well, yes, it’s ok for me to homeschool. But I’m an exception. Parents in general shouldn’t have that right. Shouldn’t have that right! As if the government in its great benevolence is condescending to give me a right to raise my children.

I also had classes in college where many kids were apathetic. But I had one really great course called The Human Situation in which we read Plato, Thucydides, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hume, Voltaire – we read the original texts, heard lectures on them, and wrote papers on them. How simple, but it changed my life. I realized I had never read original documents before in all my life of school. I loved writing those essays. That’s when I first started to think about homeschooling, because at the same time I was going to that class, I was also teaching SAT prep classes to high school students to pay my way through school. I would try to talk to these kids about what I was studying in college and how great college was and what was the most exciting thing to them about going to college? Blank stares. They were only there for the test scores to go to college where daddy wanted them to go. They had no individual desires or interests. They were like zombies. But they were from private schools, and I promise you many of them will make good money.

One time, I taught SAT courses to a poor public school. My employer did that as a kind of charity. I was new and signed up to teach that class. I was so excited about helping poor kids score better on the SAT so they could go to college. (I’ve always hated the SAT, but there is no doubt it can make a huge difference in going to college). The first day a student told me he couldn’t read. I tried to get him out of the class and into a reading class, but I was told to just do my job. Then I realized that this was a school that went to state in football every year. I was teaching kids to get better SAT scores so that they could qualify to go to college to play football. That was the day I began to realize the world I had grown up in. I put it all together – the rich kids going to daddy’s school, the poor kids going to football school, the kids in college who rolled into class in their pajamas to discuss texts they hadn’t read (without any shame). School is not about education. It’s about doing your time so you can fit into a life that is prepared for you.

I found my college US History class almost intolerable because of the zombies in there. The teacher did everything he could to get people to comment, to take interest, to have some opinion, feel the contraditions, the severity of many complex issues, but it was as if though he was speaking to near dead people—in their 20′s.

I loved to bring in material here and there that refuted the textbook (propaganda) which the teacher acknowledge to be accurate and I too had him admit the text book was filled with propaganda against the real character and belief of the US Founders. But most of the other students had zero interest in anything that was not in the narrow “is it going to be on the test” discussion. No curiosity, no creativity, no hunger for knowledge, the only concern for information was “will it be on the test.” How deadening.

The industrialized world is low on agriculture and the arts. Because of these dearths in education, we end up with very well educated ignoramuses.

In all industrialized countries, the priorities for all academia is

1) literacy & matematics.
2) physical & applied sciences.
3) social sciences.
4) The arts.

Notice that agriculture in the classical sense is nowhere to be found. Only in a few areas of industrialized countries will you find agriculture classes. Mostly only available in high school.

Public education was pressed on the people of this country at the point of a gun. After a generation or two the gun was no longer necessary. People willfully submitted to the ignorance machine.

Once we are prepared to become a cog in the industrial machine, we will no longer have time to keep an eye on government. We will no longer have time to study economics. We will no longer have time to study history and recognize when it is about to repeat itself.

The idea was sold to well meaning government officials to help the country prepare for the coming industrial revolution. But the sellers didn’t have the people’s welfare in mind. They wanted to destroy America.

They realized that an assembly line school would produce ignoramuses. They realized that such a program would be self-perpetuating and would encourage immorality, or at the very least, amorality or moral relativity.

It’s done a pretty good job.

I myself went to college to become an engineer. It’s a highly technical field that requires learning public school subjects in the same priority that they are offered. This is why I did so well.

I went to BYU and found a slogan that was so much more profound than I realized at the time: ENTER TO LEARN, GO FORTH TO SERVE.

Our student body president pointed out that it does NOT read “Go forth to EARN”. Only now as I’ve learned about the history and purpose of the public school system do I really understand the importance of his words.

Unfortunately, my college education was not much different than what I received in public schools. In some ways it was more disappointing. I believe this had to do with the accrediting requirements. I am a capable engineer. So I actually DID go forth to EARN.

But only the religious aspect of my education was superior to what I would have received anywhere else. And a few of those courses left much to be desired. But because of the environment and the culture, I at least had morality as part of the process.

So now I am in charge of my own education. In reality, it always was.

True education will include the following four tenets:

1) Read like a lawyer.
2) Write like a founding father.
3) Calculate like an entreprenuer.
4) Serve like a disciple.

Not necessarily in that order.

Know who said that? Check out Nibley’s awesome article on our modern day education here:

http://farms.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=125

Is monetary attainment the only thing people value these days?

http://www.ldsphilosopher.com/2008/05/26/wheres-my-diploma/

What I find interesting is that companies and business used to train their own employees, or pay for the training of their employees, or would hire apprentices, etc. How to make money was something for the employer to teach the employee, etc. Education was an entirely different beast: it was for learning about the world, and studying great writers. Now that the two have become one and the same in people’s mind, employers can just let the state train all of its workers. Now, when people aren’t prepared for the workplace, employers can blame in on the schools. And job-training takes precedence over learning the ideas and thoughts of the great writers of the world, because that is what people are paying for these days.

I wish schools and universities were separate from trade schools and apprenticeships, like they used to be.