Dumbed Down by the Educational System, pt. 2

I wrote about the Dumbing Down by the Education System earlier:
http://rabbit-hole-journey.blogspot.com/2007/08/dumbed-down-by-educational-system.html I mentioned that I thought few people seem to be capable of critical thinking.

I found another link along the same lines:
Underground History of American Education,
a book by John Taylor Gatto

Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness. ... Dumb people are no longer merely ignorant. Now they are indoctrinated, their minds conditioned with substantial doses of commercially prepared disinformation dispensed for tranquilizing purposes... Critical judgment disappears altogether, for in no way can there ever be collective critical judgment....The individual can no longer judge for himself ...

The individual can no longer judge for himself because he inescapably relates his thoughts to the entire complex of values and prejudices established by propaganda. With regard to political situations, he is given ready-made value judgments with the power of the truth by the word of "experts". The new dumbness is particularly deadly to .. kids already made shallow by multiple pressures to conform.

According to all official analysis, dumbness isn’t taught (as I claim), but is innate in a great percentage of what has come to be called "the workforce". The workforce itself is a term that should tell you much about the mind that governs modern society. According to official reports, only a small fraction of the population is capable of what you and I call mental life: creative thought, analytical thought, judgmental thought... Just how small a fraction would shock you. According to experts, the bulk of the mob is hopelessly dumb, even dangerously so.

if you believe any of the various explanations given for the position of the dumb in the social order we have, then you will be forced to concur that a vast bureaucracy is indeed necessary to address the dumb. Otherwise they would murder us in our beds.

There are several ideas in the above excerpt that I agree with:

• Lack of critical thinking in the masses
• Commercially prepared disinformation (mass media is controlled)
• .. dispensing propaganda
  
• .. for tranquilizing the workforce (my earlier blog, Dumbed down by the media)
• A vast bureaucracy, necessary to address the dumb
  

Regarding the last 2 points, I think the "workforce", meaning the masses in the middle class, are purposely made dumb, precisely to make them easier to control. This is accomplished by the first above bullet points.

Here is a short, illustrated "American Education History Tour". It will take you 5 minutes:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm



This all reminds me of another thought I have. The world resembles Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley:
Amazon link
Wikipedia entry

Paraphrased from the wikipedia entry: In the Brave New World, society is rigidly divided into five castes — Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. They are separated into categories based on "natural" abilities they have been bred to possess. The lowest castes were bred to do menial tasks and to have such a disposition as to be very happy with this type of work. All members of society are trained to be good consumers to keep the economy strong. The Deltas and Epsilons do menial work such as factory labor, and are happy, as long as they have their perfect drug, Soma. The drug makes it possible for everyone to be blissfully oblivious and perfectly content to do the assigned tasks of their caste.

Seem familiar? Consumers that are oblivious to what's going on around them, as long as they have their perfect drug. Joe Schmoe is happy as long as he has his job, his overpriced home, his new truck which he bought by taking equity out of his home, and can open a sixpack in front of the mind-numbing TV after work. Next day, get up, go to work, pay taxes, repeat, ad nauseum.