Military Industrial Complex

[Carol]

Education is like a genie in a bottle. The defined purpose is the wish, and the students are the genie. The US changed that wish in 1958 and the culture of the country.

Until 1958 the US had liberal education. This was modeled after Athens education for well rounded, individual growth. It used Greek and Roman classics to build a cultural democracy, where government is only one aspect of manifesting democracy. Might I be very up front with everyone, and say, only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended. Fascism requires only two things; experience with democracy and experience with industry.

My first experience with this forum was a u-tube report of media, where mostly young people were protesting the fascist militarization of the US, and this was contrasted with the Tea Party prayers and patriotism. Gosh, it would be great to have equal u-tube coverage of Germany after the Prussian take over.

In 1958 the US replaced its liberal education with Germany's model of education for technology for military and industrial purpose. The US stopped transmitting its culture, in favor of educating for a technological society with unknown values, and preparing its young to be products for industry. Like the Prussians did when they took control of Germany, the US destroyed its national heroes, and highlighted the past faults, and while praising efficiency. It leads everyone to believe everything good rested upon this new focus for efficiency, and political correctness, and the rapid development of technological for industrial and military purpose.

The former education was focused on good moral judgement, and later leaves moral training to the church. This is perhaps the worst threat to the culture of democracy, that is now being destroyed. It has lead to many problems, including thinking God and morality are the sole property of church authority. Only highly moral people can have liberty, or there is anarchy, and anarchy deteriorates into a police state. We must all have a sense of morality, and we can allow one religion to define God for us. Furthermore, people loosing their jobs, because of something they said, and the powers of Homeland Security, should have us taking the threat to our liberty seriously.

The former education focused on logic and independent thinking. The later focuses on memorization and "group think". Now our young dye their pink, blue and green and use tattoos and body piercing to express their individuality, but can not formulate an independent political thought. For example, the decision of if it was right to invade Iraq, rested on what was in the news, not on independent study of out Iraq and our involvement in the mid east. If we hadn't had computers and such easy access to information, this might be excusable, but given our easy access to information, this is inexcusable. We have gone from independent thinkers to sheeple, as easily to move as the Prussian populace.

When the US mobilized the first world war, Industry, Education and National Defense sat on the same board for the first time. Industry tried to close the schools, claiming the war had caused a labor shortage, and that they were not getting their monies through from public education, because they still had to train new employees. If industry had won this argument, it would have put an end to the new child labor laws, keeping children out of school during school hours. We might have ended up with a very different nation. One more like India with child labor and mass ignorance.

Teachers argued, an institution for education for making good citizenship, is good for education for making patriotic citizens. Of course, for national defense reasons, they won the argument and public schools were used to mobilize us for two world wars. Not until the military technology of WWII, flying across oceans and dropping atom bombs, was our liberal education replace with education for technology for military and industrial purpose. Those young people protesting the militarization of the US and the fascism, don't know the history of change in the US, but they sense something is wrong. The conservatives praying to God and demonstrating patriotism, have their historical German equivalent.

I am seriously concerned that if we do not realize how public education has changed our culture, we have fought every war for nothing.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Education is like a genie in a bottle. The defined purpose is the wish, and the students are the genie. The US changed that wish in 1958 and the culture of the country.

Until 1958 the US had liberal education. This was modeled after Athens education for well rounded, individual growth. It used Greek and Roman classics to build a cultural democracy, where government is only one aspect of manifesting democracy. Might I be very up front with everyone, and say, only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended. Fascism requires only two things; experience with democracy and experience with industry.

My first experience with this forum was a u-tube report of media, where mostly young people were protesting the fascist militarization of the US, and this was contrasted with the Tea Party prayers and patriotism. Gosh, it would be great to have equal u-tube coverage of Germany after the Prussian take over.

In 1958 the US replaced its liberal education with Germany's model of education for technology for military and industrial purpose. The US stopped transmitting its culture, in favor of educating for a technological society with unknown values, and preparing its young to be products for industry. Like the Prussians did when they took control of Germany, the US destroyed its national heroes, and highlighted the past faults, and while praising efficiency. It leads everyone to believe everything good rested upon this new focus for efficiency, and political correctness, and the rapid development of technological for industrial and military purpose.

The former education was focused on good moral judgement, and later leaves moral training to the church. This is perhaps the worst threat to the culture of democracy, that is now being destroyed. It has lead to many problems, including thinking God and morality are the sole property of church authority. Only highly moral people can have liberty, or there is anarchy, and anarchy deteriorates into a police state. We must all have a sense of morality, and we can allow one religion to define God for us. Furthermore, people loosing their jobs, because of something they said, and the powers of Homeland Security, should have us taking the threat to our liberty seriously.

The former education focused on logic and independent thinking. The later focuses on memorization and "group think". Now our young dye their pink, blue and green and use tattoos and body piercing to express their individuality, but can not formulate an independent political thought. For example, the decision of if it was right to invade Iraq, rested on what was in the news, not on independent study of out Iraq and our involvement in the mid east. If we hadn't had computers and such easy access to information, this might be excusable, but given our easy access to information, this is inexcusable. We have gone from independent thinkers to sheeple, as easily to move as the Prussian populace.

When the US mobilized the first world war, Industry, Education and National Defense sat on the same board for the first time. Industry tried to close the schools, claiming the war had caused a labor shortage, and that they were not getting their monies through from public education, because they still had to train new employees. If industry had won this argument, it would have put an end to the new child labor laws, keeping children out of school during school hours. We might have ended up with a very different nation. One more like India with child labor and mass ignorance.

Teachers argued, an institution for education for making good citizenship, is good for education for making patriotic citizens. Of course, for national defense reasons, they won the argument and public schools were used to mobilize us for two world wars. Not until the military technology of WWII, flying across oceans and dropping atom bombs, was our liberal education replace with education for technology for military and industrial purpose. Those young people protesting the militarization of the US and the fascism, don't know the history of change in the US, but they sense something is wrong. The conservatives praying to God and demonstrating patriotism, have their historical German equivalent.

I am seriously concerned that if we do not realize how public education has changed our culture, we have fought every war for nothing.

Welcome...

My fav subject...and glad to see your most interesting view of the problem.
My view differs just a bit, as I see the leftward slant of the culture and of education as feeding on one another.

1. A major reason for the change is even more disheartening: Universities have abandoned intellect because it represented the barrier that rationality places in the way of politicization.

a. The move is toward ever more insistent and radical egalitarianism which is the very heart of modern liberalism, as “intellect in America is resented as a kind of excellence, as a claim to distinction, as a challenge to egalitarianism, as a quantity which almost certainly deprives a man or woman of the common touch.” Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” p. 51.

b. One can trace the anti-intellectualism, modern liberalism, and the passion for an evangelical equality as moving in tandem.

c. In light of the fact that rational thought can imperil many of the premises of the radical left, there has grown what is called post-modernism, an outright denial of truth. Even in science…

d. The leading proponents of ‘post-normal science,’ PNS, Funtowicz and Ravetz, have written that, in issue-driven science, ‘facts’ and ‘values’ are unified by replacing ‘truth’ by ‘quality.’ http://www.ecoeco.org/pdf/pstnormsc.pdf

e. Students are taught by left-wing professors that traditional respect for logic, evidence, intellectual honesty, and the other requirements for scholastic discipline are not merely passé, but repressive, attempting to support a society that benefits only white, heterosexual males.

So I cannot agree that we aim at a technological education. No, we have simply eliminated a great deal of education

2. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) documented the changes in universities comparing the years 1914, 1939, 1964 and 1993.

a. Decline in required courses from 55% of courses, down to 33% by 1993. And even more telling, in 1914 no exemptions were allowed in 98% of the courses, but by 1993 it was only in 29%. This, of course produces students with a far narrower basis for understanding context.

b. In 1914, 57% of institutions had a literature requirement, by 1993 this was down to 14%. The same pattern appeared in philosophy, religion, social science, natural science, and mathematics.

c. The study found “diminishing rigor at most prestigious colleges…” Students graduating from these elite schools not only had fewer assignments to complete but were asked to do considerably less in completing them.” The NAS commented on how this drop off in hard work negatively influences character, and this effect on society’s leaders impacts the strength and vitality of society.

d. Decline of rigor can be seen, as well, in the number of days classes were in session, from 204 in 1914 to 156 in 1993, and the length of a class period fell by 10.2%.
The National Association of Scholars, “The Dissolution of General Education: 1914-1993” NAS - The National Association of Scholars :: Reports

Interesting as well, and an indication of correspondence, the NAS found the above trends accelerate from the Sixties on, assimilating the radical regimen.

I look forward to reading more of your posts.

 

[Carol]

Welcome...

My fav subject...and glad to see your most interesting view of the problem.
My view differs just a bit, as I see the leftward slant of the culture and of education as feeding on one another.

1. A major reason for the change is even more disheartening: Universities have abandoned intellect because it represented the barrier that rationality places in the way of politicization.

a. The move is toward ever more insistent and radical egalitarianism which is the very heart of modern liberalism, as “intellect in America is resented as a kind of excellence, as a claim to distinction, as a challenge to egalitarianism, as a quantity which almost certainly deprives a man or woman of the common touch.” Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” p. 51.

b. One can trace the anti-intellectualism, modern liberalism, and the passion for an evangelical equality as moving in tandem.

c. In light of the fact that rational thought can imperil many of the premises of the radical left, there has grown what is called post-modernism, an outright denial of truth. Even in science…

d. The leading proponents of ‘post-normal science,’ PNS, Funtowicz and Ravetz, have written that, in issue-driven science, ‘facts’ and ‘values’ are unified by replacing ‘truth’ by ‘quality.’
e. Students are taught by left-wing professors that traditional respect for logic, evidence, intellectual honesty, and the other requirements for scholastic discipline are not merely passé, but repressive, attempting to support a society that benefits only white, heterosexual males.

So I cannot agree that we aim at a technological education. No, we have simply eliminated a great deal of education

PoliticalChic, I think most people prefer short post, so I will respond to yours in two parts. And even then my reply will be way too long.

"..it [ Intellect] represented the barrier that rationality places in the way of politicization." Oh yeah, I don't think we have disagreement, but incomplete information. Industry and the military wants well trained personnel, not intellectual personnel, and it is industry and the military in control of education. This is not how public education began. It might help to understand how we come to have education in the first place, then we can understand the change in education.

Education in western culture, begins with the church. Paradoxically we owe much to the Catholic church for our secularism and democracy with liberty. Following the crusades the church accepted the Greek and Roman classics that had been lost to the Christian world, because the early Christians burnt libraries, but the classics were preserved by Arabs, who took pride in being well educated and in their private libraries that held the ancient documents. Later monks copied these ancient documents and spread them throughout Christian Europe. This lead to scholasticism, which becomes the renaissaunce of horrors humanism. You know, that line of thinking based on nature, filled all those pagan ideas about our human nature, and which give us the enlightenment opposing religious oppression, and the idea that God decides who is to be master, and who is be the servant/slave.

Jumping over a lot of detail, we get to the US with its democracy and liberty. The Statue of Liberty carries a book for literacy, and a torch for enlightenment. At the time, being literate meant literate in Greek and Roman classics, and of course Cicero, John Locke and Newton. You know those men who wrote of nature's laws and the the God of nature. Those men who were opposed to authority over the people, and devoted their lives to the cause of liberty and enlightenment.

Thomas Jefferson gave his fortune to trying to establish public education. He believed this is essential to a strong democratic republic. That is democratic culturally and with a republican form of government. There was not a united will supporting government support of public education, until around the 1840's. By this time, the east coast of the US was well established and anyone wanting the freedom of the New Land had to move west into Native American territory. Those who had already arrived, owed and controlled the land are resources, leaving immigrants to be poorly paid factory workers when industrialist enjoyed exploiting child laborers, and they lived with terrible work and living conditions. This disparity between the early arrivers and late arrivers, result in social unrest. We could have easily become a police state at this time, but instead, our shared idealism pushed for social order through education, instead of a police force. That is when the federal government mandated free education be provided to all children, the purpose was social, not vocational.

Vocational training did not begin until we mobilized for the first world war. The social purpose remained the priority, for National Defense purpose, until the military technology of the second world war changed our national defense needs. This is when education made the big shift towards preparing the young for the Military Industrial Complex.

To clarify, I will repeat, the military and industry want well trained people, not intellectual people. Past education for well rounded, individual growth, meant preparing everyone to be industrial and civic leaders. Their education was generalized, and this is what self governing people need to be. But what industry and the military wants is, specialized people. They become specialized through education and employment. Budget cuts always mean cutting the classes not deemed important to the Military, Industrial Complex. We need to discuss merit hiring to fully understand this point. Classes in philosophy do not add to the merit of those needed by industry and the military.

Everything you said is right on when there is understanding of the Military, Industrial Complex. Keeping in mind, the military doesn't care want color a person is or where the person comes from. It cares that person will obey orders, and not cause trouble. The person is a number, a part to plug into the machine. This is what education for technology for military and industrial purpose means. It is dehumanizing and amoral. Everyone can go to church for the human stuff, but please, do not impose your religion on others. Education for technology, has little to do with being individual humans. This education is also very bad for self governing people, who know little beyond their specialty and their own very limited, personal experience of reality.

Now baby is crying and I must I go. Will get to back as soon as I can.

 

[daveman]

...it is industry and the military in control of education.

No, it's unions and liberals in control of education.

 

[zzzz]

Let me interject something here. The reason we changed our education system in the 1950's was the Soviet launch of Sputnik. This technological achievement of the Soviets embarrassed the US, not only the government but the citizens of the country. We were not teaching American kids the math and science and needed to compete in the world. By changing our education system to concentrate more on math and science enabled this country to become the greatest superpower the World has known. Today that educational system has become corrupted and needs to be overhauled and refocused. In the 1950’s children had fathers and mothers. In today’s society a lot of kids have one or no parents and the family fabric has disintegrated. A new method of teaching needs to be introduced but in today’s partisan atmosphere I doubt that any progress can be made in this area.

 

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4SKL7f9n58]YouTube - Pink Floyd- Another Brick in the Wall[/ame]

 

[psikeyhackr]

b. In 1914, 57% of institutions had a literature requirement, by 1993 this was down to 14%. The same pattern appeared in philosophy, religion, social science, natural science, and mathematics.

In 1914 the neutron had not yet been discovered. That did not happen until 1932.

We are supposed to spend class time on pseudo-intellectual garbage that is totally subjective.

I don't hear unions or industrialists saying that accounting should ba mandatory in the schools. What have economists said about planned obsolescence since Galbraith mentioned it in 1959?

Now we can get free math.

Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus Phillips Thompson
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf

psik

 

[PoliticalChic]

Welcome...

My fav subject...and glad to see your most interesting view of the problem.
My view differs just a bit, as I see the leftward slant of the culture and of education as feeding on one another.

1. A major reason for the change is even more disheartening: Universities have abandoned intellect because it represented the barrier that rationality places in the way of politicization.

a. The move is toward ever more insistent and radical egalitarianism which is the very heart of modern liberalism, as “intellect in America is resented as a kind of excellence, as a claim to distinction, as a challenge to egalitarianism, as a quantity which almost certainly deprives a man or woman of the common touch.” Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” p. 51.

b. One can trace the anti-intellectualism, modern liberalism, and the passion for an evangelical equality as moving in tandem.

c. In light of the fact that rational thought can imperil many of the premises of the radical left, there has grown what is called post-modernism, an outright denial of truth. Even in science…

d. The leading proponents of ‘post-normal science,’ PNS, Funtowicz and Ravetz, have written that, in issue-driven science, ‘facts’ and ‘values’ are unified by replacing ‘truth’ by ‘quality.’
e. Students are taught by left-wing professors that traditional respect for logic, evidence, intellectual honesty, and the other requirements for scholastic discipline are not merely passé, but repressive, attempting to support a society that benefits only white, heterosexual males.

So I cannot agree that we aim at a technological education. No, we have simply eliminated a great deal of education

PoliticalChic, I think most people prefer short post, so I will respond to yours in two parts. And even then my reply will be way too long.

"..it [ Intellect] represented the barrier that rationality places in the way of politicization." Oh yeah, I don't think we have disagreement, but incomplete information. Industry and the military wants well trained personnel, not intellectual personnel, and it is industry and the military in control of education. This is not how public education began. It might help to understand how we come to have education in the first place, then we can understand the change in education.

Education in western culture, begins with the church. Paradoxically we owe much to the Catholic church for our secularism and democracy with liberty. Following the crusades the church accepted the Greek and Roman classics that had been lost to the Christian world, because the early Christians burnt libraries, but the classics were preserved by Arabs, who took pride in being well educated and in their private libraries that held the ancient documents. Later monks copied these ancient documents and spread them throughout Christian Europe. This lead to scholasticism, which becomes the renaissaunce of horrors humanism. You know, that line of thinking based on nature, filled all those pagan ideas about our human nature, and which give us the enlightenment opposing religious oppression, and the idea that God decides who is to be master, and who is be the servant/slave.

Jumping over a lot of detail, we get to the US with its democracy and liberty. The Statue of Liberty carries a book for literacy, and a torch for enlightenment. At the time, being literate meant literate in Greek and Roman classics, and of course Cicero, John Locke and Newton. You know those men who wrote of nature's laws and the the God of nature. Those men who were opposed to authority over the people, and devoted their lives to the cause of liberty and enlightenment.

Thomas Jefferson gave his fortune to trying to establish public education. He believed this is essential to a strong democratic republic. That is democratic culturally and with a republican form of government. There was not a united will supporting government support of public education, until around the 1840's. By this time, the east coast of the US was well established and anyone wanting the freedom of the New Land had to move west into Native American territory. Those who had already arrived, owed and controlled the land are resources, leaving immigrants to be poorly paid factory workers when industrialist enjoyed exploiting child laborers, and they lived with terrible work and living conditions. This disparity between the early arrivers and late arrivers, result in social unrest. We could have easily become a police state at this time, but instead, our shared idealism pushed for social order through education, instead of a police force. That is when the federal government mandated free education be provided to all children, the purpose was social, not vocational.

Vocational training did not begin until we mobilized for the first world war. The social purpose remained the priority, for National Defense purpose, until the military technology of the second world war changed our national defense needs. This is when education made the big shift towards preparing the young for the Military Industrial Complex.

To clarify, I will repeat, the military and industry want well trained people, not intellectual people. Past education for well rounded, individual growth, meant preparing everyone to be industrial and civic leaders. Their education was generalized, and this is what self governing people need to be. But what industry and the military wants is, specialized people. They become specialized through education and employment. Budget cuts always mean cutting the classes not deemed important to the Military, Industrial Complex. We need to discuss merit hiring to fully understand this point. Classes in philosophy do not add to the merit of those needed by industry and the military.

Everything you said is right on when there is understanding of the Military, Industrial Complex. Keeping in mind, the military doesn't care want color a person is or where the person comes from. It cares that person will obey orders, and not cause trouble. The person is a number, a part to plug into the machine. This is what education for technology for military and industrial purpose means. It is dehumanizing and amoral. Everyone can go to church for the human stuff, but please, do not impose your religion on others. Education for technology, has little to do with being individual humans. This education is also very bad for self governing people, who know little beyond their specialty and their own very limited, personal experience of reality.

Now baby is crying and I must I go. Will get to back as soon as I can.

"Education in western culture, begins with the church. "
Yes, and no. The connection was certainly broken with the French Revolution, wherein a distorted 'reason' replaced same.

1. How, more than interesting is it that in this most rational of eras, many who claim to be wedded to reason and liberty, have descended into irrationality and intolerance? The answer is that since the 18th century Enlightenment, many Westerners have made the mistake of believing that reason can exist separate from civilization, and that ‘enlightened’ necessitates a repudiation of religion.

2. In the Middle Ages, people were irrational and superstitious and ignorant, and went around killing each other in religious wars. Disapproval of these characteristics and events meant embracing of an anti-religion viewpoint, and then progress, liberty and happiness must follow!

3. 'The Enlightenment' has been given many differing definitions but it was, at its broadest, a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging 'scientific' thinking.

4. But history is a complex and curious process. While the Enlightenment may be seen as a reaction to the abuses of clerical authority, it must be remembered that the biblical imprecation that all humanity was equal, having been fashioned in the image of God, provided the template for liberty. And many Enlightenment thinkers were religious, albeit many were less Christians, but rather deists who believed in an impersonal god who did not interfere in human life.

a. Leibniz argued that the universe was composed of individual units in harmony with God’s divine ordinance.

b. John Locke thought that man’s duty to God to preserve mankind as part of Creation was the basic moral law of nature.

c. Isaac Newton and Joseph Priestly were devout Christians, but Dissenters.

5. In France, Enlightenment was joined not just with antipathy to clerical authority, but disgust with religion itself.

a. Voltaire claimed that the infamy was not just the Catholic Church, but Christianity itself, he cried "écrasez l'infâme," or "crush the infamous". The phrase refers to abuses to the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him.

b. Unlike France, thinkers in Britain and America embraced religion as an amalgamation with ‘social virture,’ in the former and ‘political liberty’, in the latter.

c. The French invested reason with the same dogmatic status as religion, creating a secular reflection of the Catholic Church. Reason, or nature, or the general will, became the civil religion. Thus authoritarianism was there from the time of the French Revolution.

d. The philosopher Condorcet believed that the application of mathematics and statistics to social policy would result in general happiness, truth and virtue.

e. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes today’s liberal’s doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.

6. The Conflict Between Reason and Liberty

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for ‘reason.’ But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that ‘enlightened despotism’ would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in ‘tyranny of popular opinion’ or even ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat.’

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: “We must reason about all things,” and anyone who ‘refuses to seek out the truth’ thereby renounces his human nature and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” So, once ‘truth’ is determined, anyone who doesn’t accept it was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.” It is not the individual who has the “ right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,” but only “the human race,” expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, “The Roads to Modernity,” p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau’s call for a “reign of virtue,’ proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In ‘The Social Contract’ Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: “the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.” Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” p. 3-7

While these may not be direct quotes, much of the thinking above is based on Melanie Phillips' "The World Turned Upside Down."

Now, if the changes in education were, as you propose, were based on the needs of the 'military-industrial complex,' how do you account for the same irrationality that we see in the EU, where sovereignty has been put aside, and therefore there is less need for said complex? They care not for borders, or for defense.
The EU is a fine example of the prominence of radical egalitarianism, ...

7. One can see that it is possible to lose sovereignty quickly. Consider the European Union. It began in 1957 when six countries signed a treaty agreeing that they would cooperate on certain economic matters. They established the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to interpret disputes about the treaty.

a. In the 1960’s the Court decreed that if acts of national parliament’s acts came into conflict with the treaty, the treaty would take precedence!

b. In the 1970’s the Court stated that it had precedence over national constitutions!

c. Today, whatever regulations are cranked out by the bureaucrats at the European Commission supersede both parliamentary statutes and national constitutions. This includes any questions about basic rights.

d. Neither does the EU have a constitution, nor does the EU have an army or police force for common control of its borders. Thus it has political superiority over member states, but declines to be responsible for its defense. Inherent in this idea of transcending nation-states is the idea that defense is unimportant.
(From a speech by Jeremy Rabkin, professor of law, George Mason School of Law, June 5, 2009 at Washington, D.C. sponsored by Hillsdale College.)

No, Carol, it is ideology rather than monetary or military considerations that has pierced the heart of learning.

 

[Carol]

Let me interject something here. The reason we changed our education system in the 1950's was the Soviet launch of Sputnik. This technological achievement of the Soviets embarrassed the US, not only the government but the citizens of the country. We were not teaching American kids the math and science and needed to compete in the world. By changing our education system to concentrate more on math and science enabled this country to become the greatest superpower the World has known. Today that educational system has become corrupted and needs to be overhauled and refocused. In the 1950’s children had fathers and mothers. In today’s society a lot of kids have one or no parents and the family fabric has disintegrated. A new method of teaching needs to be introduced but in today’s partisan atmosphere I doubt that any progress can be made in this area.

I think fear of the USSR as a nuclear power, that had just proven the capability of delivering a nuclear bomb, had more to do with Eisenhower asking congress for the 1958 National Defense Education Act, than embarrassment. Drilling students to duck under tables was not about embarrassment. The USSR got the nuclear information form a couple living in the USA who were concerned about the US being the only nuclear power. I don't remember this being an embarrassment. It was their guided missile technology that alarmed the US.

I think the change in the family can be associated with the change in public education. Women had fought for liberation from the day the US Constitution was written. Abigail Adam's prompted her husband to remember the women. However, the churches as well as teaching strong families are essential to a strong democracy, maintained traditional family values, until the change in education.

If I were to change public education, the first thing I would do is stop releasing the children for 3 months in the summer, so they can work in the fields. We stopped using our children in the fields a couple of years ago, and I think we are the only nation in the world that releases children in the summer so they can work in the fields.

 

[Carol]

"Education in western culture, begins with the church. "
Yes, and no. The connection was certainly broken with the French Revolution, wherein a distorted 'reason' replaced same.

1. How, more than interesting is it that in this most rational of eras, many who claim to be wedded to reason and liberty, have descended into irrationality and intolerance? The answer is that since the 18th century Enlightenment, many Westerners have made the mistake of believing that reason can exist separate from civilization, and that ‘enlightened’ necessitates a repudiation of religion.

2. In the Middle Ages, people were irrational and superstitious and ignorant, and went around killing each other in religious wars. Disapproval of these characteristics and events meant embracing of an anti-religion viewpoint, and then progress, liberty and happiness must follow!

3. 'The Enlightenment' has been given many differing definitions but it was, at its broadest, a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging 'scientific' thinking.

4. But history is a complex and curious process. While the Enlightenment may be seen as a reaction to the abuses of clerical authority, it must be remembered that the biblical imprecation that all humanity was equal, having been fashioned in the image of God, provided the template for liberty. And many Enlightenment thinkers were religious, albeit many were less Christians, but rather deists who believed in an impersonal god who did not interfere in human life.

a. Leibniz argued that the universe was composed of individual units in harmony with God’s divine ordinance.

b. John Locke thought that man’s duty to God to preserve mankind as part of Creation was the basic moral law of nature.

c. Isaac Newton and Joseph Priestly were devout Christians, but Dissenters.

5. In France, Enlightenment was joined not just with antipathy to clerical authority, but disgust with religion itself.

a. Voltaire claimed that the infamy was not just the Catholic Church, but Christianity itself, he cried "écrasez l'infâme," or "crush the infamous". The phrase refers to abuses to the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him.

b. Unlike France, thinkers in Britain and America embraced religion as an amalgamation with ‘social virture,’ in the former and ‘political liberty’, in the latter.

c. The French invested reason with the same dogmatic status as religion, creating a secular reflection of the Catholic Church. Reason, or nature, or the general will, became the civil religion. Thus authoritarianism was there from the time of the French Revolution.

d. The philosopher Condorcet believed that the application of mathematics and statistics to social policy would result in general happiness, truth and virtue.

e. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes today’s liberal’s doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.

6. The Conflict Between Reason and Liberty

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for ‘reason.’ But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that ‘enlightened despotism’ would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in ‘tyranny of popular opinion’ or even ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat.’

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: “We must reason about all things,” and anyone who ‘refuses to seek out the truth’ thereby renounces his human nature and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” So, once ‘truth’ is determined, anyone who doesn’t accept it was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.” It is not the individual who has the “ right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,” but only “the human race,” expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, “The Roads to Modernity,” p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau’s call for a “reign of virtue,’ proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In ‘The Social Contract’ Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: “the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.” Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” p. 3-7

While these may not be direct quotes, much of the thinking above is based on Melanie Phillips' "The World Turned Upside Down."

Now, if the changes in education were, as you propose, were based on the needs of the 'military-industrial complex,' how do you account for the same irrationality that we see in the EU, where sovereignty has been put aside, and therefore there is less need for said complex? They care not for borders, or for defense.
The EU is a fine example of the prominence of radical egalitarianism, ...

7. One can see that it is possible to lose sovereignty quickly. Consider the European Union. It began in 1957 when six countries signed a treaty agreeing that they would cooperate on certain economic matters. They established the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to interpret disputes about the treaty.

a. In the 1960’s the Court decreed that if acts of national parliament’s acts came into conflict with the treaty, the treaty would take precedence!

b. In the 1970’s the Court stated that it had precedence over national constitutions!

c. Today, whatever regulations are cranked out by the bureaucrats at the European Commission supersede both parliamentary statutes and national constitutions. This includes any questions about basic rights.

d. Neither does the EU have a constitution, nor does the EU have an army or police force for common control of its borders. Thus it has political superiority over member states, but declines to be responsible for its defense. Inherent in this idea of transcending nation-states is the idea that defense is unimportant.
(From a speech by Jeremy Rabkin, professor of law, George Mason School of Law, June 5, 2009 at Washington, D.C. sponsored by Hillsdale College.)

No, Carol, it is ideology rather than monetary or military considerations that has pierced the heart of learning.

That is an excellent explanation of the ideology for liberal education. Where are you getting your information?

What is the ideology of the 1958 National Defense Education Act, that was suppose to last for 4 years, but instead permanently changed public education?

 

[zzzz]

Let me interject something here. The reason we changed our education system in the 1950's was the Soviet launch of Sputnik. This technological achievement of the Soviets embarrassed the US, not only the government but the citizens of the country. We were not teaching American kids the math and science and needed to compete in the world. By changing our education system to concentrate more on math and science enabled this country to become the greatest superpower the World has known. Today that educational system has become corrupted and needs to be overhauled and refocused. In the 1950’s children had fathers and mothers. In today’s society a lot of kids have one or no parents and the family fabric has disintegrated. A new method of teaching needs to be introduced but in today’s partisan atmosphere I doubt that any progress can be made in this area.

I think fear of the USSR as a nuclear power, that had just proven the capability of delivering a nuclear bomb, had more to do with Eisenhower asking congress for the 1958 National Defense Education Act, than embarrassment. Drilling students to duck under tables was not about embarrassment. The USSR got the nuclear information form a couple living in the USA who were concerned about the US being the only nuclear power. I don't remember this being an embarrassment. It was their guided missile technology that alarmed the US.

I think the change in the family can be associated with the change in public education. Women had fought for liberation from the day the US Constitution was written. Abigail Adam's prompted her husband to remember the women. However, the churches as well as teaching strong families are essential to a strong democracy, maintained traditional family values, until the change in education.

If I were to change public education, the first thing I would do is stop releasing the children for 3 months in the summer, so they can work in the fields. We stopped using our children in the fields a couple of years ago, and I think we are the only nation in the world that releases children in the summer so they can work in the fields.

Yes it was fear and embarrassment. Sputnik did not just make the Soviets the first in space it gave them the capability to strike to the US with ICBM’s. Before this the only delivery system was bombers and as history has proven time and time again bombers always get through. That’s why we had the “duck and cover” drills. But we did have some defense against bombers, at least here in the Midwest. But there was no defense against ICBM’s.

So you are saying that the American family has disintegrated because public education’s focus changed? The focus changed to a more technical education so we could compete in the world. This change did not change our morals. The church has been and still is a vital part of many American families and it still provides a moral base for many of us. I believe the change in American society starting with the 60’s and the various movements back then initiated the change in the family. The introduction of the “pill” made sex more doable and the “free love” of the 60’s resulted in a rise of out of wedlock births and brought about more one parent families. This social corruption of our morals continues today.

Of course there were many other influences that contributed to the decline of the American family. And the change in education was a part but not the main cause of that disintegration. And let me say there are still many American families that have morals and live a moral life and stay together. They are just fewer and fewer every year.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"Education in western culture, begins with the church. "
Yes, and no. The connection was certainly broken with the French Revolution, wherein a distorted 'reason' replaced same.

1. How, more than interesting is it that in this most rational of eras, many who claim to be wedded to reason and liberty, have descended into irrationality and intolerance? The answer is that since the 18th century Enlightenment, many Westerners have made the mistake of believing that reason can exist separate from civilization, and that ‘enlightened’ necessitates a repudiation of religion.

2. In the Middle Ages, people were irrational and superstitious and ignorant, and went around killing each other in religious wars. Disapproval of these characteristics and events meant embracing of an anti-religion viewpoint, and then progress, liberty and happiness must follow!

3. 'The Enlightenment' has been given many differing definitions but it was, at its broadest, a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century which stressed human reasoning over blind faith or obedience and was thus in contrast with much of the religious and political order of the day, while also encouraging 'scientific' thinking.

4. But history is a complex and curious process. While the Enlightenment may be seen as a reaction to the abuses of clerical authority, it must be remembered that the biblical imprecation that all humanity was equal, having been fashioned in the image of God, provided the template for liberty. And many Enlightenment thinkers were religious, albeit many were less Christians, but rather deists who believed in an impersonal god who did not interfere in human life.

a. Leibniz argued that the universe was composed of individual units in harmony with God’s divine ordinance.

b. John Locke thought that man’s duty to God to preserve mankind as part of Creation was the basic moral law of nature.

c. Isaac Newton and Joseph Priestly were devout Christians, but Dissenters.

5. In France, Enlightenment was joined not just with antipathy to clerical authority, but disgust with religion itself.

a. Voltaire claimed that the infamy was not just the Catholic Church, but Christianity itself, he cried "écrasez l'infâme," or "crush the infamous". The phrase refers to abuses to the people by royalty and the clergy that Voltaire saw around him.

b. Unlike France, thinkers in Britain and America embraced religion as an amalgamation with ‘social virture,’ in the former and ‘political liberty’, in the latter.

c. The French invested reason with the same dogmatic status as religion, creating a secular reflection of the Catholic Church. Reason, or nature, or the general will, became the civil religion. Thus authoritarianism was there from the time of the French Revolution.

d. The philosopher Condorcet believed that the application of mathematics and statistics to social policy would result in general happiness, truth and virtue.

e. Henri de Saint-Simon, the articulator of socialism, argued for the supremacy of the sciences over religion, and predicted that, like religious, secular propaganda would employ artists and poets. His collaborator, Auguste Comte, also saw the need for a secular religion, a scientific materialism, which contends that the only reality is what can be detected and measured by human senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. His authoritarian thinking shapes today’s liberal’s doctrinaire insistence that science has the explanation for all things.

6. The Conflict Between Reason and Liberty

a. In France, there was the development of an apparatus of ideological enforcement for ‘reason.’ But rather than necessitate liberty, Edmund Burke was prescient enough to predict that ‘enlightened despotism’ would be embodied in the general will, a formula for oppression as in ‘tyranny of popular opinion’ or even ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat.’

b. Although attributed to Rousseau, it was Diderot who gave the model for totalitarianism of reason: “We must reason about all things,” and anyone who ‘refuses to seek out the truth’ thereby renounces his human nature and “should be treated by the rest of his species as a wild beast.” So, once ‘truth’ is determined, anyone who doesn’t accept it was “either insane or wicked and morally evil.” It is not the individual who has the “ right to decide about the nature of right and wrong,” but only “the human race,” expressed as the general will. Himmelfarb, “The Roads to Modernity,” p. 167-68

c. Robespierre used Rousseau’s call for a “reign of virtue,’ proclaiming the Republic of Virtue, his euphemism for The Terror. In ‘The Social Contract’ Rousseau advocated death for anyone who did not uphold the common values of the community: the totalitarian view of reshaping of humanity, echoed in communism, Nazism, progressivism. Robespierre: “the necessity of bringing about a complete regeneration and, if I may express myself so, of creating a new people.” Himmefarb, Ibid.

d. In this particular idea of the Enlightenment, the need to change human nature, and to eliminate customs and traditions, to remake established institutions, to do away with all inequalities in order to bring man closer to the state, which was the expression of the general will. Talmon, “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy,” p. 3-7

While these may not be direct quotes, much of the thinking above is based on Melanie Phillips' "The World Turned Upside Down."

Now, if the changes in education were, as you propose, were based on the needs of the 'military-industrial complex,' how do you account for the same irrationality that we see in the EU, where sovereignty has been put aside, and therefore there is less need for said complex? They care not for borders, or for defense.
The EU is a fine example of the prominence of radical egalitarianism, ...

7. One can see that it is possible to lose sovereignty quickly. Consider the European Union. It began in 1957 when six countries signed a treaty agreeing that they would cooperate on certain economic matters. They established the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to interpret disputes about the treaty.

a. In the 1960’s the Court decreed that if acts of national parliament’s acts came into conflict with the treaty, the treaty would take precedence!

b. In the 1970’s the Court stated that it had precedence over national constitutions!

c. Today, whatever regulations are cranked out by the bureaucrats at the European Commission supersede both parliamentary statutes and national constitutions. This includes any questions about basic rights.

d. Neither does the EU have a constitution, nor does the EU have an army or police force for common control of its borders. Thus it has political superiority over member states, but declines to be responsible for its defense. Inherent in this idea of transcending nation-states is the idea that defense is unimportant.
(From a speech by Jeremy Rabkin, professor of law, George Mason School of Law, June 5, 2009 at Washington, D.C. sponsored by Hillsdale College.)

No, Carol, it is ideology rather than monetary or military considerations that has pierced the heart of learning.

That is an excellent explanation of the ideology for liberal education. Where are you getting your information?

What is the ideology of the 1958 National Defense Education Act, that was suppose to last for 4 years, but instead permanently changed public education?

While there are several sources listed in the post, if you only have time to read one book, I would suggest Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism."

"What is the ideology of the 1958 National Defense Education Act, ..."
I wouldn't think of discounting specifics that one can point to, as this one dealt with Sputnik, 1957. As for duration, government programs take on a life of their own, successful or not, redundant or not...

But one must not overlook the larger picture, the deathgrip of modern liberalism, which accelerated in the 1960's.

"The breakup of this 300-year-old consensus on the work ethic began with the cultural protests of the 1960s, which questioned and discarded many traditional American virtues. The roots of this breakup lay in what Daniel Bell described in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism as the rejection of traditional bourgeois qualities by late-nineteenth-century European artists and intellectuals who sought “to substitute for religion or morality an aesthetic justification of life.” By the 1960s, that modernist tendency had evolved into a credo of self-fulfillment in which “nothing is forbidden, all is to be explored,” Bell wrote. Out went the Protestant ethic’s prudence, thrift, temperance, self-discipline, and deferral of gratification. Weakened along with all these virtues that made up the American work ethic was Americans’ belief in the value of work itself. Along with “turning on” and “tuning in,” the sixties protesters also “dropped out.” As the editor of the 1973 American Work Ethic noted, “affluence, hedonism and radicalism” were turning many Americans away from work and the pursuit of career advancement…"
Whatever Happened to the Work Ethic? by Steven Malanga, City Journal Summer 2009

The above from a long but worthwhile essay.


If you want to see the decline of the culture in the words of the assassins themselves, the unrest of the sixties was born in June of 1962 at the AFT-CIO camp at Port Huron, Michigan.
Some prior rumblings had been heard in a nascent civil rights movement, and from the Free Speech movement at Berkeley- but it was the Port Huron meetings that represented the heart of Sixties radicalism.
1. Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, a small group of alienated, left-wing college students, 59 from 11 campuses.
2. One member gave this prescription: “four-square against anti-Communism, eight-square against American-culture, twelve-square against sell-out unions, one hundred and twenty against an interpretation of the Cold War that saw it as a Soviet plot and identified American policy fondly.” Todd Gitlin, “The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage,” p. 109-110
3. A draft of the meeting can be found at Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962

The people who participated in and wrote the Port Huron draft now run the colleges, MSM, and Democrat Party.

If you haven't done so, you might find the above outline fleshed out in Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah" at your local library.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The former education focused on logic and independent thinking.

Science depends on logic and independent thinking. Propagating culture depends on preventing independent thinking.

Double-entry accounting is 700 years old. How is it that educators and economists haven't suggested that i be mandatory in the schools by now.

Do the economic power games depend on keeping most people ignorant? The schools indoctrinate people to be workers and get their egos wrapped up in their jobs.

What do you want to BE when you grow up? How about a competent human being and the job is irrelevant?

psik

 

[Douger]

But...........

 

[Carol]

I have down graded to dial up and this really sucks. I thought I already replied but I don't it, so I will try again.

I would like to do a thread just about family. I have learned it is safer to say one is homosexual, than to say "I enjoy being feminine and relying on a man". When I was in grade school, in Hollywood, California, there was a Girls' Club and a Boy's Club. That is girls and boys were kept separate and taught gender based skills. When I was in high school, girls studied home economics, and boys didn't take economic classes. I am as aware as anyone can be of the problems with traditional values, and the gender discrimination. I don't want to cover all the arguments here, but tell me which forum should we use to argue these value issues?

Here it needs to be said, we no longer have gender divisions in school. PoliticalChic, has given us excellent information, but incomplete. Very important is the decline in college education. Incomplete is the decline in grade school education. I never thought I would be in favor of burning books, but after volunteering in grade school library, I think a barbique using the books for fuel, might be a good idea. A school library with Books like "Captain Underpants" and no classics, should infuriate parents, but today's parents don't know any better, because their education wasn't any better.

When my children were in school, I trusted the schools knew what they were doing, and that their knowledge would mean they were better preparing my children for the future than I could I. That was a terrible mistake. My children's generation lead the National Youth Crisis. Those kids on drugs appearing to have turned their backs on their parents values, was not a personal problem. We didn't suddenly have mutant parents. It was a national problem, begun in 1958 and things have gone from bad to worse. Now before anyone gets defensive, I see major improvements in some areas. The skills of many young people are very impressive. There is some huge improvements in male behaviors, but the flip side of this is single mothers, living off the government, that give the word "bastard" meaning. Effectively my sister and I were bastard children, because my parents divorced, and we grew up with all the relative privation of bastard children. I am not intending to offend anyone, but to clarify, that hardships of single parents hurts the children, unless that single parent has plenty of support, like Obama's mother obviously had. My point here is, my son and daughter thought I was old fashioned and out dated, and every generation we get further away from the previous libertal education, the worse things get. My children's generation can not teach their children better, because they didn't learn better. The culture was not transmitted.

Compare, liberal education with education for a technological society with unknown values.
The most important thing public education did was transmit a culture, and it stopped doing this. This occurs long before college. It occurs in the grade schools. PoliticalChic has called this modern liberalism. Okay, what caused the modern liberalism? The 1958 National Defense Education Act, happened before the 1960's. I was in school when the change was implement. My teachers were walking around in a state of shock, and as we were doing air raid drills, their state of shock was firghtening to me. Finally, a male teacher explanation, their reason for teaching had just been changed. That is, at that moment in time, education for a technological society replaced what Eisenhower called our "domenstic education". We began preparing our young to serve the Military Industrial Complex.

psikeyhackr's, criticism of education is criticism of the changed purpose. Before the change we prepared all children to be independent thinkers and well rounded people. I hate the term "modern liberalism" because it effective creates a lie. Liberal education prepared children to have meaningful and purposeful lives. It prepared them to be responsibility citizens. We still have a lot to talk about. Our democracy has been turn upside down. There are some good changes and some bad ones.

zzzz, Christianity without education for democracy, is not a good thing. In fact, Christianity can be as bad for democracy as Islam. The bible is poor in helping us understand morals are a matter of reason, and this understanding of morals is essential to democracy. No religion is the sole authority of God and morals. Nothing could be more destructive of our democracy than to tell people they do not have God and morals, unless they are not fundamentalist Christians. Thomas Jeifferson edited the bible so it would be compatible with science. When a religion fights science and insist what they believe is truth, the religion is killing itself. Eventually, Protestants and Cahtolics had to accept the heavenly bodies are not prefect orbs, and they do not circle the earth, but still Christians fight science, and insist we can not have God and morals without the mythology of the bible. Perhaps this too should be another thread? What is a good forum for discussing the importance of Deism, verses fundamental Christianity? I think we should have the word "God" in text books, and that education needs to return to education for good moral judgment, and I wish Christianity would stop being a problem opposing this goal.

 

[eots]

You can thank this guy...


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COf_6dajr1M]YouTube - Edward Bernays Assassin of Democracy[/ame]

 

[lizzie]

Carol, both you and PoliticalChic have made excellent points, and I tend to believe it’s a combination of both your views.

Until 1958 the US had liberal education. This was modeled after Athens education for well rounded, individual growth. It used Greek and Roman classics to build a cultural democracy, where government is only one aspect of manifesting democracy.

Interesting to me, because my husband was born in 1950, and he was taught the classics in grade school. I was born in 1958, and was not taught the classics at all in public school.

In 1958 the US replaced its liberal education with Germany's model of education for technology for military and industrial purpose. The US stopped transmitting its culture, in favor of educating for a technological society with unknown values, and preparing its young to be products for industry.

Just a casual observation here, and not anything that is provable, but that could be related to the fact that we have so many citizens of German descent in this country (myself being one of them). Germans tend to be highly intelligent in practical application sciences, and in my observation tend to be lacking in creative/artistic endeavors. (Not always, of course, but generally speaking).

The former education was focused on good moral judgement, and later leaves moral training to the church. This is perhaps the worst threat to the culture of democracy, that is now being destroyed. It has lead to many problems, including thinking God and morality are the sole property of church authority.

This is probably primarily due to the separation of church and state issue. It’s really not the traditionally religious people in the country who have pushed for getting morality out of the classroom, but the segment of society who believes that morality doesn’t belong in the classroom because they are opposed to religion on principle. I agree that living in a free society requires dedication to moral standards, but in our current society, a significant portion of the population seems to believe that morality cannot and should not be taught in any publicly funded institution of learning.

The former education focused on logic and independent thinking. The later focuses on memorization and "group think".

Imo, this is because people in power desire a dependent and ignorant population. Without an ignorant population, their power would shrink.

Teachers argued, an institution for education for making good citizenship, is good for education for making patriotic citizens. Of course, for national defense reasons, they won the argument and public schools were used to mobilize us for two world wars. Not until the military technology of WWII, flying across oceans and dropping atom bombs, was our liberal education replace with education for technology for military and industrial purpose.

This seems to conflict with your statement that public education was changed in 1958, well after both world wars were fought. Am I missing something?
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

 

[Carol]

eots Would you please start a thread with the u-tube explanation of how the CIA was used to further the United Fruit Company and a country was thrown into war, to protect this companies interest. Then invite people to say what they think of what happened? And do you have anything to say about this thread being arbitrarily put in Conspiracy theories forum, instead of recognizing the thread as valid history belonging in the history and education forum?

By the way it takes so long to download u-tube with dial up, I took my dog for a walk while it was loading.

lizzie, thank you for verifying the change in public education. We used the classics to transmit a culture. Transmitting that culture was the sole purpose of public education, until we mobilized for the first world war, and added vocational training to appease industry, and better meet changing national defense needs. We maintained the cultural education, because really stressed it, during both world wars, so the public is very clear about what made our democracy different and why we had to defend it. I have grade school text books that make Germany look like the evil enemy, used in public schools before we declared war on Germany. What is really unnerving, is we are now like those old text books say Germany was. We have imitated Germany in every significant way, and are now what we defended our democracy against.

Charles Sarolea studied the Germans intimately in the beginning of 1900. He said they were congenial artistic and dreamy people, but the Prussians who took control of Germany were sour and dour people. The Prussians did to German education, what we have done to ours.

I know my post are too long, so I am trying to high light your most important comments. We had education for good moral judgment without religion. That is the most important point I want to get across. We read stories to our children, such as "The Little Red Hen" and then would ask, what is the moral of that story? The moral of "The Little Red Hen" story is she asked everyone to help grow wheat and then to make bread, and none of her friends would help her with any part of the processes, so she did not share her bread with them.

The concept of morals comes from ancient Athens. It means to know good manners and "the law". Now by "the law" means universal law of cause and effect. Some is moral because good things result from it and something is immoral because bad things result from it. Education for good moral judgment is learning essential concepts, such as cause and effect, and logic, so the individual is capable of determining what is moral and what is not. This was true of our education from the time Thomas Jefferson was educated, until the 1958 National Defense Education Act.

The U-tube explanation of mind control and using fear to control the masses goes with the change in public education, that makes the people even easier to manipulate, and Bush sneering when explaining why people were having trouble with the change in Medicare and who pays for prescriptions. He sneered and said some people just don't making decisions. His father boosted of the US being the leader of New World Order. The US lead terror attack that was an imitation of Germany, was not the way the US has imitated Germany. These imitations of Germany have been intense every since the second world war.

Let me clarify. The Germans were very much like Americans, but it was the Prussians that militarized them, and now the same thing has been done to the US. At the end of war, the US brought home ever German who could advance our military and CIA, that they could. College professors teach the German philosophy and values, and we no longer teach the classics. The US has become what it fought against, and US citizens are not different from Germans. The culture that made is different is a forgotten past.

 

[zzzz]

The US has become what it fought against, and US citizens are not different from Germans. The culture that made is different is a forgotten past.

So you are saying we are Fascists?
That we are an immoral country?
And it is because Ike changed the focus of education from the classics to science and math?

Life is a complicated voyage for us as individuals and life as a nation is even more complicated. The immoral behavior that is exhibited today traces its roots in part to the irresponsibility of parents to teach their children values. It is the responsibility of the parent to instill in children what is right and wrong not the school system. That is where society has failed.

Note: Why are you complaining about dial up. You asked for it!

 

[Carol]

Teachers argued, an institution for making good citizenship, is good for making patriotic citizens. Of course, for national defense reasons, they won the argument and public schools were used to mobilize us for two world wars. Not until the military technology of WWII, flying across oceans and dropping atom bombs, was our liberal education replace with education for technology for military and industrial purpose.

Lizzie asked
"This seems to conflict with your statement that public education was changed in 1958, well after both world wars were fought. Am I missing something?"

Thank you for pointing out when I am unclear. As we all know military technology changes, but the US wasn't interested war or military technology. It did not have any serious enemies and the people thought the Atlantic and Pacific oceans protected them from any serious threat of war. They also were strongly opposed to spending money on the military and war. They had a few soldiers for fighting Indians, but not a military industry. They had gun makers, because people moving west didn't have super markets, but forest and prairies and rivers full of game food. People went hunting for their groceries, okay? People weren't buying planes and subs loaded with weapons, okay? No military industry, okay? Help me here, how should I convey this totally different reality to people with no memory of our past?

Our national defense did not depend on a Military Industrial Complex as it does today. It depended on people understanding our democracy, (the culture that is a forgotten past), and why it must be defended (from what we have become). That is until the second world war, when we were caught with our pants down. It is time for some strong pagan euphemisms here, shit, oh dear, we were totally unprepared for war. We began mobilizing for war a good year before we declare war. This included text books explaining what made us different from Germans, and a lot of books for the general public about our national principles and values. I collect these books, and that is why I have ideas very different from what is normal. But do you realize, England had disarmed its citizens, and at the beginning of WWII US families sent the British their hunting rifles? During the war, males too old and too young for war, protected the Pacific coast with their family hunting guns and their own dynamite. I am telling you, we were not prepared for war, mentally nor in arms. Our military strategy was none existent. We were completely unprepared for air warfare.

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, no one could fight back. All the ammunition was locked below deck. On one ship in complete desperation the men began loaded the guns with potatoes and were shooting potatoes at the Japanese bombers. Seriously, we were not prepared for war.

Following the second world war Truman demobilized our military and the military industry as we did after every war. Understand, no Military Industrial Complex. But we no sooner shut everything down, and we are engaged in the Korean war. We never again demobilized our military industrial. During the Eisenhower administration, the military industry was made permanent, and it became one of the largest industries of the nation. Now we can demobilize because demobilizing would cause an economic disaster. This industry has been assured constant government support, even when we are not engaged in war. This is what the Military Industrial Complex is.

While minor changes to public education were made when we mobilized for the first world war, our priority in national defense was education for patriotism. WWII made our priority rapid development of technology, but this did not effectively change public education until Eisenhower asked congress for the 1958 National Defense Education Act. This was supposed to be a temporary, 4 year change, in response to Sputnik. It became a permanent change. The US is now as focused on war, as Prussian control Germany was.

Yes, the change is well after both wars, and this thread should not be in the conspiracy theory forum. The change was the result of changed national defense needs. This thread is about history fact, not conspiracy theory. The U-tube information is very important to our understanding of the change and the ways it came about, that we are not fully aware of. Strong pagan euphemisms again &*%&$^$^*, we have been using our CIA and military force to defend the economic interest or industries at tax payers expense, and the countries we invade or where we use the CIA to incite revolutions are not threats to our nation. But without knowing it, we are a threat to the health and welfare of people around the world.