From his book, Jefferson:
“Throughout his life, Mr. Jefferson consistently maintained that “the most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate so far as possible the minds of the people.” He had no doubt that “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.” He seems never to suspected, however, the ease with which mere literacy is perverted, and that it is therefore quite possible for a literate people to be much more ignorant than an illiterate people–that a people of well-perverted literacy, indeed, is invincibly unintelligent.”
This is far more profound than it appears on a first reading. And it’s not that the mere teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic that is damaging to the independence of thought of children, but the insidious weaving of propaganda and State-approved theories of social organization into daily instruction. If only schools would refocus all that energy, wasted into getting kids to accept various social philosophies that prop up the State, solely into reading comprehension, and our country might now have such an abysmally low level of reading ability.
Instead, government-approved versions of history, the worship of the symbols of government through the strangely non-subtle ‘Pledge of Allegiance’, a conditioning to accept a warden/prisoner environment for an unnaturally long time, remain the focal point.
