the control of human behavior

impose on the young the ideal of subordination."

to think of themselves as employees competing for the favor of management€

The ability to think as independent producers had to be curtailed

redefined the term "education" after the Prussian fashion as "a means to achieve
important economic and social goals of a national character."

"lose its independent identity as well as its authority,"

mass schooling as a vast demonstration project of human inadequacy
controlling the mind and movements of the young,

In 1996, after five years of record profitability, almost half of all Americans in big
business feared being laid off. This fear keeps a brake on wages

A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual
competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own
requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless,
godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld
is a subject worth arguing about.

Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating,
creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy—these are precisely
what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.

"We must continue to produce an uneducated social class.

at the bottom of the pile, a group between 92 and 94 percent of the population
attended "people’s schools" where they learned obedience, cooperation and correct
attitudes, along with rudiments of literacy

Administrative utopias are a peculiar kind of dreaming by those in power, driven by

an urge to arrange the lives of others, organizing them for production, combat, or
detention

to break student potential "for forming the habit of independent and individual effort.

Duty should come first and pleasure should grow out of the discharge of it."

they can be trusted to continue being their predictable, dedicated, selfless selves

distances us from hand-to-hand encounters with authority

When you stand at a machine or sit at a computer you need an ability to withdraw
from life, to alienate yourself without a supervisor.
No more wars, no civil disputes, just people waiting around pleasantly Waiting for
Teacher to tell them what to do.
The psychological tool was alienation. The trick was to alienate children from
themselves so they couldn’t turn inside for strength, to alienate them from their
families, religions, cultures, etc., so that no countervailing force could intervene

Urban confinement robbed men and women of their ability to find satisfaction outside
the titillation of mechanical excitation. Whoever provided excitement became the
master.

Fathers were grossly diverted by nonagricultural labor from training their own
children. Claims of a right to society and fashion led to neglect by mothers,

perfect interchangeability, perfect subordination

Utopian thinking is intolerant of variety or competition

Citizens who thought alike on most issues

"Where the whole tendency of education is to create obedience

to train the population as consumers rather than independent producers.

gullibility among well-schooled masses. Jacques Ellul is the most compelling analyst
of this awful phenomenon, in his canonical essay Propaganda. He fingers schooling as
an unparalleled propaganda instrument; if a schoolbook prints it and a teacher affirms
it, who is so bold as to demur?

unquestioned obedience."
"the cult of the easy," "a step backwards in human development," "focusing on
the group instead of the individual." One principal predicted if the plan were kept,
retardation would multiply as a result of minimal contact between teachers and
students.

Poverty can’t make you miserable; only a bad character and a weak spirit can do that.

easy access to pornography as an indirect form of

sterilization for underclass men

low-wage rates to dull the zest for life

The men’s club emerged as the principal agency

where business agreements were struck and,
indirectly, where school policy was forged.
The entire web of affiliations among insiders in business, government,
and the nonprofit sector operates through interpersonal and institutional
ties which interconnect at the highest levels of finance, politics,
commerce, school affairs, social work, the arts, and the media

power, however, is substantially increased by building collateral alliances

which insulate it from criticism and scrutiny.

Foundations automatically make friends among banks which hold their

large deposits, in investment houses which multiply their monies, in law
firms which act as their counsels, and with the many firms, institutions,
and individuals with which they deal and whom they benefit. By careful
selection of trustees from the ranks of high editorial personnel and other
media executives and proprietors, they can assure themselves press
support, and by engaging public relations counselors can further create
good publicity.

For a society like ours to work, we need to feel that something is

fundamentally wrong when we can’t continually "do better"—expand our
farms and businesses, win a raise, take exotic vacations. This is the way
our loan/repayment cycle—the credit economy—is sustained. The human
tendency to simply enjoy work and camaraderie among workers is turned
into a race to outdo colleagues, to climb employment ladders. Ambition is
a trigger of corporate life and at the same time an acid that dissolves
communities. religious activity would have to be dampened down

By addicting children to outside approval and nonsense rewards, schools

make them indifferent to the real power and potential that inheres in self-
discovery reveals

The fifth lesson schools teach is emotional dependency. By stars,

checks, smiles, frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, schools
condition children to lifelong emotional dependency. It’s like training
a dog

intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them

what to do. Good people do it the way the teacher wants it done.
Good teachers in their turn wait for the curriculum supervisor or textbook
to tell them what to do. Principals are evaluated according to an ability to
make these groups conform to expectations; superintendents upon their
ability to make principals conform; state education departments on their
ability to efficiently direct and control the thinking of superintendents
according to instructions which originate with foundations, universities,
and politicians sensitive to the quietly expressed wishes of powerful
corporations, and other interests.

The seventh lesson schools teach is provisional self-esteem. Self-respect

in children must be made contingent on the certification of experts
through rituals of number magic. It must not be self-generated as it was
for Benjamin Franklin, the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, or Henry
Ford. The role of grades, report cards, standardized tests, prizes,
scholarships, and other awards in effecting this process is too obvious to
belabor, but it’s the daily encounter with hundreds of verbal and
nonverbal cues sent by teachers that shapes the quality of self-doubt most
effectively.
The real conspirators were ourselves. When we sold our liberty for the
promise of automatic security, we became like children in a conspiracy
against growing up, sad children who conspire against their own
children, consigning them over and over to the denaturing vats of
compulsory state factory schooling

The working-class proletariat conceived by Toynbee is in a permanent

childlike state, one that requires constant management. Because of this
ongoing necessity, a second proletariat must be created, "a special social
class" which represents a professionalized proletariat, "often quite
abruptly and artificially" gathered by the national leadership to aid in
managing the lumpish mass of ordinary folk

A successful tradition of self-reliance requires an optimistic theory of

human nature to bolster it.

Nobody labors, unless someone else, owning capital, by the use of that
capital, induces him to it.

common people are crushed like annoying insects if they argue.

only the fresh air from millions upon

millions of freely made choices will
create the educational climate we need to
realize a better destin
Empty Children

Not far to go now. Here is my recipe for empty children. If you want to cook whole
children, as I suspect we all do, just contradict these stages in the formula:
1. Remove children from the business of the world until time has passed for them
to learn how to self-teach.
2. Age-grade them so that past and future both are muted and become irrelevant.
3. Take all religion out of their lives except the hidden civil religion of appetite,
and positive/negative reinforcement schedules.
4. Remove all significant functions from home and family life except its role as
dormitory and casual companionship. Make parents unpaid agents of the State;
recruit them into partnerships to monitor the conformity of children to an
official agenda.
5. Keep children under surveillance every minute from dawn to dusk. Give no
private space or time. Fill time with collective activities. Record behavior
quantitatively.
6. Addict the young to machinery and electronic displays. Teach that these are
desirable to recreation and learning both.
7. Use designed games and commercial entertainment to teach preplanned habits,
attitudes, and language usage.
8. Pair the selling of merchandise with attractive females in their prime
childbearing years so that the valences of lovemaking and mothering can be
transferred intact to the goods vended.
9. Remove as much private ritual as possible from young lives, such as the rituals
of food preparation and family dining.
10. Keep both parents employed with the business of strangers. Discourage
independent livelihoods with low start-up costs. Make labor for others and
outside obligations first priority, self-development second.
11. Grade, evaluate, and assess children constantly and publicly. Begin early.
Make sure everyone knows his or her rank.
12. Honor the highly graded. Keep grading and real world accomplishment as
strictly separate as possible so that a false meritocracy, dependent on the
support of authority to continue, is created. Push the most independent kids to
the margin; do not tolerate real argument.
 13. Forbid the efficient transmission of useful knowledge, such as how to build a
house, repair a car, make a dress.
14. Reward dependency in many forms. Call it "teamwork."
15. Establish visually degraded group environments called "schools" and arrange
mass movements through these environments at regular intervals. Encourage a
level of fluctuating noise (aperiodic negative reinforcement) so that
concentration, habits of civil discourse, and intellectual investigation are
gradually extinguished from the behavioral repertoire

Procratination
Causes guilt and self-loathing

The number one reason that we procrastinate is BECAUSE WE CAN.

We get away with it as adults by changing our minds and deciding not to do the task
at all

We live in a world of extra chances. We feel angry at our- selves.