Out Of The Ashes

Anthony Esolen, a professor at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire and recently of Providence College, Rhode Island, has written a stinging critique of modern education and American society in general titled Out Of The Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture published by Regnery Publishers, 2017.

It's a short book - 203 pages – but contains much wise social commentary and observations on everything wrong with American education, if there's any such thing. Esolen is not one to beat around the bush. If you don't agree with him it isn't because he is opaque. For instance, chapter one is titled, Giving Things Their Proper Names: The Restoration Of Truth Telling. It is divided into several sections with their own headings, one of which is Are We a World of Liars?

“In a word, yes.

It is almost impossible in the modern world not to accept lies as a matter of course. We are told that a woman can make as good a soldier as a man. Except for the rare amazon, that is a lie”

In the same vein a few pages later: “Here is a quick and generally reliable rule to follow. If people have always said it, it is probably true; it is the distilled wisdom of the ages. If people have not always said it, but everybody is saying it now, it is probably a lie; it is the concentrated madness of the moment.”

Most of what he says in the book is glaringly obvious, but it is so seldom spoken or written that it becomes heroic when written or spoken audibly. When referring to teachers who have acquiesced to imparting depravity, he writes:

“It will not do merely to restrain them in this or that regard. They are not fit to teach your children the multiplication table. They are not fit to be near them at all. Every moment that your children are in their presence, they will be breathing the putrescent air from the diseased heart and spirit of the instructors, in an institution whose walls stink of it, it has lingered there so long.”

Just a few years ago, in the memory of almost everybody, a statement like,“First let us establish that there are such things as the sexes.” would have met with everybody's assent. Most people reading it would be wondering why such a thing would need to be established at all. Now such a proposition is not just questionable, it might even be “controversial” or hate speech or some kind of micro aggression.

Esolen is such a hater (maybe even a Neanderthal) that he writes:

“We are taught from the time we enter the indoctrination centers that the only differences between men and women are trivial matters of plumbing. It is not true.

When the European missionaries came to the new world to evangelize the natives, they did not find creatures of a different species. They found human beings, male and female. They did not find any tribes in which the women met in council, hunted the large animals, smoked the peace pipe, trained up their daughters in savage displays of physical courage and endurance (the “sun dance” of the Plains Indians, for example) and established elaborate hierarchies of honor. They did not find any tribes in which the men took care of small children, gathered roots and berries, made themselves up with pretty decorations to delight their women … and made “nests,” as it were, as clean and neat as possible, for the sake of the little ones, and because that is the way they liked things best.

They found men and women. That is what you will find wherever you go in the world.”

I can't disagree with any of his assessments about the shipwreck of the schools or his suggested remedies. The one thing I think is absolutely essential that isn't mentioned and is never mentioned by anybody in the reformist camp is the necessity of prohibiting government involvement of any kind in schooling or anything else having to do with forming thoughts, opinions or beliefs. No matter who is in charge, be it Aristotle, Pythagoras, Isaac Newton or Erasmus, they won't always be in charge, and the forces of coercion will always seek control. All compulsion should be eliminated. Certainly there will be parents that don't send their children to school or teach them themselves, but there always have been and always will be unfit parents. Compulsory schooling has always been about teaching children the “right” things, not about education.

This is a book that will be appreciated by anybody interested in the social, cultural, educational and intellectual collapse of society and its possible remedy.

Contagious Passivity

There was a story recently about a six-year-old girl being molested by a TSA stooge while the parents looked on "helplessly." This is a perfect example of what Edward S. Herman called "normalizing the unthinkable."
He says:

"Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done."

Anybody living in the U.S. has to have noticed an acceleration of this trend. If these parents had been told five years ago that soon the TSA would be legally molesting children, they would probably have called you crazy. The unthinkable is rapidly becoming normalized and if you object, you're some kind of paranoid kook.

Americans might not be any more timid and sheep-like than other people, but they seem to accept any outrage if it's supposedly for their safety or to fight terrorism, or back in the old days; to fight Communism. Any bogeyman will do to justify asserting ever-increasing control over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

One of the ways - perhaps the primary way - in which this attitude is inculcated is through government schooling. Many people have written about the dangers of allowing  government to indoctrinate the youth. The first person I ever read that took up an intransigent position against government schooling was Hilaire Belloc. Belloc of course is long dead and when he was writing most of his readers probably thought he was seeing imaginary dangers. More recently I ran across arguments by Sheldon Richman, Marshall Fritz, Jacob Hornberger and others who argued for a separation of school and state. They have moved public opinion closer to seeing that putting government in charge of thought is a bad thing.

This seems much more important than fighting battles against the TSA, EPA, FDA, or any of the other evil and intrusive alphabet agencies. As long as the government is in control of forming the minds of the youth, fighting all these other battles is like trying to purify a stream downstream from a sewage dump. Get rid of the cause and the effect will go away. This does not mean that all people will be clear-thinking if we can just get rid of government control of schooling, but it will eliminate a disease-causing agent.

Walter Karp wrote an article for Harper's Magazine back in 1985 called Why Johnny Can't Think, that illustrates perfectly the problem with government schooling. The problem is not just with the schools, but also with the textbooks. Private schools and homeschooling are miles ahead of the Hitler Youth atmosphere of government schools, but the books are geared mainly to government customers. A friend told me that the first inkling he had that he'd been brainwashed was when he started reading about WW II armored engagements and found that most of the action was between Russia and Germany. He had not heard anything about the Russian front in school.

Teaching error is not the only problem with government control of schooling (schooling is not education and teachers are not "educators") and probably not the most important one. The government-run Day Prisons that are presented as schools induce a sort of gullibility and a contagious timidity in the inmates. After twelve years of being told to be quiet, stop chewing gum, stop running, no smoking, do this, don't do that; a student has about as much ability to think independently as an organ grinder's monkey. For all the blabber about thinking outside the box, that's the last thing that schools want in their students.

The outrages perpetrated by the TSA and other government agencies are bad, but they can be reversed at the stroke of a pen. The damage inflicted by the schools is probably in most cases irreversible.

Destroying The Mind

 A recent story about a Warden of a Chicago Day Prison prohibiting the inmates from bringing their lunches from home has people in an uproar. It is indeed evil and presumptuous to arrogate to yourself authority over other people's children, but this has been happening for years; why the outrage over this instance?

Children in the government-run day prisons are all now effectively wards of the state, with the parents being relegated to providing a place to sleep and some food and clothing. For years the parents have been thwarted in their efforts to determine what their children are taught. If the parents don't approve of sex education or the political slant of various courses, it's tough luck.

What is more important - what is put into the mind or what is put into the body? It is much easier to correct maladies of the body than of the mind. If someone is taught a demonstrable error - such as two plus two equals five - it is much easier to correct that than if they are taught something like the idea that people in the time of Columbus thought the earth was flat. They in fact did not think it was flat, but I was taught this as a child and I have no doubt they're still teaching children this nonsense. We were also taught that Juan Ponce de Leon was looking for the fountain of youth, which he wasn't. It is very hard to disabuse someone of something like this that "everybody knows." A more recurring example is probably that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Government schools have probably never been about educating anybody since most people can't be educated anyway. I don't know that I've ever met an educated person, but if so, they have been few and far between.
Even back in the time of Marcus Aurelius, he could write: 
"From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper.
 
From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character.

From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich.

From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally."

It appears as though the Emperor's concerns were weighted more toward intellectual matters than dietary.

Whenever I see the yellow paddy wagons disgorging the inmates from the day prisons, I cringe to think how difficult it will be for them to ever attain a grasp of reality.What is being fed them in the cafeteria is not nearly as pernicious as what is being fed into their minds.

Parents should fear those that can destroy the mind more than those who harm the body. The body is easier to repair and is of little value when operated by a diseased mind.