Video from Academy of Ideas
"In this video we examine how public schools and the mainstream media have contributed to the growth of a passive citizenry, thus paving the way for the rise of tyranny. We then look at the role anti-authoritarians play in a free and flourishing society." from video introduction.
Have our public schools and media dumbed us down and made passive sheep out of us all? Is our current social decline in part due to these elements at work? Are we now sheep to be slaughtered?
Schools in America by and large do not teach students how to think or explore a wide range of ideas.
“I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
Our schools produce mediocre intellects in whom find comfort in following incompetent politicians and movie stars. today most young people who graduate from high cannot count change or balance their checkbooks.
Can our culture ever flourish again with such a citizenry?