Dark as Night 37 Degrees
4:45 a.m.
From the outside looking in, one might wonder how a “Straight A Sheep” like me transformed into someone who is now clear that schooling is child abuse.
Seems like quite a journey to make doesn’t it? And over just a few years?
“Aren’t you being a wee bit harsh,” Jason? “Shouldn’t you tone it down before you draw too much attention to yourself?” “Nobody likes a fanatic man!” “You’ve always been such a problem, and now you’re going after school teachers?”
(To be clear, I wish all good-hearted school teachers the best. I am sure they will find a way to provide value to the world once the institution of schooling dissolves as enough people realize it was created to be a prison training center for their children, aka future slaves.)
Did something happen to cause my change of heart? Did I get kicked in the head by a mule? Did I fall down a mountain? Did the “Valedictorian” eat some rotten fruit? What could possibly account for such an irrational shift?
No. There was no single event that caused my affliction. No bolt of lightning from the sky that did this. No intervention from above.
Instead, nosey Jason just started asking too many questions. He started poking his head in places it didn’t belong. He started discovering people who knew what was up. And finally, when he looked back over his own life and experience, he realized that everything he was uncovering was in fact true…because he had experienced it all himself.
John Taylor Gatto had a clear understanding of what the real lessons are in school. He didn’t have to figure them out, he just had to look it up…the experts had already told everyone!
Here’s a quote from Gatto’s 2003 article in Harper’s Magazine where he explains what is actually taught in the school system, as outlined by one Alexander Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named.
- The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can’t test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
- The integrating function. This might well be called “the conformity function,” because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
- The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student’s proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in “your permanent record.” Yes, you do have one.
- The differentiating function. Once their social role has been “diagnosed,” children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits – and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
- The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin’s theory of natural selection as applied to what he called “the favored races.” In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit – with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments – clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That’s what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
- The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
So the question I faced with my own children was this one:
“Do I send my own child into an environment designed to make them like what it made me?”
The answer was NO.
From my perspective, there is far less damage done to a child should they decide to go sit in a forest for 12 years than there is in “learning” institutions such as the ones designed for today’s kids.
Our society has been designed to make schooling the easy decision.
The economy has been structured and manipulated so things are just a wee bit too hard with a single source of sustenance. When everyone “has” to work, there’s no other option available!
With the infection of “expert-itis,” parents are made to feel like they are not “qualified” to lead their children. As if any other human on the planet is MORE qualified to lead someone than a parent is a child.
As we walk together on this road to autonomy, these is something important that everyone should know:
There is almost nothing on this journey that is convenient. Few things are “easy.” And even fewer are simple.
Why?
Because the matrix is not designed to make for an easy exit.
You must want it.
When THAT happens, everything changes. When you will accept nothing less than full autonomy, you will find the energy to continue, the courage to face resistance, the fortitude to stand in your own power and watch as the storm passes you by.
And then, when you have discovered how to center and calm yourself within that fury, it will cease to exist. And you will realize it was an illusion you were taught to create to keep you from discovering the truth.
And from that point forward, you will be free.