Intellectual Tyranny: Learning From History, Part II

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." ~ Thomas Jefferson

REAL education must be revived. People are rediscovering history, thanks not only to people like Beck, who are pushing it hard (have you caught his Founders' Fridays?), but because they are awakening to their own lack of knowledge. We cannot get the return to Constitutional ideas that is necessary without the education of the public. I was in the bookstore recently browsing the history section and overheard a woman ask the bookseller for a book on American History "that isn't written from a particular point of view." I had to smile. First because she had the right idea, and second because, of course, no such thing exists.

I've been plodding along through Toynbee and I find his views on public education correct in many regards. From The Breakdown of Civilizations; Failure of Self Determination: "One stumbling block has been the inevitable impoverishment in the results of education when the process is made available for the masses at the cost of being divorced from its traditional cultural background....Our mass-produced intellectual pabulum lacks savour and vitamins."

Interruption for illustrative story: My son and I were discussing some economic theories he was studying in his econ class at his private school. My daughter who attended public school was amazed. "Do you know what we did for an exam grade in my Economics class? We had to sing the theme to 'The Apprentice'!" She has noted many times over the past few years that things he was studying were things that she didn't encounter until she was a junior in college. "Mass-produced intellectual pabulum" indeed.

So many of Toynbee's comments on it are quotable but as you are familiar with him, I'll just add one more:

"Thus, in countries where democratic education has been introduced, the people are in danger of falling under an intellectual tyranny engineered either by private exploitation or by public authority. If the people's souls are to be saved, the only way is to raise the standard of mass education to a degree at which its recipients will be rendered immune against, at any rate, the grosser forms of exploitation and propaganda; and it need hardly be said that this is no easy task."

"INTELLECTUAL TYRANNY ENGINEERED...BY PUBLIC AUTHORITY." There it is. As people begin to realize just how deeply that has taken root and begin to take responsibility for their own education, the tide will turn. It will be a painfully slow process though, and I fear we may not have the luxury of time needed for that method to manifest change. I don't think at this point there is a solution that will be pain free. Whatever proves necessary will be difficult.

I've taken up a lot of space here and not sure I answered your question. If I have misunderstood it let me know. :)