Source: Lew Rockwell | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
“When your people first came to our land they were trying to get away from those people at the top. But they still thought the same, and soon there were new people at the top in the new country. It is just the way you were taught to think.” –Lakota elder Dan, to Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf nor Dog, New World Library, 2002 p.156 – 157
In this three part series, we’re attempting answers to this question from Part I – – –
What changed, morphed, and/or converted our archaic ancestors who wouldn’t even stand on cue for a church service into Milgram experiment victims and authoritarian follower lemmings who will electrocute fellow humans on demand, machine-gun helpless civilians, torture prisoners, unnecessarily nuke entire cities, and allow themselves to be “locked-down” and jabbed with an untested mRNA vaccine at the direction of elected liars, bureaucrats and white-coated authority figures?
In Part II we picked the low-hanging fruit, showing how military training reveals and confronts our resistance to taking orders and even just being told what to do — and usually overcomes both that and our innate resistance to killing our own kind.
We ended that Part by asking “But how about those of us who haven’t undergone military brainwashing, and so, as Major General Smedley Butler put it, haven’t had our brains put into suspended animation? Why have so many of us also become potential Milgram experiment victims and ‘authoritarian follower’ lemmings?”
First I want to remind you of what we have almost completely lost in the modern world – – –
The Way We Were
… Annette Hamilton is an anthropologist … what she does is to examine carefully the patterns of parenting and learning among a group of people who until recently lived as gatherer-hunters. … After presenting the details of her research findings, Hamilton draws conclusions. She notes that while, for Europeans, the needs of the child are determined by “experts,” in Aboriginal society “the role of the caretaker is to pay attention to the overt demands of the infant…. The infant cries, the caretaker feeds. When it is old enough, it grabs the breast or the food for itself. If it does not grab for it, it does not want it…. The Aboriginal model trusts the child’s knowledge of its own states, both physical and emotional. When a three-year-old is tired someone will carry it. No one says ‘Three-year-olds are old enough to walk.’ In fact, no one makes generalizations about children at all. Each child is treated solely on the merits of its actual concrete situation at that moment.” This sort of treatment tends to produce confident, secure, self-motivated adults. —Nature and Nurture: Aboriginal Child-Rearing in North-Central Arnhem Land, by Annette Hamilton. (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1981) as excerpted in Liberation or Mind Control? By Richard Heinberg bolding added
From Part II of this series remember, Barbara tells of her daughter, Karen, who put this into practice as a baby. Asserting her independence at the age of four months, her first words weren’t “Mama” or “Dada,” but, resisting being fed by her mother — and insisting on feeding herself by reaching for the spoon — her first words were “Me. I do. Self.” Barbara paid attention.
And remember this from Part I – – –
Briggs (1970:55-58) tells us in detail how religious services were conducted in iglus [igloos] and how Inuttiag (in the role of religious coordinator) tried at certain points to get his tiny congregation to stand. The community initially conformed, but then more and more people began to disregard his orders until the majority were ignoring him. At that point, he simply stopped trying to command them. –Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1999) p. 54
Now let’s add this – – –
In his book, [Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter] Gray writes about a group of 13 kids who played several hours a day for four months without supervision, though they were observed by an anthropologist. “They organized activities, settled disputes, avoided danger, dealt with injuries, distributed goods… without adult intervention,” he writes.
The kids ranged in age from 3 to 5. –Source
Those kids were playing, unsupervised, in the South Pacific, not, unfortunately, in today’s USA.
As well explained by Lenore Skenazy in her Free Range Kids blog, this over-protective nonsense chills creativity and self-expression by conditioning kids — and everyone else — to think and act as if Authority figures are always surveilling them and that that’s normal. It also prevents kids from learning how to take care of themselves and deal with the experiences and problems of real-life. Worse, it steals their opportunities to discover their own abilities – – – and develop confidence in them.
Sort of suggestive of Milgram experiment victims and/or authoritarian followers maybe?
When I was a kid, we used to go on unsupervised all-day hikes into the woods, along the river, following the railroad tracks and anywhere else our imaginations suggested. Later, sometimes we camped overnight. We strolled the streets and alleys just being alive. We took long distance bike hikes and swam the river. All unsupervised. Supervision never occurred to us or our parents. We learned we could set our own itinerary, take care of ourselves and make our own decisions — and that was normal. We learned how to get along with each other and ourselves. We learned we were capable.
Christra told me that although her neighbors frowned on her twenty years ago for allowing her girls to ride their bikes in Fredericktown, when she was a girl, she used to sometimes ride all the way from Fredericktown into Pittsburgh.
Harmless Education
The one-room schoolhouse is a good place to plant the Harmless Education flag. During most of the 19th Century, our kids learned, mostly reading, writing and arithmatic, in a legendary one-room schoolhouse if and when they and their parents chose. After all, there were more interesting things to do, other ways to learn — and chores at home, on the farm, etc.
The TV series “The Waltons“does a pretty good job of representing this historical context as does “Little House on the Prairie.“
There was one adult and kids of all ages from 6 to 16. If segregated, it was mostly naturally and informally by skill-level, not primarily by age (or color, etc.) — and a child’s skill-level varied from subject to subject.
The skilled helped the less skilled learn without regard to age else it would have been simply impossible for one schoolmarm to handle so many.
Normally unrecognized and nearly completely deprecated in modern government-form schooling is that such helping — that is teaching something — is the best way to learn it.
For example, an early technique of mass education in Britain took advantage of this fact. One instructor could educate as many as 2,000 students. He’d directly teach several students who would then, in turn, each pass on the knowledge to several more who would do likewise. Etc. He’d do quality control by checking down the line to see that things were being passed on correctly and if not, follow the chain back to where it went wrong and correct the situation.
The BIG PICTURE came to me via the producer of a documentary on the Whiskey Rebellion who was giving a talk at Bowman’s Castle. He mentioned in passing that the local dirt-floor subsistance farmers of the period could almost universally read, write and cipher (do math.)
This was surprising to me and to several of my former teachers who happened to be attending the talk. An English teacher asked the producer if he had his facts straight. “We’ve been led to believe these early American folks were mostly illiterate until universal government schools caught on,” she said.
The documentary producer was correct. Research shows that in most of the American Colonies — without government interference — literacy rates were as high as 95% whereas modern literacy rates are lucky to be 75%, much of that due to the necessity of reading to use computers, although that’s decaying out as AI begins to read to us. Real education was highly valued. For example, slaves risked serious punishment for teaching their kids to read.
Through a modern window back into that era, an Amish friend, Ivan, invited me to help raise a windmill. It was to power a new telephone system to replace the buried long tubes with whistles at each end they had been using.
Folks came, put in some work as it suited them and then unceremoniously left. Everyone expressed their opinion but it seemed they were waiting for one particular fellow who, the consensus seemed to be, knew the most about such projects. They were looking forward to his arrival, his critique, and his unofficial endorsement.
Two things impressed me the most. A young boy showed up, maybe 11 or 12 years old, and, like the adults, he critically looked over the project and asked a couple of penetrating questions, which were received and answered as if he was an adult with not a hint of condescension. Then he joined in and helped fill in around one of the footers.
The second thing: I kept wondering when the expert everyone seemed to be expecting would show up. Each new arrival got my attention. I listened to their comments and questions, wondering if this was the dude.
He was way later than expected and there was much speculation as to why but no blame. When he finally showed up, I couldn’t tell the difference except by the extra attention he got. He looked things over and asked a few questions, which seemed to be standard behavior, endorsed things and then got busy filling in around the footers with the rest of us.
There was no Authority of Position here, only authority of knowledge. Co–operation in action!
These are modern-day models of Lincoln’s “mudsill” folks who support the whole edifice of civilization but usually become disrespected ignored and exploited as it develops. You know, fly-over America, “We The People,” Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables.”
But that was then.
So one-room schooling focused on read’n, writ’n, and ‘rithmetic, which, according to thrice Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto, requires only about a total of 100 hours of instruction. That’s about 17 six-hour school-days, less than one school-month. What are they doing to our kids for the other 107 modern government-form school-months – which works out to be 99.07% of the school-time remaining in that twelve-year sentence?
Here’s what we gave up — and replaced with modern government-form compulsory schooling: Voluntary and variable attendance, customer (parent) control of the curriculum, that is, of what’s taught, serious respect for student individuality and preference — and huge chunks of our irreplaceable childhood unnecessarily wasted often including school-bus travel time. But we gave up something much more important – – –
Parents give up their rights when their children cross the threshold of the public school door. This was recently made crystal clear by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
When a few parents in Palmdale, California learned that their children’s school had permitted researchers to interview first, third and fifth grade students about such things as sexual urges and fantasies, they became outraged and took the matter to court.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case and concluded that when parents place their children in a public school, they forfeit any right to determine what or how their children are taught. The school may teach anything it wishes in any way it wishes. It may allow researchers, special interests, social activists, and anyone else it chooses access to students. The court’s decision confirmed earlier court opinions.
Our society has become a slave to the state by virtue of government-controlled schools. Children suffer, parents feel helpless, and scores of good educators feel trapped in a system that never should have existed in the first place… –Is There a Problem? Separation of School and State
So “Our society has become a slave to the state by virtue of government-controlled schools.” Now THERE’S a waystone on the path to Milgram and lemminghood you may want to keep in mind.
American Culture has gone to great lengths to condition you to blindly accept one-way communication, that is, usually commands from Authority figures. Government-form schools are the most glaring example.
The implausible cover story for Government schools is that you might some day need some of the massive over-provision of likely useless information they subject you to for thirteen years. The usually unstated idea is that you’ll be able to remember — in usable form — what they tried to teach you years or decades ago.
For efficient information transfer and use, that thirteen years is a monumental waste of student time and taxpayer money.
Where Things Went Wrong
Despite what we moderns accept as normal, necessary, and desirable — and while many modern government-form school teachers may have sensed things weren’t going right — one in particular figured most of it out – – –
“David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first – the five-year spread means nothing at all. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, ‘special education.’ After a few months she’ll be locked into her place forever.” –John Taylor Gatto: I Quit, I Think – Saint Kosmas Orthodox Education
“The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. …
“I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.” –John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
Not surprisingly, over the years this repression, dependence and subliminal debilitation has spread from government-form schools into society in general. Could there be a connection to Milgram’s experiment victims — and authoritarian followers?
How Serious has this gotten?
Poll: Most Americans Want to Criminalize Pre-Teens Playing Unsupervised – Reason.com
Two Maryland children are with their parents again after being held by Child Protective Services (CPS) for hours. This is the third time Danielle and Alexander Meitiv have come under fire for letting their children walk around unsupervised, reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid.
Police picked up 6-year-old Dvora and her 10-year-old brother Rafi from a park near their Silver Spring home around 5 p.m. Sunday. Someone called 911 after seeing them alone. …
Montgomery County police brought them to protective services where they were held for hours.
In February, a CPS investigation found the Meitivs responsible for “unsubstantiated child neglect.” They said they’re practicing free-range parenting, a parenting style in which independence and freedom is encouraged. They claim it builds independence.
“In essence it’s like a false imprisonment, “…legal analyst Rikki Klieman said “Remember this, it’s hours where these parents don’t know where their kids are and where the kids don’t know where their parents are.”…
When the Meitivs spoke with “CBS This Morning” in January, they said they were unwilling to alter their parenting style, but now it seems they have no choice.
“They made us sign a safety plan that says that we will not leave them unattended at all until they follow up, and I’m not going to risk my kids being snatched again like this by CPS,” Danielle said. –Maryland “free range parenting” couple under fire again – CBS News
No more unsupervised hikes in the woods, along the river or the railroad tracks. No overnight camping, bike hikes or swimming the river. No more strolling the streets and alleys just being alive. No bike rides in Fredericktown. No setting our own itinerary or significant or easy way to learn we can take care of ourselves and make our own decisions — and that we’re capable.
And there’s this – – –
Marion County mother charged with neglect for making children walk to school | Times Free Press
ETC.
Even setting “playdates” for your kids may now be edgy since, compared to what’s now considered normal supervision, “playdates” are imagined to be “unstructured.”
The effects of this malarkey have gotten so far out-of-hand that, according to CNBC, it’s now necessary to coach some kids how to talk to others face-to-face — without their device as an interface.
The following high-school valedictorian testifies to the ultimate outcome – – –
“If it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is. –Erica Goldson, A Valedictorian Speech Everyone Needs to Read
The truth of the matter is – – –
“I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, anytime, that underestimates children’s abilities more than we North Americans do today.” –Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life
“Children are born geniuses. 9,999 out of every 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently, degeniused by unwitting humans.” –Buckminster Fuller
I’m old enough that I can see part of the progression that led here. When I was twenty, I was teaching Physics and working for my Private Pilot’s License on the side. The received wisdom was that you couldn’t do your own ground school training. It was necessary to take a supervised class. Everyone told me so.
That was a challenge. I was a Physics “teacher” after all. Surely I should be able to teach myself. I’d used a programmed text — sort of like a computer program in print — for my students to teach themselves the metric system. I got a programmed text for ground school and had at it. I passed with a respectable 89. I rediscovered I could learn on my own.
A main damage done to us by government-style education is it leads you to believe, mistakenly, that you need someone to tell you what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, how fast to learn, and then insisting you haven’t learned until they say so.
Have you recovered yet?
They tell you what to learn, when to learn, how to learn, how fast to learn, and then insist you haven’t learned until they say so– and you think that’s normal. –lrw
On the other hand – – –
[American] Indian parents often will not make decisions for their children until they have determined what the children want. Sometimes they will permit youngsters to do things which they know are not good for them simply because they believe in allowing children to make decisions for themselves. —James E. Officer, Journal of American Indian Education, October 1963
So even in the 1960s, the culture had long been set in place for habitual and unnecessary dependence on others for comprehensive supervision, surveillance, knowledge acquisition and control. The most obvious force for that was government-form schools.
Some folks might be tempted to think that – – –
“Mass schooling damages children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn’t cost very much, doesn’t depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the self-awareness that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time.” –John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
