The American Education System: Understanding The Roots
American schoolhouse, 1800’s. Picture: FineArtAmerica.com
To understand how the American Public Education system has essentially become weaponized as a tool for radical leftist propaganda, indoctrination and the general “dumbing down” of American children over the last several decades, we must understand the roots of how the system was created and who inspired it.
‘The Father of American Public Education’: Horace Mann
Horace Mann
In 1837, after serving as a member of Congress for 4 years, Horace Mann became an instrumental part in creating the American Public Education system by founding the first Board of Education in Massachusetts. He firmly believed that the State was the ‘father of children.’
After studying various education systems that were used throughout the world, he discovered the Prussian Model of Obedience and was impressed with the ‘ease’ of the Prussian precision.
Mann’s primary goals began after he declared small town schoolhouses a problem and threat to society because they were not committed to his political process. He stressed that it was the State’s responsibility to provide an education for the child, rather than the family, and strongly felt ‘common schooling’ would be an equalizer for society. The 1830’s and 1840’s sadly marked the end of free market education and the rise of government schools, therefore, creating a secular environment in schools rather than religious based education.
A major shift towards government schools happened after Mann’s 10th Annual Report in 1846. It led to the first state law that would make school attendance mandatory for children. That same year, the Governor of Massachusetts Edward Everett adopted the Prussian Model for Education for the entire state. By the 1900’s, the Prussian Model was enforced widely across multiple states.
Mann went directly to working with the State, rather than locals, to further define what would be taught in schools through regulation and enforcement, which were inspired by the Prussian Model of Obedience.
How did Mann define education?
Schools are to be under centralized town authority
This would achieve uniformity throughout the State
Centralized power and uniformity were to be used as a powerful tool for social unity
Many Protestants and even Classical Liberals opposed Mann’s efforts by disagreeing upon the role of the government in education as it was antithetical to conservatism, and restricts the freedom of parents to pass their own thoughts, values and beliefs onto their children.
So what is the Prussian Model of Obedience?
Napoleon Bonparte
After the Prussians were defeated by Napoleon in 1806, it was decided that the reason why the battle was lost was because the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves, instead of following orders.
To make sure this didn’t happen again, a new system of schooling was created. It provided skills needed for the early industrialized world like reading, writing and arithmetic. But also, it taught duty, discipline, respect for authority and the ability to follow orders.
In Prussia, which was pre-Nazi Germany, every individual had to be convinced that the decisions of the King were always just and always rights, and the need for obedience was priority, Ultimately, instilling loyalty to the crown and to train young men for the military and bureaucracy. To do this, all independent thinking had to be banished from the population.
The Proclamation of the German Empire, 1871. Picture: napoleon.org
In John Taylor Gatto’s book titled The Underground History of American Education, he outlines the intended outcomes of the Prussian Model of Obedience were to create obedient soldiers to the army, obedient workers for mines, factories and farms, well-subordinated and trained civil servants and clerks for industry, citizens who thought alike on most issues and national uniformity in thought, word and deed.
Today we see the use of centralized power and authority in schools being supported by taxes, state trained teachers, compulsory attendance, parents punished for child’s absence, and uniformity in instruction and curriculum.
John Taylor Gatto’s book The Underground History of American Education
Gatto makes the point: if we borrowed the style, structure and intention of pre-Nazi Germans for our own schools, then American schools had to be scrapped of good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance to make way for something different…
It’s safe to say that our Public Education system was directly imported from pre-Nazi Germany.
Prussian Philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who is called the “Father of Modern Neo-Nazism” and had a deep influence on the Third Reich as well as the Prussian Model of Obedience, said, “schools must fashion the person and fashion in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.”
Prussian Philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Why would the father of American Education, Horace Mann, make it a law that every child spend their youth in a system created by the ‘Spiritual Father of Neo-Nazism”?
Many question how so many people allowed a man like Hitler to rise to power… was it that the German people had been influenced by the Prussian Model of Obedience, and were taught from a young age into accepting authority and their power without question? If so, it begs the question: if the entire population of North America has been raised in a system brought over from Pre-Nazi Germany, then how can we be sure that we currently heading in the right direction?
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school master would have wished. When this technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”
— Prussian Philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte
