Why Public Schools and the Mainstream Media Dumb Us Down

Why Public Schools and the Mainstream Media Dumb Us Down

"Resist much, obey little;

Once unquestioning obedience,

once fully enslaved; Once fully enslaved,

no nation, state, city, of this earth, ever

afterward resumes its liberty."

This were the words of caution which the great poet

Walt Whitman offered to his fellow Americans.

For Whitman recognised that crucial to a free and

flourishing society are men and women

who are willing to question and even resist authority

when necessary. But today, very few of us

live by the ideal espoused by Whitman--

rather blind obedience is the norm. We have

become populations of sheep--easily to be

herded into the chains of tyranny.

But what has led those of us in the West to largely

shun the advice of Whitman? In this video we will examine two institutions that have played

an integral role of the breeding of a passive citizenry--

the compulsory state-run education system,

which in North America is called The Public School System,

and the mainstream media. Public schooling

is viewed as one of the shining lights of the modern Western world.

Who could question the value of an institution that provides

free and compulsory education for all?

But, as with many institutions of our day, the textbook

picture of who the institutions should work

greatly diverges from the reality of how it does work.

If public schools taught individuals how to think, if they promoted intellectual curiosity

and produced citizens healthy in body and mind,

then few would question their value. But beneath

the veneer, presented by the bureaucrats

that run this institution, a darker reality emerges.

Whereas John Taylor Gatto, a former teacher turned one of public

schoolings greatest critics, writes

Noam Chomsky echoed

this sentiment, writing in his book 'Understanding Power'

To some this may sound like heresy, but a study

of history reveals that this was the intention from the

the very start. The state-run school systems

in the West were modelled off the factory style of education

first introduced in Prussia in the early 1700s

Albert Einstein, an individual

who reached heights of genius rarely seen, did

not credit his compulsory schooling

with his intellectual development. Reflecting

back on his school years, Einstein noted that

after completing his final examinations

his interest in the field he would go on to revolutionise

was all but dead.

Einstein believed that

one of the major flaws of compulsory state-run

education systems is their forced

style of teaching.

After well over a decade of indoctrination

in the school system, few emerge with a great thirst for knowledge

and a curiosity toward the many mysteries of the

world. Instead, as Bruce Levine writes in his

book, 'Resisting Illegitimate Authority', by the time a student graduates

But if our schooling cannot be relied upon to generate

the critical and curious minds needed to protect a society

from the actions of corrupted authorities,

can the mainstream media play this role? While

there has been an increasing skepticism toward this

institution in recent years,

distaste and distrust toward the mainstream media

has a long history.

Nietzsche, one of the most intellectually free and curious minds

of history, was also no fan of the mainstream media.

Richard Weaver,

a professor at the University of Chicago in the first half of

the twentieth century, found it ironic that while we

have freed ourselves from the earth-centric view of the cosmos--

we have all the while dove head-long

into an illusory view of the world created by the mainstream

media. And while Weaver focuses on newspapers

in the following passage, as they were the dominant

medium of his day, his words are even more applicable

today; where modern technologies offer far

better tools for the manipulation of the masses

But why does the mainstream media so often choose

deception over truth? Noam Chomsky in his book

'Media Control', suggests that

like many politicians, the mainstream media

is dominated by individuals who adhere to

an elitist ideology. The twentieth century

journalist Walter Lippmann epitomized this view,

calling the masses the "bewildered herd" in suggesting

that one of the main functions of the media is to

put this herd in its proper place as passive spectators

not active participants, in the organization

of a society.

For as Chomsky explains, this elitest

ideology is built on the notion...

For those of us who are not among the self-annointed elite

the question arises as to whether the controlling of the bewildered herd

is done in order to promote a prosperous and

flourishing society or merely to maintain certain

institutional structures, which favour the elites

to the detriment of society at large. This

open question only reinforces the need for a

more skeptical attitude toward the authority figures

of our day. We need, in other words, more

anti-authoritarians. It must be stressed

that an anti-authoritarian is not someone

who in place of a passive acceptance of authority

adopts a passive rejection of all authority.

Many institutions and authority figures serve

a beneficial purpose, and therefore should be accepted.

But anti-authoritarians recognize that consensus

does not mean truth, that power corrupts, that people lie

and that some institutions, in the words of Chomsky,

Recognizing these undeniable facts,

the anti-authoritarian is willing to look at all authority

figures with a healthy dose of skepticisim

and potentially even resist their commands, if such

authority proves corrupt and harmful to the wellbeing

of a society. Whereas Henry David Thoreau wrote...

But should we fear a world with more

anti-authoritarians? The obedience bred into us

in school and the blind deference to authority promoted by

the talking heads of the mainstream media

may lead some to view anti-authoritarians

as a threat to the stability of a society, but nothing could

be farther from the truth.

Anti-authoritarians are the crucial protectors of a flourishing

society, for as the author CP Snow

noted...

Malevolent authority combined with a passive citizenry

is the recipe for tyranny and so

anti-authoritarians should not be feared or

ostracized, they should be welcomed.

They are the individuals who raise the alarm and awaken the slumbering

masses to the existence of corrupt authority.

A society without a healthy number of anti-authoritarians

where a society in which anti-authoritarians

are shunned and silenced is a

society that has chosen the comfort of illusions

over the desire for truth and is, therefore, a society

paving the way for its own destruction.

Whereas, the 18th century French philosopher, Voltaire, cautioned.