by Al Benson Jr.
I expect, at this point, I need to shed a little light on the origins of the public, or government, school system. It is worth noting, contrary to the most vocal liberal opinion, that the "public school movement" in this country did not even exist until the 1830s.
Horace Mann (1796-1859) has been called the "father of the common schools." I have seen no history book to date that bothered to tell anyone that Horace Mann was a Unitarian, a member of a "Christian" denomination that denies the deity of Jesus Christ. Unitarians, especially in the New England states, were in the front lines of the struggle to implement compulsory public schools.
The Unitarians felt that Christian schools were backward. They felt that education must be concerned with "liberty" and that "liberty" came from the state, not from God. In their eyes, education, to fulfill its calling, had to be government-run. Mr. Mann felt that government-run schools would rid the nation of crime, poverty, sin, etc., within a century. Well, the century has passed, and guess what? To say that Mann's claim was erroneous would be a gross understatement.
Back in the mid-1970s historian Antony C. Sutton wrote a number of informative books, among which were "Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution" and "Wall Street and FDR." More material you won't find in the "history" books. In 1986 he wrote one, one of his last, called "America's Secret Establishment--An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones." We've all heard about several prominent politicians who belonged to it--George Bush, John Kerry I think, and many more--but they refuse to talk about it. It really is America's secret establishment. And as such, it is into the public school education program. You might say the Order has a vested interest.
In his book Sutton noted that "A tragic failure of American education in this century has been a failure to teach children how to read and write and how to express themselves in a literary form. For the educational system this may not be too distressing. As we shall see later, their prime purpose is not to teach subject matter but to condition children to live as socially integrated citizen units in an organic society--a real life enactment of the Hegelian absolute State. In this State the individual finds freedom only in obedience to the State, consequently the function of education is to prepare the individual citizen for smooth entry into the organic whole." No place for God or His Law in this setup--the man-made State is top dog.
Sutton observed that possibly the Order wants "citizen components" to be "little more than automated order takers;..." After all, citizens that can barely read or write are not too likely to challenge the Establishment. They are, to all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate.
It's also interesting to note that the "Look-Say" reading method that most of us were taught to read with in primary public school was developed around 1810 for deaf mutes. So why was it picked up and used for generations of children that did not have these problems?
According to Sutton, on page 83 of his book: "Horace Mann, whom we met in Memorandum Two as the promoter of 'look-say' reading was the first president of Antioch College (1853-1860). The most prominent trustee of Antioch College was none other than the co-founder of the Order, Alphonso Taft..Furthermore, Cincinnati, Ohio at that time was the center for a Young Hegelian Movement including famous left Hegelian August Willich, and these were well known to Judge Alphonso Taft." For anyone that has read the book Donnie Kennedy and I wrote "Lincoln's Marxists" (Pelican Publishing, Gretna, Louisiana) the name August Willich will ring a bell. He was one of Abraham Lincoln's Marxist generals during the War of Northern Aggression.
It seems that Mr. Mann, the "father of the common schools" had some interesting connections.
Could it be that the real purpose of the public schools was not to much to educate as to indoctrinate? That's the conclusion that Antony Sutton has arrived at and my research over the years has brought me to the point where I have to agree with his assessment.
To be continued.
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