Amerika's 3-Tiered Prussian Industrial Educational System (first draft proposal)

6 Quotes

“It's still patronizing. As a matter of fact, it's worse than the most worse traditional and rigid of the other schools. Traditional schools that are rigid, at least 90% of the people who go there, hate them and they know the enemy. A school that is letting you, allowing you, to having a little bit of freedom, seduces you into thinking that the little bit of freedom, when you're really being manipulated, is the real thing, and that opens you up to being manipulated all your life.” ~Daniel Greenberg (Greenberg, 2009). Greenberg, Daniel. Sudbury Valley School (Youtube video). Uploaded April 2, 2009, taken from Teachers.tv January 9, 2009. 7:00-7:30 minutes in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI

“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors who oppress, exploit and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.” ~Paulo Freire (Freire, ) Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1, 6^th paragraph.

“The colonial man will first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his own people. This is the period when the niggers beat each other up, and the police and magistrates do not know which way to turn when faced with the astonishing waves of crime in North Africa... The settler keeps alive in the native an anger which he deprives of an outlet; the native is trapped in the tight links of the chains of colonialism... The native's muscular tension finds outlet regularly in bloodthirsty explosions—in tribal warfare, in feuds between septs (clans), and in quarrels between individuals... While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile glance cast on him by another native...” ~Franz Fanon (Fanon, 1963). Fanon, Franz. (1963: 52, 54) http://books.google.com/books?id=KnWsAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=frantz+fanon+quote+oppressed+attack+each+other+horizontal+violence&source=bl&ots=vgdrWN9wDW&sig=x8i9E6_aq4c8leMSmtCsV-WWkto&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GxI8VNngJerlsATU3YGoBQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=frantz%20fanon%20quote%20oppressed%20attack%20each%20other%20horizontal%20violence&f=false

“The most powerful, potent weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” ~Stephen Biko.

“Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.” ~Frederick Douglass. (Douglass 1855).

Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). pg. 286. http://teachingAmerikanhistory.org/library/document/the-last-flogging/

“The poor baby, knowing nothing, is he not at your mercy? Can you not arrange everything in the world which surrounds him? Can you not influence him as you wish? His work, his play, his pleasures, his pains, are not all these in your hands and without his knowing? Doubtless he ought to do only what he wants; but he ought to do only what you want him to do; he ought not to take a step which you have not foreseen; he ought not to open his mouth without your knowing what he will say.” ~Jean Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau, 1762). Rousseau, Jean Jacques. (1762). Emile, Book II - Age 5 to Age 12. http://www.online-literature.com/rousseau/emile/2/

Definitions

Democracy: a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting

: a country ruled by democracy : an organization or situation in which everyone is treated equally and has equal rights 1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections 2 : a political unit that has a democratic government 3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States <from emancipation Republicanism to New Deal Democracy — C. M. Roberts> 4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority 5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

Freedom: 1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedomfrom care> d : ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom> e : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken<answered with freedom> f : improper familiarity g : boldness of conception or execution h : unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a : a political right b : franchise, privilege http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freedom

Totalitarian: controlling the people of a country in a very strict way with complete power that cannot be opposed 1 a : of or relating to centralized control by an autocratic leader or hierarchy : authoritarian, dictatorial; especially : despotic b : of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (as censorship and terrorism) 2 a : advocating or characteristic of totalitarianism b : completely regulated by the state especially as an aid to national mobilization in an emergency c : exercising autocratic powers http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/totalitarian

Totalitarianism: 1 : centralized control by an autocratic authority 2 : the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/totalitarianism

Autocrat: a person who rules with total power 1 : a person (as a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority 2 : one who has undisputed influence or power http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autocrat

Monarchy: a country that is ruled by a monarch (such as a king or queen) : a form of government in which a country is ruled by a monarch 1 : undivided rule or absolute sovereignty by a single person 2 : a nation or state having a monarchical government 3 : a government having a hereditary chief of state with life tenure and powers varying from nominal to absolute http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monarchy

Psychopath: a person who is mentally ill, who does not care about other people, and who is usually dangerous or violent : a mentally ill or unstable person; especially : a person affected with antisocial personality disorder http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/psychopath

Fascism: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government : very harsh control or authority 1: often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition 2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascist

Machiavellian: using clever lies and tricks in order to get or achieve something : clever and dishonest. 1 : of or relating to Machiavelli or Machiavellianism 2 : suggesting the principles of conduct laid down by Machiavelli; specifically : marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/machiavellian

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

School sucks, and everybody knows it. The students, who are bored out of their minds, know it. And teachers, who hate their lives, themselves, and the students, know it too. Mark Twain said, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Albert Einstein had a similar quote, which he stated that “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” Mark Twain and Albert Einstein are titans when it comes to intelligence, and in describing in how Amerika is. It's really no surprise, in some respects. The autocratic dominated classroom censors democratic virtues and practices, and even the teachers are afraid to question, criticize, or oppose teaching paradigms crammed into their brains. There's Oppressors, and there's the Oppressed. That's Paulo Freire 101. Benjamin Franklin said that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. Abraham Lincoln said that he didn't want to be a master or a slave. That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm a revolutionary Equalist. I believe in equality. I don't want to be your slave, or to have to control you. And I would like to find folks like me. I love others because they exist on this planet, because they have consciousness just like you and me, which is amazing to me, and they have to struggle, just as the rest of us. And for those working class families who understand the struggle, while I would love to help everybody get to the promised land, many times I'm not in a position to help everybody, and if I fight with every dog who barks at me, I'll never get to the store. So I have learned through the struggle, that if I can't ease your struggle, or liberate you, at the very least, I will not harm to you. That's the only rule Jean-Jacques Rousseau gives to Emile, his imaginary boy, he's raising. For Emile, to find out who and what he his, Rousseau gives him ultimate freedom to do as he pleases, with only one rule: to do no harm to others. Asshole Amerikans can learn much from just adhering to that rule: do no harm to others.

I'm a boy in wisdom, and I'm dancing with the ancients. It's not just Albert Einstein and Mark Twain who agree with me. There's also AS Neil from Summerhill, and William Glasser, who speaks about “Choice Theory, who also agrees with me. Plus there's Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose not discussed in Amerikan politics at all. As a country, we've already determined that Hobbes is right, that people's human nature is inherently evil, and the only way to combat that, is to smash them into submission, and to make sure “you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will”, as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a German philosopher, said. But Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the “other” choice for determining how our human nature is. We're born good, and so therefore, if you want the child to be good, then you make them strong. Those who are bad are that way because they are weak. Teachers expect their students to be malleable, and transparent. They expect them to be stupid, weak, and to be manipulated. Anyways... Paulo Freire, George Orwell, Daniel Greenberg, Franz Fanon, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, George Carlin, Abraham Lincoln, Tecumseh, Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Greenberg, Frederick Douglass, William Glasser, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, AS Neil, Mark Twain, and Albert Einstein... I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. I'm a boy in wisdom. I haven't met anybody like me, who loves freedom and democracy, and has a moral core, who loves humanity as I do, and believes the goodness of humankind.

The Daniel Greenberg Quote

Daniel Greenberg is a co-founder of Sudbury Valley Schools, which is a private independent school, that believes in freedom. AS Neil said he'd rather create happy street sweepers than a neurotic prime minister. AS Neil is the founder of Summerhill, which has a movie about the school, that's very similar to Sudbury Valley Schools. The reason why AS Neil would rather his pupils be a happy street sweeper than a neurotic prime minister is because he cares about his students' happiness. That's the point to life. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This quote goes to the heart to the purpose of life. If my children were happy and satisfied with being a street sweeper, than that's all that matters to me. I do not care if they are filthy rich, or have big houses, and fancy cars. In fact, I can't wait until I watch my children grow up, and blossom, and grow into their personalities, of who they're going to be. It would be exciting and magical to watch. While wealth and power can help with one's happiness, it's not everything. There's many things that matter. Hell, there's love, justice, ethics, morals... there's plenty of virtues out here. But there's a lack of morals in Amerika. Most Amerikans have no morals whatsoever. They are just pleasant to folks they feel they need to be pleasant to, and they stop when they determine they are nobody to appeal to. Amerikans are immoral greedy assholes. They'll get into sales, and learn some manipulative tactics, and sell ice to an Eskimo, and up-sell your grandmother to buy some shit she doesn't need, just to make a few bucks on commission. I have the most unpleasant conversation with a bill collector awhile back. While I called them, and was explaining my situation to them, it just felt like they were “tricking” me into giving them information. When I asked them how much my bill was, they wouldn't tell me anything. They were takers, not givers, and I hung up phone disgusted.

My Morals

I love humankind just for existing. Just for having a consciousness. Nothing more. Nothing less. As an Equalist, I desire no power over others. I do not care to dominate anybody. I love them as I want to be loved. “We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.” ~Kurt Vonnegut. I have a moral core, and it starts out with the Golden Rule, which is wonderfully logical. I do not want to be robbed, hit, raped, murdered, etc. Because I do not want those things happening to me, I do not do those things to others. It's wonderfully logical. So do not rob me, hit me, murder me, or rape me, and I won't do those things to you. Even if you did those things to me, I doubt I'd ever do those things to you, because it goes against my nature. One has to have the ability to empathize, just to keep your soul, your humanity, but in dog-eat-dog capitalistic Amerika, most folks are psychopaths. They have no ability to empathize with others. They also have no anxiety, since they don't give a fuck about others. All serial killers are psychopaths, but not all psychopaths are serial killers. Most politicians are psychopaths. Mitt Romney is a psychopath. When he ran Bane Capital, he would gut industries, fire everybody, steal pensions, and since that was “good business”, he's valued in Amerika.

I found this idea through a popular meme that's been shared many times on facebook so I do not who the original author of it is. Morality and Obedience are the Opposites. When one is obedient, they do as they are told, regardless of whether their orders are right or wrong. When one is moral, they do what is right and good, for goodness sakes, no matter what they are told. Morality and Obedience are Opposites. Rationalization follows behavior. When a person is ordered around like a bitch ass nigger slave, when they comply with arbitrary and absolute authority, that slave loses everything that makes them human. To the Oppressor, the Oppressed are just objects to be manipulated and controlled. Capitulation is all they understand, and rationalization follows behavior, so the Oppressed will defend their behavior, as well as the Oppressors, to the death.

When the controlling manipulative unfeeling and uncaring psychopathic Oppressors force the Oppressed to capitulate to their demands, the Oppressed lose their humanity, as well as their conscience, their empathy, ethics, spirit, their ability to make decisions, their sense of justice and wonder, their ambition, history, past experiences, their thoughts, curiosity, morality, soul, freedom, dignity, heart, brain, body, and democratic virtues. And democracy should be consensus-based, erring towards unanimity. We should all decide on all of the issues, and the Internet gives us the power to do so. A true blue democracy. Direct and pure. Unanimous is the ideal, and while virtually impossible, it's the pinnacle I seek. 

When we force another person to do as we will, against their own will, we murder that person's sacred sovereign autonomy. We take their oxygen to their soul away. We have made them into a malleable object. We turned a human being into a slave; a robot; a zombie; a dehumanized Nazi. And slavery was abolished many years ago, for adults, in 1863. For children, in 1938. Still today, however, since the South got exemptions to allow them to make their children into slaves, 500,000 children pick almost a quarter of the food currently produced in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws_in_the_United_States

Blind obedience to arbitrary and absolute authority is the reason why we have war, genocide, and slavery (Howard Zinn). Blind obedience to arbitrary and absolute authority is the reason why the Prison guards abused the Prisoners in Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. The prisoners abused the one man who was staging a hunger strike, the only man who could have saved them all, since they were all happily being abused by the “authority” figure. All of these folks were students in a college, and they knew it was an experiment, but still engaged in the abuse. Milgram's Obedience experiments showed how obedient Amerikans are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment. They were willing to shock to death a man because they were told to do so, by an “authority figure”, a man wearing a science lab coat. That's it. A man in a science lab coat can order an Amerikan to murder just like Hitler ordered him to kill the Jews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZWsFmjSi78. The Discovery Channel redid the Milgram Obedience Experiments, the Eli Roth Obedience Experiments, just recently, on October 30, 2011, and Amerikans still did the same as they did after World War II, when Milgram first did his experiments. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/videos/the-milgram-experiment.htm http://www.jspace.com/news/articles/eli-roth-recreates-milgram-experiment-for-discovery-channel-video/5469. Milgram and Zimbardo did these experiments right after World War 2 to see how obedient humans were, and to see if Amerikans, if they were subjected to a fascist such as Hitler, if they would harm innocent people that never did anything to them. Henry David Thoreau wrote about “Civil Disobedience”, which Ghandi and Martin Luther King took to new lengths. The reason for the Stanford Prison Experiments and for Milgram's Obedience experiments was because it seemed appalling that seemingly normal “good” average Germans would engage in massive genocidal Holocaust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust against a race of people just because they were told to do so.

For the Oppressors and the Oppressed, they only understand hierarchy. For them, some folks are to be manipulated and controlled, and others are bosses whose orders we must obey. There's no middle ground for them. Virtually all of my problems is because I capitulated to those-who-didn't-love-me's demands. They didn't fuck with me because I was bad or because I did anything to them. They fucked with me because I was good and because I was weak. So why do the Oppressors and the Oppressed stay in a hierarchical relationship, when it's bad for them both? Paulo Freire says it's because they have a Fear of Freedom.

I really like what Diderot said about Voltaire, and the way he would teach history. “Other historians relate facts to inform us of facts. You relate them to incite in our hearts an intense hatred of lying, ignorance, hypocrisy, superstition, tyranny; and the anger remains even after the memory of the facts has disappeared.” I hate Lying, Ignorance, Hypocrisy, Superstition, and Tyranny. I hate it. I hate all types of oppression, not just violent oppression. I hate coercion, trickery, or intimidation. Only equals can negotiate a fair contract. Your and my freedom are inseparable. Nelson Mandela, from prison, wrote, “My freedom and yours are inseparable.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ~MLK

“Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary.” ~Che Guevara

“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.” ~Che Guevara

“We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.” ~Ernesto Che Guevara

“The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” ~Che Guevara

“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Frederick Douglass Quote

“Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise.” ~Frederick Douglass. (Douglass 1855). Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). pg. 286. http://teachingAmerikanhistory.org/library/document/the-last-flogging/

To prove the wicked depravity of the sadistic, Maria Abramovic did an experiment where she proved that when she offered no resistance, people would do the worst things in the world to her. On a table, she had a bunch of available tools offered to the public, such as a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, olive oil, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet, with a sign that said they could do anything they wanted to do to her, and for six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions. Because Maria Abramovic never showed power for herself, the wicked did as they wanted with her. Abramovic said, “If you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.” Those who had been abusing her, and watching others abuse her, scattered like roaches running underneath the refrigerator when the light was turned on when the experiment was over. With Gollum's invisibility ring, people are so depraved, they'll do to others as they please, without regard to their humanity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would say of these folks, that they were born good, but that society had corrupted them.

Maria Abramovic's Rhythm Zero. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87#Rhythm_0:_1974 http://vimeo.com/71952791 www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwPTKmFcYAQ http://www.complex.com/style/2014/01/marina-abramovic-reflects-on-rhythm-0

Hierarchy Destroys Relationships

“While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile glance cast on him by another native...” ~Franz Fanon

In the romantic movie The Notebook, about a poor boy winning the woman of his dreams, Noah had been prevented from seeing Allie because her parents forced her. While the Oppressor didn't force her directly, since they had to wait until she came to leaving Noah on her own conclusion, just as O'Brien did with Winston Smith in 1984, and Allie's Plantation Massuhs (they lived on a Plantation, which had Black servants, literally), but they mettled enough until Allie and Noah got into an argument, just as her Plantation Massuhs, the wealthy stuck-up snobby aristocracy wanted them too.

In George Orwell's 1984, it was important for the Ministry of Love to torture Winston Smith to the point where the denounced the one who he loved. Winston Smith was a member of the Thought Police, but in the beginning of the book, he bought a journal, and the first thought he wrote down was “Down With Big Brother”. Then he started to get scared of his own ideas. But Julia, a Revolutionary siren, was able to Winston Smith to fall in love with her, and eventually, they both sign up for the Brotherhood, a secret group dedicated to the overthrow of Big Brother.

Winston Smith loved Julia, but he loved himself more, which the torture revealed. O'Brien of the Ministry of Love in Room 101 tortured Winston Smith with his fear of rats, which they knew about. When the rats came closer and closer to his eating Winston's face, instead of being tortured himself, instead, Winston Smith shouted out to hurt Julia instead, which is what O'Brien had wanted to hear. The establishments knows that love can crash their elaborately controlled system. Love is why Django went back to liberate his woman. Love is why Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, and perhaps Russell Brand, died for us. But they didn't have to die. O'Brien, in order to completely transform a man into an obedient cog of the machine, needed to destroy all of the citizen's ability to have any independent thoughts, in order to get the Winstons to denounce those he loves, and for him to pledge his love to Big Brother.

Any possibility of resistance or independent thought is destroyed when Smith is forced to accept that 2 + 2 = 5, a phrase which has entered the lexicon to represent obedience to ideology over rational truth or fact. By the end of the novel, O'Brien's torture has reverted Winston to his previous status as an obedient, unquestioning slave who genuinely loves “Big Brother”. Beyond his total capitulation and submission to the party, Winston's fate is left unresolved in the novel. As Winston realizes that he loves Big Brother, he dreams of a public trial and an execution; however the novel itself ends with Winston, presumably still in the Chestnut Tree Café, contemplating the face of Big Brother.

O'Brien says: “We are different from the persecutors of the past. We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us, we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil, and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was “Thou shalt not”. The command of the totalitarians was “Thou shalt”. Our command is “Thou art”. No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors in whose innocence you once believed — Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford — in the end we broke them down. I took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradually worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping — and in the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still clean.” (Orwell, 1948).

The Oppressors understand that if the Oppressed start to love one another, then that'll be a bond that can't be broken, and then the Oppressors can't Oppress them as easily, not without some cunning, or just outright torture. Love shows us how we're supposed to treat each other, and once one is being treated good, why would one prefer to be treated anyway else? Once one has love, why would one prefer anything else? Only the virtues of Freedom and Happiness can compete with Love, because the vices of Hate, Oppression, Bloodshed, Murder, Rape, Thieves, Violence, who wants that? Only psychopaths, those who can't empathize, would want something like that.

This is why the students aren't allowed to speak to one another in Amerikan classrooms. Shut up and sit down are the demands of the Molester Oppressor Professors. Julie Chancellor, a “Social” Studies teacher at Valley High School in Louisville, Kentucky, threatened to call security on a student who laying their heads on the desk. That's fascism. In order to gain compliance, Julie Chancellor (read: Nazi) threatened public humiliation and violence. That's slavery. That's fascism. And that's the norm in Amerika. And Julie makes $55,000 a year in order to smash young Amerikan chidren's minds into simpleton slaves. The Massuh hates it when you speak to each other, because in their worst nightmares, they'll assume that a friendship, and love, will eventually lead to them questioning the authority figure's undeserved and illegitimate authority, and everything will come crashing down. Just to question authority figures, since they are so insecure, since they know that they are on that bullshit, is enough of a reason for them to attack you, and employ as many tools and tactics available to them to fuck you over.

Allie's rich family acts all high and mighty, like they're better than Noah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpCWySlBzeQ which is similar to how Rose's rich and snobby rich Titanic families treated Jack Dawson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oklPl95DC8c. Allie's Mom calls Noah “trash”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGP3IAGX0iQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGOBhPm0QPU When Allie's father tells Noah to “sit down”, he obediently complies with him. Then Noah breaks up with Allie, realizing he won't be able to compete with his Oppressor Molester parents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJnZ_fNCBLY. Allie's parents intervened, and then it was all over for Allie and Noah.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” (Orwell 1948)

The one man who could have liberated all of those being abused in the Stanford Prison Experiments was the one who the abused attacked. The other prisoners (slaves; Oppressed) attacked the one slave who was doing something that could have liberated them all. None of the slaves attacked the prison guards (master; Oppressors).

Zimbardo, the mastermind behind the Stanford Prison Experiments, said that hierarchy and authority is what makes people evil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jYx8nwjFQ When one is just using their own devices, their own internal consciences are used, their knowledge of right from wrong, they wouldn't genocide Jews so systemically, but when an authority figure told them to do it, they threw out their own morals and ethics, and complied with the authority figure. The authority figure gave them permission to act like savage barbarians, and so the normally “good” Christian German went about murdering willy nilly.

The Oppressor in the Stanford Prison Experiments didn't feel regret or guilt when he was hurting others. It surprised the Oppressor that nobody said a thing about what he was doing was wrong. The Oppressor would tell the other slaves, even though he was profane, to insult the other slaves, and do push ups, and other humiliating tactics, without question, and nobody said a word to the Oppressor.

They would chant “prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner” over and over again, and they were being punished because of him, when the Oppressor told them to do so, using the most vile and filthy language, that the Oppressed could be hypocritically punished for, but when the Oppressor used it, like Mr. Pauley at Valley High School did recently. The Oppressed prisoners did push-ups, and insulted each other, because they were told to do so by the prison guard, who would later admit, that he wanted to see how far he could push the boundaries of the experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpDVFp3FM_4 The abuse the Oppressor of the Stanford Prison Experiment was doing reminds of me the movie Full Metal Jacket, when Private Pyle (“Leonard Lawrence”) was being abused by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman of the Marine Corps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzSsLiBPX38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxalkMk7cTM, and then eventually, all of the new cadets were being collectively punished because of his failures (according to the Oppressor). They were all doing push-ups, like the Stanford Prison Experiment, because “of him” hiding a jelly donut, and then they all beat the fuck out of him with soap bars inside their towels, after Gunnery Sergeant Hartman said that his cadets weren't “properly motivating” Leonard Lawrence. Not only was Leonard Lawrence being abused, but he was being intentionally ostracized, and turned into a social outcast. The seemingly playful chiding turned into full scale abuse. Leonard Lawrence was smiling at Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's insults, until he was choked by him, and then his face was broken. But then Leonard Lawrence was pushed too far. He lost his mind. He started talking to his gun, since that was his only friend. And Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was satisfied with Leonard Lawrence, but Leonard Lawrence had lost his mind, and declared that he was in a “world of shit”, and then he had his climatic “greatest hour”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc2cPuwpqTg “762 millimeter. Full Metal Jacket”. Leonard Lawrence's reaction to the mind-killing oppression made sense, and was close to justice, since Gunnery Sergeant Hartman's only objective was to break Leonard Lawrence, who he called “Gomer Pyle”, to dehumanize him, to turn him into an obedient automaton, an object, a weapon, to be used at the disposal of his future commanding officer, in the field of battle, so he'd even comply with the most suicidal of missions, to used as cannon fodder. This was the reason the Preußins (Prussians) adopted their 3-tiered educational systems. The oppression most certainly stopped after Leonard Lawrence's greatest hour.

“I have not betrayed Julia,” Winston said.

O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. “No,” he said; “no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia.”

The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again. “How intelligent,” he thought, “how intelligent!” Never did O'Brien fail to understand what was said to him. Anyone else on earth would have answered promptly that he had betrayed Julia. For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under the torture? He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that had happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party — everything. And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the same. O'Brien had seen what he meant without the need for explanation.

“Tell me,” he said, “how soon will they shoot me?”

“It might be a long time,” said O'Brien. “You are a difficult case. But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.”

What's surprising is that the illusion became the reality, in the Stanford Prison Experiments. The prison was located in the basement of the University, but somehow, just wearing the same uniforms, and dehumanizing sunglasses, and being put into the role of prison guards or prisoners, they acted each role accordingly. Formerly active students because zombie-like and unhuman when they became prisoners. They ceased to be students. They ceased to be themselves. They were the Oppressed, and became objects to be manipulated by the Oppressors. They all were students, used to be students, and they still were students, but somehow, in just a matter of hours, they changed. The “jail” was created in the basement of Stanford University, and there were no windows, to complete the dark and isolated conditions prisoners in our prions have to live through. The students who were to be prisoners were arrested at their houses, so it had all of the elements of a “real jail”, with the arrest, and then booking all except all of the students had signed up for the experiment, and knew that the whole thing was an illusion, and wasn't real. They knew they hadn't committed any crimes, and that the hierarchy between Oppressors was Oppressed was specifically designed by default. But the illusion quickly became the reality.

“Everything was settled, smoothed out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more arguments, no more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy and strong. He walked easily, with a joy of movement and with a feeling of walking in sunlight. He was not any longer in the narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love, he was in the enormous sunlit passage, a kilometer wide, down which he had seemed to walk in the delirium induced by drugs. He was in the Golden Country, following the foot-track across the old rabbit-cropped pasture. He could feel the short springy turf under his feet and the gentle sunshine on his face. At the edge of the field were the elm trees, faintly stirring, and somewhere beyond that was the stream where the dace lay in the green pools under the willows.”

Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The sweat broke out on his backbone. He had heard himself cry aloud:

“Julia ! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!”

We live in a Prison Plantation, where some folks are thrown away and out of society for good. Norway treats their prisoners good using the philosophy that treating a person like a person is the only way they will rehabilitate. But not Amerika, where we have the largest prison population in the world. The Plantation Massuhs didn't get attacked by the fields of 50 or so slaves, when the Massuhs only represented just a few folks. The same is true in the classroom. There's only one dictator, and there's 30 students, or less, or more, in some classes, and they all allow the Professor to “manage” them, just as they had done to them in Teacher Training School (aka Normal Schools), and therefore, they passed that Oppression on down to their inferiors, and feel right and justified in doing it, since they were broken by their Professor Molester Oppressors.

O'Brien: “You know the Party slogan: “Freedom is Slavery”. Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone — free — the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter — external reality, as you would call it — is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute.”

Winston: “But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals -- mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.” (Orwell, pg. 186)

O'Brien: “Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.” https://archive.org/stream/ost-english-1984-george-orwell-1937-dystopia/1984-george-orwell-1937-dystopia_djvu.txt “By itself,” he said, “pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable — something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.”

Winston: “But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know what it is?”

Henry Ford, a well known anti-semite, whose international anti-semitic newsletter inspired Hitler, split the Black workers and the White workers in his factories, because he didn't want them to unionize against him, and demand fair treatment. Henry Ford, the Oppressor, understood the principle of divide and conquer, and this is a perfect example of how hierarchy destroys relationships.

Amerika's 3-Tiered Preußische-Industrial Educational System

The Preußische Educational System

Horace Mann, the father of Amerikan common schools, and the entire Amerikan public school system, we witness being in existence today, incorporated the Preußische system into Amerika in 1852 in Massachusetts, and soon New York state set up the same method in 12 different schools on a trial basis. Horace Mann visited Preußen in 1843, when Mann returned to the US, he lobbied heavily to have the “Preußen model” adopted. Mann persuaded his fellow modernizers, especially those in the Whig Party, to legislate tax-supported elementary public education in their states. Most northern states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for Normal Schools to train professional teachers.

Some of the characteristics of the Preußische Educational System began to develop with the implementation of the Preußische General Land Law of 1794, which made all schools and universities institutions of The State. The final examination—the Abitur—was introduced in 1788, implemented in all Preußen secondary schools by 1812, and extended to all of Germany in 1871. Passing the Abitur was a prerequisite to entering the learned professions and the civil service. In 1810, Preußen introduced state certification requirements for teachers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preußenn_education_system

But the United States of Amerika had Preußen influence before Horace Mann. George Washington and his ragtag continental army was helped out by a Preußen: Baron von Steuben, aka Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Wilhelm_von_Steuben Baron von Steuben was the son of a military engineer, and became a Preußen officer himself at the age of 17. He served with distinction and was quickly promoted from infantry to Frederick the Great's General Staff. Baron von Steuben trained the ragtag Amerikan soldiers, just like Gunnery Sergeant Harman did for the Marine recruits in Full Metal Jacket, by abusing them, and swearing and yelling at them up and down in German and French. When that was no longer successful, Baron von Steubun recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his French-speaking aide, to curse at them for him in English. Steuben would write out the next day's orders in German, Walker would translate them into French, and a French-speaking officer would then translate them into English. The ego-crushing methods of modern boot camp were practiced among the shoeless soldiers of Valley Forge with remarkable efficacy.

In the miniseries biopic John Adams, whose dialogue comes directly from the letters exchanged between Adams and King George III, King George III told John Adams that he wished that the young Amerika “does not suffer unduly from it's want of a monarchy”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n725zX3zIk0

Horace Mann liked Preußen's 1843 educational system, but 1843 Preußen was ruled by Frederick William the 4^th, who only achieved power, because he was the first born son of the former King of Preußen. Frederick William the 4^th got to be King when his father died. Frederick William the 4^th wasn't elected, not by the people, or by parliament, or by anybody.

The story of Preußen itself would be helpful to understand the culture Horace Mann was adopting for Amerika. The Nazis weren't an aberration of history of Europe, but a continuation of a long tradition of unnecessary warfare, brought upon the peoples of Europe, by competing land claims from the ruling classes, who only got their initial power through bloodshed and military might, and by convincing the people of the illusion of their “noble” births—the divine right of Kings—plus monarchies made it easier for historians to write about the history of nations, when they were attached to one name, instead of a bunch of names of individual citizens, and what they were doing in the region.

Hitler considered his reign of power the 3^rd Reich, and the House of Hohenzollern's Germany (1871-1919), the 2^nd Reich, and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the 1^st Reich. After the Germanic tribes defeated Roman armies at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9AD. Rome fell shortly thereafter, and Europe experienced “The Dark Ages” (400-1400) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages, which roughly correspond to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (800-1806) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire. While the Dark Ages isn't as bad as it sounds, http://www.cracked.com/article_20615_5-ridiculous-myths-you-probably-believe-about-dark-ages.html, it was still before the Age of Enlightenment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment, which sought to understand the world in rational and scientific terms, and the Age of Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Revolution, which sought to give power to the people. The Holy Roman Emperors claimed their right as Emperor came straight from the Roman Empire itself, and an evolution of the institutions and principles comprising the empire, a gradual assumption of the imperial title and role was made. The Holy Roman Emperor was only as strong as his army and alliances made him.

Hitler, like Frederick William the 4^th, used forced to subdue his enemies, and was uttered opposed to revolutionary democratic republics. Hitler didn't even considered the Weimer Republic (1919-1933) to be a regime; just an “interim Reich”.

In 1871, German states united in creating the German Empire under Preußen (the House of Hohenzollern) leadership. The House of Hohenzollern was the name of Frederick William the 4th's lineage, which was named after the castle they lived in, which itself, took part of it's name from the county it resided in—Zollern. The House of Hohenzollern supplied the hereditary rulers of the former German state of Preußen from its founding in 1525 as the Duchy of Preußen. The first “Duchy of Preußen” was formed in 1525 with Duke Albert of Preußen at the head of it, who had many other titles, and names.

Duke Albert became Duke, once he renounced his Grand Mastership of the Teutonic Knights. The Catholic Teutonic Knights had carved themselves a piece of Europe, by conquering and subduing the original Baltic Preußens by force, violence, repression, and bloodshed in 1226, but by the 1500s, Poland wanted the land the Teutonic Knights murdered for, and so did the Catholic Church. Duke Albert, who was elected by the Teutonic Knights, because they believed by electing a Prince, that would increase their negotiation power with the Polish King, who was his uncle, and therefore, keep their territory. Duke Albert, however, betrayed the Teutonic Knights, and renounced his position as Grand Master, and bowed down to the King of Poland (due in part by advice given to him by Martin Luther) and in return, the King of Poland allowed him to rule over the lands the Teutonic Knights had anyways, but as a Polish client state. The name of that Polish client state: the Duchy of Preußen.

Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach of the House of Hohenzollern, the Duke of the Duchy of Preußen

The House of Hohenzollern was a self-stylized royal family who lived in Hohenzollern Castle. The Order of the Teutonic Knights, who even Hitler banned, ruled over Preußen, which was dissolved after Hitler's 3^rd Reich, for many years. The United States didn't want Hitler taking the world over, and we chastised him for the Holocaust, when our Native Amerikan Holocaust took 10 times the human souls, and for wanting an Empire, while we have over 900 military bases in 153 countries. Plus with our totalitarian schools, and the many cases of police brutality happening everyday, you'd have to be blind to not see the Preußische influence upon these United States.

The Order of the Teutonic Knights was a Roman Catholic crusader state and theocracy located along the eastern Baltic Sea coast. In 1226 Konrad I of Masovia appealed to the Teutonic Knights, a German crusading military order, to defend his borders and subdue the pagan Baltic Preußins. The Old Baltic Preußins who were defeated were, ironically, located in the same area that many of the original German-speaking tribes were first found, nearby Northern Germany, and Southern Sweden. The Order of the Teutonic Knights had killed and conquered the old Preußins, the original Baltic Preußins, and subjugated those who were still alive. The original Baltic Preußins were an ethnic group of native indigenous Baltic tribes that inhabited Preußen, the lands of the southeastern Baltic Sea in the area around the Vistula and Curonian Lagoons.

Preußen took its name from the Old Baltic Preußens, who they conquered, and forced them to assimilate into their way of life, similar to Indiana USA. The land of Old Preußenns consisted approximately of central and southern East Preußen — the present-day Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland, the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, and the southern Klaipėda Region of Lithuania.

The Teutonic Knights had a strong economic base, hired mercenaries from throughout Europe to augment their feudal levies, and became a naval power in the Baltic Sea. The conquest and Christianization of Preußen was accomplished after more than 50 years, similar to what Saint Patrick did to Ireland, after which the Order ruled it as a sovereign Teutonic Order state. Their conflict of interests with the Polish-Lithuanian state lead in 1410 to Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg). In 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army decisively defeated the Order and broke its military power at the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg). A Polish-Lithuanian army inflicted a decisive defeat and broke its military power, although the Order managed to retain most of its territories.

As Protestantism spread among the laity of the Teutonic Monastic State of Preußen, dissent began to develop against the Roman Catholic rule of the Teutonic Knights, whose Grand Master, Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Hohenzollern, lacked the military resources to assert the order's authority. After losing a war against the Kingdom of Poland, and with his personal bishop, Georg von Polenz of Pomesania and of Samland, who had converted to Lutheranism in 1523, and a number of his commanders already supporting Protestant ideas, Albert began to consider a radical solution. At Wittenberg in 1522 and at Nuremberg in 1524, Martin Luther encouraged him to convert the order's territory into a secular principality under his personal rule, as the anachronistic Teutonic Knights would not be able to survive the Protestant Reformation. The Preußische Homage or Tribute (German: Preußische Huldigung; Polish: hołd pruski) was the formal induction of Albert of Preußen as duke of the Polish fief of Ducal Preußen.

The reigning Grand Master Prince Duke Albert of Hohenzollern-Brandenburg-Ansbach became the first Duke of Preußen by bowing down, and kissing the ass of his uncle, Polish King Sigismund I the Old, and betraying the Teutonic Knights who had elected him Grand Master in the first place. This great betrayal effectively dissolved the Teutonic Knights out of existence (though not without some resistance) and it established the “Duchy of Preußen” as a Protestant administrative unit, like a county to a State, to King of Poland.

The 1848 Revolutions

1843 was the year Horace Mann visited Preußen, and Frederick William the 4^th had already ruled for 3 years. In 5 years, Karl Marx would write the Communist Manifest which encouraged the workers of the world to unite, since all they had to lose was their chains, homeboy. Shortly after the Communist Manifesto was written, the 1848 Rebellion (since Revolutions are successful revolts or rebellions, and failed attempted Revolutions, history label “Revolt”, or “Rebellion”, such as Nat Turner's Rebellion), aka the Springtime of Nations, happened. The Springtime of Nations was the most widespread revolutionary/rebellion/revolt wave in European history, but within a year, reactionary forces had regained control, and the 1848 Rebellions collapsed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 The 1848 Rebellions were essentially bourgeois-democratic in nature, with the aim of removing the old feudal structures, and the creation of independent national states. The revolutionary wave began in France in February, and immediately spread to most of Europe and parts of Latin Amerika. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no coordination or cooperation among the revolutionaries in different countries.

France was the first one in rebellion, which shows it's influence in Europe, and the other states involved were: The Italian states, the German Confederation (which, at the time, had 39 independent German-speaking states), Denmark, Schleswig, Habsburg Empire (which was ruled from Vienna, included Austrians, Hungarians, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Croats, Slovaks, Ukrainians/Ruthenians, Romanians, Serbs and Italians), Hungary, Switzerland, Western Ukraine, Greater Poland (Polish people mounted a military insurrection against the Preußins in the Grand Duchy of Posen (or the Greater Poland region), a part of Preußen since its annexation in 1815), Danubian Principalities (Romania; aka Wallachia and Moldavia), Belgium, Ireland, New Grenada (Columbia), and Brazil.

The middle-class and working-class components of the Revolution split, and in the end, the conservative aristocracy defeated it, forcing many liberals into exile.

Frederick William the 4^th was that conservative aristocracy, and the way he defeated the Germans attempt at Revolution was cunning, or ratbastardish, depending on if you're a Revolutionary Equalist or a aristocratic butt-kissing Preußische Nazi asshole. Frederick William the 4^th was 100% against the formation of a united Germany. He wanted to follow the traditions of history, which was the Catholic Church's Holy Roman Empire's ways. The Holy Roman Empire was based around Catholicism, but the religious would get the Kings and Queens to endorse them, since God reigned as King, and Kings and Queens ruled through a divine right of royalty, permitted, of course, through the human beings who were the “experts” in God: aka the Catholic Church. For 1,000 years, the Holy Roman Empire existed, and through religion, and the King and Queen system, the Catholic Church was able to acquire land, power, states, and militaries.

Frederick William the 4^th opposed the idea of a unified German state, believing that Austria was divinely ordained to rule over Germany. through Vienna, to rule over Germany, and so that wasn't his place, which is actually a bit unusual, considering how the will to power is a normal function, according to William Glasser, and logic, and many real life examples all around us.

William Frederick the 4^th staved off the oncoming Revolution by putting himself at the head of it. William Frederick the 4^th told the 39 Independent German-speaking countries to elect a representative, and had them all convene together from 18 May 1848 to 31 May 1849, in the Paulskirche at Frankfurt am Main. Its existence was both part of and the result of the German (Preußische) “March Revolution” in the states of the German Confederation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Parliament By acting as head of the Revolutionary movement, William Frederick the 4^th was able to head the Revolution off, and then, eventually, once it was small enough, he'd drown it in a bathtub.

The Frankfurt Assembly was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany, elected on 1 May 1848, and William Frederick the 4th ordered them to produce a Constitution, which they did, called the Frankfurt Constitution. The German Frankfurt Constitution proclaimed a German Empire based on the principles of parliamentary democracy. The Frankfurt Constitution proposed a constitutional monarchy headed by a hereditary emperor (Kaiser). The Frankfurt Parliament argued about who should lead the German states, and the two most likely candidates were the Austrian King, or the Preußen King, the two largest German-speaking States at the time. Once the violent rebellion of the poor working classes had quelled, and his position as Preußen King held firm, William Frederick the 4th quickly had the army reoccupy Berlin and in December dissolved the assembly. But that didn't stop William Frederick the 4th from being a two-faced scoundrel.

While the German Revolutions of 1848, and the Frankfurt Parliament, and the Constitution it produced all failed, at the end of 1848, Frederick William finally issued his own Constitution of the Kingdom of Preußen. The liberal opposition had secured the creation of a parliament, but the constitution was largely a conservative document reaffirming the monarchy's predominance. The army was a praetorian guard outside of the constitution, subject only to the king. The Preußische Minister of War was the only soldier required to swear an oath defending the constitution, leading ministers such as Strotha, Bonin and Waldersee to be criticized by either the king or the parliament, depending on their political views. The army's budget had to be approved by the Lower House of Parliament. Novels and memoirs glorifying the army, especially its involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, began to be published to sway public opinion. The defeat at Olmütz of the liberals' plan to unite Germany through Preußen encouraged reactionary forces.

In 1849, William Frederick the 4th pretended he wanted German unification, which led to the Frankfurt Parliament finally offering him the crown again on April 3, 1849, but William Frederick, once again, like a stupid ignorant stuck-up asshole, refused, because he didn't want to accept “a crown from the gutter”. William Frederick wanted an Empire that was rooted in the ways of the old Holy Roman Empire (which Napoleon wiped out in a day in 1806), which had the princes of the individual German states electing him. Therefore Frederick William would only accept the imperial crown after being elected by the German princes, as per the former empire's ancient customs, which seems rather petty, but considering an Oppressor's perspective, really, there's no way for “the people” to have gained any type of power. William Frederick the 4^th despised Revolutions, since they were fought in the name of the people, and to him, “the people” were only supposed to be subjugated. William Frederick only sought to quash the German Revolution by any means necessary.

William Frederick the 4^th expressed this sentiment in a letter to his sister the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, in which he said the Frankfurt Parliament had overlooked that “in order to give, you would first of all have to be in possession of something that can be given.”

In 1856 during peacetime Preußen Army consisted of 86436 infantrymen, 152 cavalry squadrons and 9 artillery regiments.

The Preußische Educational System that Horace Mann loved so much, and was adopted by Amerika, was being governed by a neurotic selfish snobby William Frederick the 4^th, who had no democratic legitimacy, who was two-faced, and staunchly anti-Revolutionary because he hated the masses. He didn't care for a unified German state to be created, nor for the people to have representatives they themselves chose. He only cared about the Royalty who had ruled Europe for decades, and after rejecting an incredible scheme, which would have made him the Father of Germany, a Revolutionary, as well as a Monarchist, instead, he chose to just be a stuck-up aristocrat, who got his job, because of who his father was. Preußen itself only came into existence, through bloodshed, and betrayal. For Frederick William the 4^th, having his power given by the consent of the governed, the people of German-speaking states, was accepting “a crown from the gutter”.

Frederick William the 4th was just an heir to a throne, by chance, born first, to a man who already had power, who got it from his father, who got it from his father, and so on, all of which was only brought about because of a clusterfuck of Kings, Princes, and other royal families, with competing claims to lands, who only came to power through sheer military domination and force, through mercenary armies, and then once they had genocided the original aborigines, and subdued and “assimilate” the rest (sound familiar?), all in the name of God, a Protestant God, as Martin Luther saw him, and not a Catholic God, as the Pope endorsed Holy Roman Emperor, who was neither Holy, nor a Roman, not an Emperor, saw him, and then held onto that power through tradition. The illusion of the power of the King became the reality, and by the time new peasants were born, they had only known that the land was controlled by the Kings, Queens, Princes, and Dukes.

Just like the Amerikan system of education.

The 3-Tiered Educational System

After Napoleon was able to conquer the German states so easily in 1806, the German intelligensia rallied together to figure out what went wrong, and what they could to better their chances for future wars. Napoleon's troops were fighting for the causes of freedom, democracy, and revolution, they were volunteers, and they were willing to die for their cause, even allowing their Emperor to send them on suicide missions en mas, and the educated Germans wouldn't do that for their Kings and Princes. They were running away from the battlefields because they wanted to live. In some battles, there were 10 deserters for every single death, whereas the French troops were flooding the battlefields, willing to do their Emperor's bidding, and to lay down their lives, without question.

The solution was to modernize their educational system. The people needed to be brainwashed to be nationalistic, and patriotic, and obedient, since the ruling class weren't prepared to allow Revolutionary forces to take their power away from them. And the educational system the Preußins designed to be set-up in a strict 3-tiered system.

John Taylor Gatto points out how Amerika's educational system is designed to fit Preußen's 3 tiered system. For the ½% of the population, they'll get to go to Academy School (“Akadamiesschulen”); for 5-7.5% of the population, they'll go to Real School (“Realsschulen”), and the rest are doomed to be the servants for the top ½% and for the 5-7.5%, and they'll just have a People's School education (“Volksschulen”).

John Taylor Gatto writes in The Underground History of Amerikan Education on the strict 3-tiered social stratification of the Preußen-Industrial Education system. For the top ½% of the population, they attended “Akadamiesschulen”, “where, as future policy makers, they learned to think strategically, contextually, in wholes; they learned complex processes, and useful knowledge, studied history, wrote copiously, argued often, read deeply, and mastered tasks of command” (Gatto).

The next 5-7.5% of the Preußische population attended “Realsschulen”, which was “intended mostly as a manufactory for the professional proletariat of engineers, architects, doctors, lawyers, career civil servants, and such other assistants as policy thinkers at times would require”, and they were taught “how to manage materials, men, and situations—to be problem solvers. This group would also staff the various policing functions of the state, bringing order to the domain” (Gatto).

The last group would educate the rest of the 92-94% of the population at “Volksschulen,” “where they learned obedience, cooperation and correct attitudes, along with rudiments of literacy and official state myths of history.”

The purpose of having a strict 3-tiered social stratification was so that the Preußische Totalitarian system, which Horace Mann incorporated into Amerikan common schools in the 1852, when they were first developed, would produce these 6 results: “1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word and deed.” (Gatto). Health, Happiness, Civics, Making Money, Democracy, Justice, Peace, Solidarity, and Love all take a backseat to the wide-spread national collective brain-washing in the name of order and control.

After reading Gatto, that 1%, 5%, 94% 3 tiered system has stuck with me. It's like only the ruling class is getting the right and proper education, and the rest are being put in their respective place. My mindset is simple enough. Because our children are being force-fed ideas that they have to regurgitate back to their Massuhs, they aren't learning critical thinking skills, or how to think for themselves, both of which are essential for one's own humanity, but more importantly, for scientific breakthroughs, which can help all of humanity. It takes 10,000 scientists to have 1 scientific breakthrough. But we're not training our students to live harmoniously with each other, through democratic institutions, how to share power with each other, or how to have any power at all. In fact, at Spalding University, they religiously subscribe to 100% compliance for the best most effective teacher, when they themselves hypocritically aren't governed by anybody. Teacher training schools believes that teaching to future teachers as they are Kindergarteners, making them sit down and shut up, is what is best to make them a teacher, when actually getting on that bike, and riding it yourself is the best way to learn.

The ruling class doesn't want their children going to public schools because they already understand they're all on that bullshit. They don't want their children to be blindly obedient to arbitrary and absolute authority. They want them to be bosses, and captains of industry, and masters of the world. They want them to be big bankers, who wreck the entire economy, and then get the Amerikan taxpayer to pay for their mistakes, with a massive bailout. What gall! And even more appalling... it worked! The ruling class wants to be able to exploit a terroristic crisis, like 9-11, so Amerika can stay an Empire whose forever stuck in war.

The ruling class actually love their children, and want them to maintain their sacred sovereign autonomy, and not to be subjected to the whims of arbitrary and absolute authority. The ruling class understands that to be successful in Amerika, their children need to be able to think for themselves, and, for everybody else, since they'll be governing them all one day.

The point to Amerika's educational system is to sift through the population's children and to sort them out. Those who are smart enough, will get to be doctors, engineers, scientists, civil servants, teachers, and they'll be in the upper echelons, as long as they're obedient to the teachers. Those who aren't obedient and submissive, won't move up in grades, and they'll be shamed by the rest of their class for failing to be just like them. It's social engineering on a mass scale, and since it comes from Preußen's design to make obedient soldiers for cannon fodder, and worker bees for industry and corporations, for those who want to maintain any degree of dignity, self-respect, or autonomy, the Amerikan education system is a race to nowhere.

Most public schools in Amerika will not produce a Jack Andraka, the 15 year old from Maryland who made the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer easier and way cheaper; just pennies. He revolutionized how we view pancreatic cancer, and may have saved thousands of lives. In order to be able to produce Jack Andrakas, we need to value intelligence, which there is a backlash on. Just obedience to authority is all that matters, and so therefore, those who want to think for themselves, will have to educate themselves, in spite of the oppression. We're making the struggle of life more difficult, which it's already difficult enough. Blind obedience to arbitrary and absolute authority is no virtue, and creating life-saving mechanisms for thousands is no vice. http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2012/06/18/wait-did-this-15-year-old-from-maryland-just-change-cancer-treatment/

Preußen also gives Amerika's her teacher training schools, aka Normal Schools, which acts as a buffer, or barrier, to make sure only the “right” kind of teacher can get through. The only teachers who are allowed in the profession are the ones who have taken 13 years of being obedient in grade school, and many more years afterwards of being Oppressed. Once the student-teacher has been oppressed for a number of years, they lose their sense of self, as well as their sense of morality, justice, freedom, and when they themselves become teachers, they'll oppress just as they themselves were oppressed, justifying it by “that's how it is in the real world”. Because in the real world, we're all just going to be somebody's wage slave; we're not going to be scientists, or founders of new businesses, at least not in their eyes. And once the would be teacher gets through the barriers to become a teacher, they have submitted enough, and in order to get along in the fascist (compliance through violence, or threat of) totalitarian (complete control, to where even your mind is controlled) schools, only those heartless psychopathic soon-to-be oppressors can get through. They have to be blindly obedient, and once they have no conscience, morality, etc, then they'll justify their Oppression, because that's how they were treated, and therefore, they feel the oppression is justified.

The Industrial Educational System

Today, we live in a postmodern Internet world, and the structure of Amerikan education came from the rise of Industrial Revolution. It's also the cause of the creation of the uncivilized cities. Ken Robinson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySvbePkjEJo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-baker/industrial-age-education-_b_2974297.html. The bell system, the lunch period, it's all based upon education during the industrial period. Manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, and poor people around the world are making our Nikes and Iphones, and everything at Walmart. So why are we doing this? And unfortunately, Amerikans are racing without an endgoal. We're running to complete the standards set before us by bureaucrats, and it's a race with no end, no purpose. The teachers are miserable, and are only in it for the money, and could care less about the paths their “students” take. They are mean, cruel, and only care about the inferior student's submission.

The highly regimented schools, with the bell system, the subjects are all compartmentalized, noon is when lunchtime begins... it's all because we're supposed to work in the factories as obedient dehumanized robotic automatons. During the rise of the Industrial Revolution, the machines couldn't run themselves, so the Capitalists needed competent worker bees to be run the machines. They didn't want them to have their own minds, because then they might unionize, or become socialists, and take the factories over themselves, but they did want them to run the factories as good obedient worker bees do. As the great former philosopher George Carlin said education is only designed to make people smart enough to run the machines and to do all of the paperwork, but be stupid enough to accept the increase of overtime, the loss of wages, and benefits, and shitty conditions.

Another perfect aspect of the Amerikan education system is that it gets folks stupid enough to vote against their own economic interests. In the words of the great philosophy Roseanne Barr, “For the poor to vote Republican is like the chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.” Clay County, the poorest county in all of Amerika, is located in Eastern Kentucky, and they can brag about an 80% poverty rate, as well as a population that votes Republican 80% of the time. Mitch McConnell straight up works for the Koch brothers, the bankers, the military industrial complex, the war machine, the imperial industrial complex, the corporate paymasters, not for Kentuckians.

The monarchist education system dissuades solidarity. Principal Wooldridge in Louisville was gloating about when he didn't allow the students at his school to really dance. They had to dance with their bodies apart from each other and with just their hands on their sides. The students started protesting, shouting “Let us dance!”, over and over again, and Principal Wooldridge just smiled, feeling all proud of standing steadfast in the face of great mobilization of the masses. But that's the foundation to the movie Footlloose, and he was the enemy of the town. And while dancing is liberating in some sense, so is giving us, and all young Amerikans, our own brains, so we can think for themselves, to understand our rights, our power, for value and self-respect, to build up efficacy, to practice democratic virtues, to share in power, and so that we aren't manipulated for the rest of our lives.

The Solution

“The poor baby, knowing nothing, is he not at your mercy? Can you not arrange everything in the world which surrounds him? Can you not influence him as you wish? His work, his play, his pleasures, his pains, are not all these in your hands and without his knowing? Doubtless he ought to do only what he wants; but he ought to do only what you want him to do; he ought not to take a step which you have not foreseen; he ought not to open his mouth without your knowing what he will say.” ~Jean Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau, 1762). Rousseau, Jean Jacques. (1762). Emile, Book II - Age 5 to Age 12. http://www.online-literature.com/rousseau/emile/2/

Amerika has a veneer of freedom and democracy. While the elections are a minor aspect of democracy, and sometimes the system works, for us all, it all starts with the Oppressor Monarchists in the classroom. Our Prison Plantation need educators who believe in freedom and democracy, and not zombies who had their life smashed out of them in Normal Schools, which is creating the Normalization of Totalitarian systems. A paradigm shift is called for, and needed. We live in a post-industrial world of the Information Age; a postmodern society; the 21^st Century. Mass education was developed in congruence with the Industrial Revolution. And an Oppressor never respects one whose turns into an obedient automaton. The obedience only justifies their repression. Only when folks show power for themselves, that's the only way they'll gain any respect. A true educator isn't just lecturing at folks, which can only brag about a 5% retention rate, but a true educator understands that to teach others, is an artform. We're not just teaching them about this and that, but about how to live life, amongst each other, to have morals, ethics, a sense of wonder, and justice, and a true educator, once they've taught their student how to ride the bike, they step back, and out of their lives for good, unless they are needed to teach some more skills. The Oppressor Molester Professors today want the power just for power's sake, and they want to keep it forever. If it looks as though a student is developing some inclinations of being independent, or of being free, immediately, the hammer must be swung down, and the poor wretch is either knocked back into mindless zombie-like submission, or lynched. We can have democratic families, where respect and solidarity, understanding and cooperation were the mainstays of the culture. Education should enhance our basic goodness that we as humans are born with, to make us stronger, for us to be aware of our own power, our own sacred sovereign autonomy, and each others, to question illegitimate arbitrary and absolute authority. Education, especially in the so-called freest nation on the planet, should be about so much more. Education should be for liberation, not for oppression, and I have no idea why I feel so alone for calling for Freedom and Democracy in Amerika, and it must be because we aren't a people who value freedom and democracy, each other, or ourselves, and that's a goddamned shame.

xXx

“The rat,” said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, “although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.”

There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself. George Orwell 1984 Chapter 3 Page 202

“It was a common punishment in Imperial China,” said O'Brien as didactically as ever.

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment — one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!”

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars — always away, away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but O'Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.

xXx

“They can't get inside you,” she had said. But they could get inside you. “What happens to you here is forever,” O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.

He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten meters away from him. It struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way. They almost passed one another without a sign, then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him. She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round her waist.

There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter, nothing mattered. They could have had sex if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to disengage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was swallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been.

As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimeters and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed.

“I betrayed you,” she said baldly.

“I betrayed you,” he said.

She gave him another quick look of dislike.

“Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten you with something something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, “Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.” And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”

“All you care about is yourself,” he echoed.

“And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any longer.”

“No,” he said, “you don't feel the same.”

There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides, it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catching her Tube and stood up to go.

“We must meet again,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “we must meet again.”

He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the everflowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to become separated from her by a small knot of people. He made a halfhearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down, turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he had gone fifty meters, he looked back. The street was not crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable from behind.

“At the time when it happens,” she had said, “you do mean it.” He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered over to the—Under the spreading chestnut tree.

“I sold you and you sold me”.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin- scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

xxXxx

“The poor baby, knowing nothing, is he not at your mercy? Can you not arrange everything in the world which surrounds him? Can you not influence him as you wish? His work, his play, his pleasures, his pains, are not all these in your hands and without his knowing? Doubtless he ought to do only what he wants; but he ought to do only what you want him to do; he ought not to take a step which you have not foreseen; he ought not to open his mouth without your knowing what he will say.” ~Jean Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau, 1762). Rousseau, Jean Jacques. (1762). Emile, Book II - Age 5 to Age 12. http://www.online-literature.com/rousseau/emile/2/

Some folks will object to freedom and democracy, and say that it's just not possible, because they are children, and children are dumb, and they do stupid irrational impulsive things, so how can we trust them to govern themselves? Eventually those children will become adults, and they will be expected to rule themselves, and even the Oppressors speak about personal responsibility. Karen Dunnagan agreed with me that all education is self-education, but we weren't in agreement. What she meant was that she lectures at us, we do what she orders us to do for hours on end, and if we want to “learn” all that she knows, then we need to study hard, on our own, outside the classroom.

“You know what? You're all a bunch of assholes. You know why? Because you don't have the guts to be what you want to be. You need people like me. You need people like me, so you can, that's the bad guy”. ~Al Pacino as Scarfare

In Amerika, there's no democracy anywhere. There's no democracy in Amerikan schools, Amerikan workplaces, Amerikan homes, skies, trees, creeks, in the sewers, anywhere. Even in our political establishments—the election—the one thing that remotely looks like democracy, we have abysmal turnout rates:

28.6% is how many Kentuckians voted in the November election in 2011. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/2011-2019/2011/TRNSUMMARYGEX11.txt

For Kentucky's 2011 primary election, turnout rate was an abysmal 10.4%. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/2011-2019/2011/SUMMARYPRX11.txt

In Kentucky, turnout was 49.1% on November 2, 2010

http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/2006-2010/10gen.pdf

2007 General Election for Kentucky garnered a 37.8% turnout rate. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/2006-2010/07gen.pdf

2006 General Election for Kentucky garnered a 49.5% turnout rate. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/2006-2010/06gen.pdf

2002 General Election for Kentucky garnered a 47.5% turnout rate. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/2001-2005/02gen.pdf

The 1999 November General election for Kentucky had a turnout rate of 24%. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/1996-2000/99gen.pdf

The 1984 November Primary Election garnered an 18% turnout rate. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/1980-1985/84pri.pdf

In the November General Election in 1982, Kentucke's turnout rate was 40.5%. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/1980-1985/82gen.pdf In the Primary in 1982, Kentucke had 14.8% turnout rate. http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/turnout/1980-1985/82pri.pdf

28.6%, 10.4%, 49.1%, 37.8%, 49.5%, 47.5%, 24%, 18%, 40.5%, and 14.8% are not democratic majorities. Nobody whose elected in Kentucky was elected by the “demos”, and therefore, they have no democratic legitimacy. The “demos”—the Kentucky people—stay home during election, and they do not participate in their government. This has been a problem in Kentucky for over 3 decades, and probably more, which is, not coincidentally, when Mitch got into office.

While during the years of Presidential Elections, Kentucky barely breaks the 50% threshold, the polls do not count unregistered voters in their totals. For 2010, there's 2.8 million registered voters, when Kentucky boasts of a population of over 4 million people.

There's no democracy in Amerika to speak of. It's all a bunch of autocratic monarchic dictatorships. Whenever Amerika exports our democratic values to other countries, we never give them our system, which is inherently undemocratic. It's always some sort of parliamentary system, but not our Electoral Colleges, or schemes of Byzantine governance.

Which shouldn't be that surprising, since George Washington genocided the world's oldest democracy—the Iroquois—in exchange for a system that elevates the Electoral College, and smashes down the masses.

Of course it would be easy to teach young Amerikans to be free, and freedom in group settings can only exist as a democracy, unless somehow, there was a crisis, and we all gave our power away to one person, but during normal times, peaceful times, times without crisis, it's not necessary to do that. Even then, however, we're given our consent to be governed, but in the school systems, all we have are appointed monarchists, who lectures at us, who only care about our capitulation, and sadly, fascist totalitarianism is the norm in Amerikan society. But when educators start to learn democratic processes for themselves, since by the Graduate level, we're not frivolous and impetuous... and sometimes, it looks as though Graduate students are more obedient than the Kindergarteners. Their humanity has been washed sanitized, and they love Big Brother. By the Graduate level, we've all paid our dues, and the best way to learn how to ride the bike, is to get on that bike, and to ride it for ourselves, and in a classroom full of would-be educators, we all should encourage each other, as we're going to encourage our students, to learn things for ourselves, to have our own independent thoughts, to speak for ourselves, to engage in dialogue, to present our arguments, to strive towards our ambitions and goals, to teach each other, and treat each other with respect, and of course, most importantly, to listen to each other, and respect each other's beliefs. Why is it such a radical notion to get those who are to become teachers, to teach themselves? Some folks criticize me because they say I do not play the game well, but why is life a game? Life is serious, and paying $100,000 in education, one should get more benefits than just a piece of paper that says you did something, even though you didn't. When one can't talk about education to educators in an education buildings, we've got some majorly serious problems as a Amerikan society. It's like Teacher Training schools, Normal Schools, are here to teach us to be slaves, and how will us practicing being slaves make us good masters? Like with O'Brien in 1984, the importance of Normal Schools isn't to develop our skills and talents, but it's to make the student-teachers the same as the dehumanized Machiavellian Oppressor Professor Molester, to smash the human being out of us, and then, once we're malleable cogs to the Oppressor's whims, we lose our humanity too, only in order to go into the school buildings in order to destroy our future student's—Amerika's children's—spirituality and soul, and self-respect, and dignity. 100% compliance is what is taught in Amerikan schools, when the Holocaust shows us what happens with the drooling vapid obedient masses. Howard Zinn said that Amerika's problem is her obedience, and it's causing war, genocide, and slavery, domestically, and worldwide.

Of course it would be easy to teach young Amerikans how freedom and democracy is supposed to work and operate in democratic society as soon as we decide that freedom and democracy are virtues we ourselves actually believe in. Then, we'll learn freedom and democracy ourselves, and we can show our students through our example. Easy. If only it wasn't just me who believed in freedom and democracy. Even Occupy Louisville and my Democratization class in college didn't believe in freedom and democracy. We've been brainwashed to need a person to order us around, and like Franz Fanon said, if another slave speaks out, we lash at them, since that's the only way we feel human. Amerika's 3-tiered Preußische-Industrial Educational system is outdated, archaic, and it's time for working peoples all over the world to unite!

Freedom and Democracy Are Good Things

In order to write this section below, I had to look to other countries, in Europe, and the Middle East, and Afrika, who were actually attempting democratization besides Amerika.

Jim Crowther speaks about the “Crisis in Democracy” in Europe, and how there's “powerful anti-democratic forces emerging across Europe along with global economic forces that are unaccountable to national electorates” (Crowther 2013). Crowther then documents his 4 major trends that has “interrelated dimensions,” with the first one being how the world's governments have handled the economic crisis, started by the Amerikan subprime mortgage bubble that burst in 2008, which has led to “the ousting of governments (e.g. in Greece and Italy), a lurch towards austerity and the upsurge of large minority right-wing political forces with intolerant racist and xenophobic agendas” … “Bureaucrats largely dictate the economic policies in Spain, Ireland and Portugal from Brussels and even strong economies such as Germany and France heed the dictates of the banks” (Crowther 2013). While Amerikans bailed out the banks, the same ones who caused this catastrophe of global proportions due to our “unsustainable and reckless credit activity of banks” (which also happened in the UK), the solution has only been to implement austerity measures, which puts the burden of the solution to the crisis on the most vulnerable in our society, while the financial industry remains pretty much unaccountable. The financial industry received “a mere slap on the wrist or the loss of a knighthood here and there”, but, “on the other hand, there have been draconian cuts in welfare and a hardening of attitudes towards people on benefit” (Crowther 2013). While the uber wealthy bankers, corporations, and financial elite caused the economic recession, instead of going the way of Iceland, where the politicians fired the bankers, and threw them in jail, Amerika gave our tax dollars to those same global bankers, and cutting the much needed social welfare programs that keep the poor and marginalized in society barely afloat. While there's much talk about cutting the welfare of the “47%”, there's hardly any serious talk about cutting off the welfare for the financial industry. The global economic crisis has also “been the undermining of the social rights of citizenship, an essential component of democracy, because it is easy to politically legitimate”(Crowther 2013).

The second trend Crowther observes, is that there's an attack on democracy because of “the rise of transnational and multinational firms, which have the corporate power and financial clout to override or shape national and international politics”. This expansion of power by democraticly illegitimate private corporate tyrannies has seeped into shaping the policy of public education. “The expansion of the private sector into edu-business is one example of this trend” (Crowther 2013). A third trend Crowther sees, is that the global elite power apparatus is giving rise to “new forms of network governance” which “undermine representative forms of democratic accountability.” An effect of this has been a public educational policy that's “hitched to private-sector values and goals” (Crowther 2013). The last trend Crowther points out is how “public spaces for debate and dissent are being undermined.” Since the public sphere, with Amerikan politicians and media plotting out the scope of the debate, is being filled with the concerns of the monied interests, the concerns of the common average working class families are being skirted and ignored. The “consequence is that the public sphere is hollowed out as a place for analyzing how personal troubles can be transformed into public issues” (Crowther 2013).

When all of these 4 trends in Europe are combined, they “make for a crisis of democracy in social, cultural, economic and political terms” (Crowther 2013).

The governments installed in Iraq, and in other nations, are not modeled on the Amerikan Constitution, since the representative democracy of our founders, minus Thomas Jefferson (who wasn't at the Constitutional Convention), is a kind of bastardization of democracy. The Electoral College is the best example of this, where James Madison defended it in the Federalist Papers, because he wanted to distill the public's choices, to refine the whims of the huddled masses, so that it appealed to the aristocracy, and the plutocrats. And compared to pure direct democracies, representative democracy is far removed from the civic participation and the sharing of power pure direct democracy demands. For representative democracies, our only civic duty as citizens is to vote. For direct democracies, a deliberative assembly is required, as well as civic groups, and an active citizenry, all of which are virtually and woefully absent in Amerikan society. The institution which should be promoting all of these values, the Amerikan public school system, are governed by appointed monarchists in every classroom. The crisis of democracy found in Europe is also found here in Amerika, which is ironic considering our exceptionalism, where Amerika is the “city on the hill”, and a model for liberal democracies all across the world.

The ideal of public education is where we should be allowed to question ideas, and to get into arguments and debates, most especially regarding our political leaders. This too is altogether lacking. In one of my more freeing classes in Normal School (aka Teacher Training Schools), I asked my fellow teacher-student colleagues, “Who else thinks we should have democratic schools in a democratic society?”, and the only response I received was an unbearable silence. I'm not sure if my colleagues didn't support my love for freedom and democracy, or if they were afraid of speaking their minds, for fear of being flunked out or looked upon disfavorably by the autocrat Professor, but either reason is appalling for our so-called democracy. While I know there's some folks who support democracy, since there's over 300 million Amerikans, I feel completely and utterly alone in my love of individual freedom, where we all have a sacred sovereign autonomy that demands to be treated with respect and dignity. Freedom in group settings take the form of democracy. Amerika in general, and Kentucky in particular, has a major crisis in democracy.

While reflecting upon the state of democracy in Kentucky politics, the Senate election is in the national limelight, and can serve as a useful example. This Senate election will have a disgusting $100 million spent in campaign contributions, and yet, we the people do not receive a $100 million conversation, where we speak about Kentucky's myriad of problems, and find solutions to those problems. Instead, we have a race to the bottom, where we are being bombarded with mud-slinging television ads, which incidentally is how Mitch became Senator 30 years ago. Even George Washington set a precedent for Presidential term limits by stepping down after 8 years. While probably not a genuine offer, Mitch McConnell, after beating Matt Bevin, his Republican challenger in the primary, wrote a letter to Alison Lundergan Grimes asking her to engage in a series of debates, invoking the ideal standard of debating set by the “Lincoln-Douglass” debates. We the people never got a series of debates, but on September 13, 2014, we did get a debate. A single debate. On KET, Kentucky's “Educational” public television station, and that's all we're going to get. And the Libertarian candidate was even denied access to the debate, in spite of him suing in order to get that access. Kentucky also has an abysmal voter turnout rate, and long list of local candidates running unopposed in this year's elections. All local county positions are up for reelection, and that happens every 4 years, yet, most of those races have candidates who run unopposed, including the million dollar Circuit Court judge seats. For Kentucky, the Senate election is perhaps the least significant campaign, in terms of influence, considering all of the power the Sheriff, Judge-Executive, Mayors, Legislative councils, for county and city, Judges, and State representatives, plus a slew of other local candidates have, but there's hardly a peep from the media or Kentucky folks regarding them. Speaking about our representatives should be casual water cooler talk, but here in the Bluegrass, speaking about politics is considered impolite. While all of this represents a crisis in democracy that can be blamed on the elites, without a mobilization of the public, and an informed and active citizenry demanding to hold our representatives accountable, we're only going to get the scraps of democracy the elites give us.

Some folks may blame Kentucky for these problems, but many national surveys show that this crisis is happening all across Amerika. “Almost a 1/3 [of Amerikans] mistakenly believed that a US Supreme Court ruling could be appealed”; and “only 1/3 of Amerikans could name all 3 branches of government” ... “one-third could not name any”! (Snow 2012). Most Amerikan high school graduates can name “the three judges on Amerikan Idol”, but very few can say how many Justices of the United States Supreme Court we have, or their names (Snow 2012).

Luckily, we already have a Universal Public Education System in place, but ironically, our Amerikan government schools aren't teaching us about Amerikan government, and our vital roles as stewards in this “democracy”. While the ignorance is disturbing, it's more appalling when one considers that civic learning and engage is the lifeblood of a democracy. “To neglect civic learning is to neglect a core pillar of Amerikan democracy” (Snow 2012).

For Crowther, the solution for the crisis of democracy in Europe lies with the Swedes. “The Swedish context provides a positive experience to reflect on the potential role of popular education in this context, as well as warnings to heed”(Crowther 2013). Crowther even references radical educational theorist Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed being used as a basis for many of the popular school movements there. The society in Sweden has a robust popular education movement, and Crowther concludes that “the most elementary point which these trends [popular education movements in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Scandinavia] have in common is that they emerged out of the aspirations of ordinary people to educate themselves, individually and/or collectively, and thereby led to the growth of alternative public spheres where issues of wider concern and the common good were debated and assessed” (Crowther 2013). The major difference between Sweden's success with democracy and their educational system, and the rest of Europe's problem with democracy and their lack of a robust popular education movement, is that in Sweden “the demands of social movements in civil society have been supported by the state.” … “The interconnection between civil society and the state has been deeply embedded in Swedish culture through institutions of popular education (i.e. folk high schools, study circles and the associations which promote them)” (Crowther 2013). Snow also agrees with this assessment when he points to “lack of institutional commitment to formal civic education” as a major problem with civic learning (Snow 2012). The same is true for Amerikan schools.

A major reason why Amerikan public education doesn't have democratic processes is because Normal Schools doesn't have them, and when we adult teachers begin to live by democratic virtues, then we adult teachers will be able to show the students by example what adults using democratic processes looks like. Just having alternative schools isn't enough, because many of them are inherently undemocratic (Laguardia 2009). Because public education and it's Normal Schools aren't democratic, it's time to issue “a call for the transformation to democratic schools” (Laguardia 2009).

Some alternative private schools are democratic, such as Sudbury Valley Schools, and perhaps their successes will translate, through competition, for Normal Schools to up their ante. But more importantly, what needs to happen for us to reform Normal Schools to reflect our Amerikan democratic heritage. Abraham Lincoln's definition of democracy—of, by, and for the people—is held in high reverence all around the world. Lincoln said that our nation's learning of Amerika's laws and our Constitution should become “the political religion of the nation”. He advocated civic education to be “taught in schools, seminaries and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, enforced in courts of justice” (Snow 2012). Thomas Jefferson also warned us of what the opposite of an educated citizenry would produce: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be” (Snow 2012).

As humans, we only retain 5% of the lectures we hear, but we retain 90% of what we teach (and 75% of our experiences, and 50% of our experiences, per the Learning Pyramid). Normal Schools need to adopt the many popular education mechanisms that the Swedes are using, such as democratic study circles. With democratic study circles, instead of being lectured at by a monarchist, where we learn virtually nothing (5%), instead, we can teach each other. If each of the student-teachers were to take a chapter from our respective textbooks, and we taught ourselves, and each other, what we learned, we would retain 90% of those lessons we taught, as well as promoting an inherent respect for one another, as opposed to arguing amongst ourselves, in unnatural oppressive settings, in order to appeal to the Professor. Those arguments made in hierarchical environments, the zeal for education isn't apparent, but knocking down independent ideas, including ones that may be perceived as threatening the Professor's authority, even if they are not, are held in high esteem. Study circles, or democratic circles, would change that.

In Sweden, “adult students decide what is relevant, which contributes to the quality of learning”, and “the collective pedagogy of the study circle enables individuals to express their own opinions and to learn through discussion and debate as well as from materials they include in their study.” In having those democratic discussions, “the resourcing of these activities” will ultimately lead to putting the “legitimate responsibility” of financing such demands on the State (Crowther 2013). Crowther ends his article with a quote from a 1975 academic journal which declares:

Individual freedom to question the value of established practices and institutions and to propose new forms is part of our democratic heritage. To maintain this freedom, resources should not be put at the disposal only of those who conform but ought reasonably to be made available to all for explicit educational purposes. (Adult Education: The Challenge of Change, 1975, p. 25). (Crowther 2013)

If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those views we disagree with, then we don't believe in freedom of speech. Laguardia quotes Thomas Jefferson when speaking about the absence of an informed and active citizenry. “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.” Indeed, to have a complacent people is to allow the rulers to become tyrants. Jefferson said to safeguard democracy, the people's “minds must be improved to a certain degree”, which is why he was in support of an Amendment to the US Constitution for public education. “The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual... participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia 1781-1785, Query 14 (Laguardia 2009). Laguardia said that “only an informed populace can guard against undemocratic forces like plutocracy and theocracy”.

2/3 of 81,000 students in 26 states surveyed “found two-thirds of high school students complain of boredom, usually because the subject matter was irrelevant or their teachers didn't seem to care about them” (Laguardia 2009). For Laguardia, the solution was to have “Civics and Social Studies” ... “take on much more important roles”. He wanted democratic “classroom organization”, because when the students understand their beautiful historical gift of democracy, then we will be able to develop an informed, active, and engaged citizenry, who can participate in the decision-making processes in school, as well as in the community. While Civics by itself is vital to our democracy, another aspect of having informed citizens is developing their ability to think independently, and to know “how to solve difficult problems with logic and evidence”. For democratic learning, our students will need to be able to master citizenship skills, such as: “presenting a coherent argument; listening to the argument of others; persuading others; being open to the persuasion of others; negotiating differences; and mobilizing support for a particular proposal” (Laguardia 2009).

“Democracy is not only a form of government, but a way of life” (Kuran 2014), and right now is “a time when the very meaning of democracy and citizenship is contested (Arnot and Dillabough 2000)” (Matsepe 2014). If we lose our democracy, since democracy is on the ropes around the world, and wholly absent in Amerikan public schools, it won't be because of the terrorists, or by somebody trying to overthrow the government. It'll be because we did it to ourselves, and didn't care enough about freedom and democracy, as our founders did, and our political leaders like to brag about, especially when used to justify the Empire's bombing of brown-skinned 3rd world nations back into the stone age. “Democracy accepts that individuals are autonomous, responsible for self-governance, and able to make choices and decisions for themselves” (Kuran 2014). While I'll be able to do all that I can to empower my students to understand their sacred sovereign autonomous power, Laguardia calls for democratic practices “in every classroom from kindergarten through the 12th grade” (Laguardia 2009). “Students should participate in decision making in their schools”... “because it means molding future leaders who will become better citizens with decision making capacity that will benefit their communities” (Matsepe 2014). I would love to see democracy revitalized in Amerika, and it'll only happen when the schools, especially the Normal Schools, believe that freedom and democracy is a virtue, which it is. Freedom and Democracy are good things.

References

Crowther, Jim. “Popular Education, Power and Democracy”. June 1, 2013. Adult Learning. pg. 45-47. “Popular Education Network” PEN.

Kuran, Kezban. “Teacher perspectives on civic and human rights education.” May 23, 2014. Educational Research and Reviews. Vol. 9 (10). Pgs. 302-311. http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1400506908_Kuran.pdf

Laguardia, Armando and Arthur Pearl. “Necessary Educational Reform for the 21^st Century: The Future of Public Schools in our Democracy”. November 1, 2009. Urban Review.

Matsepe, Mokone W. “Democratic involvement of students in high school governance in Lesotho.” April 10, 2014. Educational Research and Reviews. Vol. 9 (7). http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1399387665_Matsepe.pdf

Snow, Rodney. “Education on the Fundamentals of Our Government and Democracy is on Life Support: We Can Help.” May/Jun2012. Utah Bar Journal Vol. 25 Issue 3, p8-13.

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[further editing is needed below]

“visions for the future are framed by the mainstream political parties and media elite rather than through spaces being created for ordinary people to engage in the debate and share their own aspirations, concerns and analyses.” (Crowther 2013)

“elites who control the international flow of money and information, preside over the philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate—that have lost faith in the values, or what remains of them, of the West.” (Laguardia 2009)

“Just over a 1/3 thought it was the intention of the Founding Fathers to have each branch hold a lot of power, but the President has the final say.” (Snow 2012)

through active participation in school and community affairs are very important. So are a revitalized school government whose basic units are the classroom, cooperative learning, and community development projects.” (Laguardia 2009)

“Just under half of Amerikans (47%) knew that a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court carries the same legal weight as a 9-0 ruling.” (Snow 2012)

“When the Supreme Court divides 5-4, roughly one in four [Amerikans] (23%) believed the decision was referred to Congress for resolution; 16% thought it needed to be sent back to the lower courts.” (Snow 2012)

why has there been a decline in civics education? Disenchantment of the government brought on by Watergate and Vietnam. “the unprecedented pressure to raise student achievement now measured by the standardized examination of reading and mathematics.” “Pressure in these trends seems to have caused education regarding democratic principles to either take a back seat or disappear altogether.” (Snow 2012)

to keep up with China: civic education is being sacrificed in order to maintain the pace of a people governed by a “communist dictatorship where human rights are all but nonexistent and free elections are effectively out of the question.” (Snow 2012)

“any automatic correlation of education with democracy is misguided: especially within redemptive discourses that seek to liberate education from its present enclosure” (Peim 2013)

this paper considers the “monstrous proposal that education be abandoned as the grounds for social, ethical and cultural redemption.” (Peim 2013)

NCLB “is the primary engine of the national school reform movement” .. the reform “undermines teacher morale and teacher initiative” … (Laguardia 2009)

“The push to increase test scores is refocusing school curriculum toward test preparation and pushing out the teaching of History, Civics, and Social Studies throughout K-12 schools at a time when we need more citizen involvement and the improvement of civic skills.” (Laguardia 2009)

“Education in a democracy, said Alexis de Toqueville, “is an apprenticeship in liberty”. It promotes the attitudes, values, and skills needed to live in freedom. Democracy is not inherited. It is constantly learned and experienced. We create freedom, sustain it, grow from it, embed it in our families, communities, and institutions, and claim it as our heritage.” (Laguardia 2009)

“we present the following 11 components as key element of an optimum learning environment” (Laguardia 2009)

1- Encouragement to risk; 2- Elimination of unnecessary pain, boredom, humiliation, and loneliness; 3- Emphasis on the meaning of learning: why what is being taught is important to know; 4- A sense of competence, which encourages all students to believe they can succeed and participate; 5- A sense of belonging to something very special, as an equally valued member of a learning community; 6- Usefulness, putting to work what has just been taught; 7- Hope, which helps students' aspirations for a gratifying life; 8- Excitement, the opportunity and the encouragement to engage in the thrill of discovery; 9- Creativity, the opportunity and the encouragement to be creative; 10- Ownership, doing things for self and community, not for the teacher or the system; 11- Empowerment, gaining a sense of power when engaged meaningfully in a project that “changes the world”. (Laguardia 2009)

“Democratic authority is legitimate authority, obtained by the consent of the governed.” … “Schools are places were students are compelled to submit to an authority not established by their consent. Classrooms are undemocratic places in which teachers are supposed to “assert their dominance over students.” That is neither a new finding nor one that generates much concern. (Laguardia 2009)

“Classroom authority earns legitimacy through persuasion and negotiation.” (Laguardia 2009)

“If we lose our democracy, it will not be because it is overthrown or because a small group of terrorists destroyed it. It will be because the citizen, the person who had the benefits of at least 12 years of education, didn't know enough to preserve it.” (Laguardia 2009)

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“When other countries like Republic of South Africa involved students in school governing bodies, the present practice in Lesotho does not allow does not allow students to be members of school boards.” (Matsepe 2014).

massive strikes are happening in Lesotho schools, and the proposal to allow for students to be a part of the school boards are recommended in order to stave off those strikes, which have resulted in “vandalism, injuries and sometimes deaths” (Matsepe 2014). It's also to “breed good future leaders who will be better citizens with decision-making capacity.” (Matsepe 2014).

the survey conducted to see if the general population thought allowing students on the school board would be a good idea was this: “60% of the students were favor of it; 87% of the teachers; 89% of the prefects; 60% of the principals; 60% of government officials, and 67% of educational secretaries were all in favor of it;” Only the parents represented a majority opposed to the idea (52% were against it). (Matsepe 2014).

“All responses emphasize that culturally it is not permissible to allow student participation because children are young and cannot be entrusted to make decisions while their parents are still there. These responses clearly show that he relationship between students and adults is based on the traditional cultural perceptions that students are children who are untrained; thus they have to obey instructions while adults are regarded as legitimate authority figures who have an inalienable right to make decisions.” (Matsepe 2014).

“McDaniel (1981) insists that power should be shared with students. Students should be helped to learn how to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. By doing this, minimization of problems of crime, vandalism and violence will be ensured.” (Matsepe 2014).

“citizenship education is something we learn, not something we merely inherit.” … “They need to experience being part of the solution rather than remaining passive observers and listeners.” (Matsepe 2014).

“Children in Lesotho are taken and treated as minors who have to be coerced in ways that are constant with approved ethical and moral standards. Blishen (1969) in Meigham (1986:33) rounds it all by saying, “you do not consult the clay about what kind of pot it wants to be.” (Matsepe 2014).

“It is hoped that if cultural values are transformed meaningfully, they could facilitate democratic participation of students and eliminate the gap that seems to exist between the ways of doing certain practices in the past and in the contemporary transitional demcracy in Lesotho.” (Matsepe 2014).

For Turkish schools.

“an awareness of human rights and citizenship can only be fostered in democratic environments”; (Kuran 2014)

“Democracy is not only a form of government, but a way of life.”; (Kuran 2014)

“Democracy accepts that individuals are autonomous, responsible for self-governance, and able to make choices and decisions for themselves.” (Kuran 2014)

“The purpose of the study is to obtain teacher views on the 8^th grade civic and human rights education course.” (Kuran 2014)

“All 31 teachers viewed the civic and human rights education course as one that “teaches the requirements of a democratic life and informs about human rights (demanding rights, respect for difference of opinion and belief, freedom of thought and expression, the right to vote, etc.). (Kuran 2014)

29 of the 31 Turkish teachers saw the course as “one that teaches civic rights and responsibilities (establishing civic awareness, health, following legal rules, constitution, paying taxes, education, etc.). (Kuran 2014)

Some of the views of the teachers were “this course teaches how to be a good citizen”, “to look out for their rights”, “teaches the requirements of democratic life”; (Kuran 2014)

29 of the Turkish teachers “agreed that the objectives of the civic and human rights education course were not met”. 20 of the teachers thought the course failed because there wasn't “a civic and human rights environment at schools and classrooms”; 20 believed it was because of “the theoretical nature of the course”, nad they they couldn't “teach practical real-life topics”. 17 blamed print and visual media, nad 12 believed it was because of parent attitudes; (Kuran 2014)

“Non-democratic teacher and parent attitudes contradict with those taught in class.”(Kuran 2014)

25 teachers said that seeing children as “adolescents” was the problem. 18 said it was because of “the failure of principals and teachers in becoming role models”. (Kuran 2014)

“Student rights are not honored”. “When children are treated democratically, the conceive this as a concession and become more disrespectful. This is because their families don't teach them these concepts.” (Kuran 2014)

“Class sizes are so big that we feel forced to use restrictions to maintain authority.” (Kuran 2014)

“most families are not democratic”; “The contradiction between the organizational culture of schools and contents of the Civic and Human Rights Education Course creates a dilemma for children.” (Kuran 2014)

Solutions:

27 said that “the establishment of a democratic environment at schools”. 18 said that “TV should show more programs on democracy, civic knowledge and human rights.” (Kuran 2014)

10 proposed that “families should be offered informative seminars and visits”, while 6 proposed that “the course be taught by field experts”. (Kuran 2014)

“Teachers stated that they mostly preferred classical methods of implementations such as lecturing and question-answer. This finding corroborates earlier findings that teachers who teach social studies, a course which includes the teaching of the civic and human rights education, use lecturing and question-answer.” … “The teacher-centered methods and techniques used in this course may also have caused this.” (Kuran 2014)

“Practice is the best, if not the only, way of teaching democratic ideals such as tolerance, responsibility, solidarity, rights, agreement and participation.” … “Lister (1982:11) states that these attitudes and behaviors must first be displayed by teachers and then practiced together with students.” … “democracy can be taught within the school culture and with self-learning (Tibbits, 1994:364)”. (Kuran 2014)

“The majority of teachers pinpointed “not viewing students as adolescents” as the most serious problem in the civic and human rights education course.” … “Teachers view students as children who are not ready to understand civic and human rights rather than seeing those students as young citizens.” … “As a result of this, today's generations have difficulty deciding what is right or wrong, and what is good or bad (Yel and Aladag, 2009:124-125). (Kuran 2014)

“Human rights are basically about independence; they denote the freedom of individuals to act in accordance with their own judgments and aims (Erdogan, 2001: 134).” (Kuran 2014)

“If teachers at all stages of education can display tolerant, respectful, unbiased, open guiding, helpful and consistent democratic behaviors towards their students, this will undoubtedly be more effective than any democracy lesson.” (Kuran 2014)

Following recommendations: (Kuran 2014)

knowledgeable teachers should be teaching the course; (Kuran 2014)

teacher's handbooks should be created for effective implementation;

all of this would help if the whole school was involved in democratic learning; (Kuran 2014)

“Home visits may be made to explain that a democratic attitude in a family-child relationships may help child development.” (Kuran 2014)

“civic and human rights education courses” are taught in 5, 6, and 7^th grades, “more permanent knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and values may be engendered in students.” (Kuran 2014)

“To be more succinct, the efficacy of democratization drive, including its sustainability, is unquestionably dependent on the enabling capacity provided by education.” … “it is this enormous potential of education that makes it prone to manipulation by powerful forces to serve vested interest”. (Chibueze 2010)

“social order” … “affects and is affected by educatoin and democracy” … “social order, more than anything else, determines the kind of education and democracy a society gets.” (Chibueze 2010)

Chibueze's goal is the democratization of Nigeria, and he recognizes that education of the masses for “social mobilization” and “citizen participation” is essential. “The efficacy of the democratization drive, including its sustainability, is unquestionably dependent on the enabling capacity provided by education including increased awareness, civic enlightenment, mental empowerment, increased critical consciousness, raised political conscienceness, imparting, imbibing and internalizing of appropriate values, among others.” (Chibueze 2010)

“The child is trained to submit to authority, to do the will of others as a matter of course, with the result that habits of mind are formed which in adult life are all to the advantage of the ruling class.” pg. 2999 (Chibueze 2010)

“As a dependent neo-colonial social formation, it thrives, in large measure, on colonial legacies”, a charge that doesn't even escape Amerika, especially when considering in our revolution, the elite were still governed by the aristocratic class. (Chibueze 2010)

Dominant groups; Civic groups...

References

Chibueze, C. Ikeji, and J. Otisi Kalu and Utulu Paul. “Social order, education and democracy in Nigeria: Some unresolved questions”. September 24, 2010. Academic Journals. Vol. 4 (14). pg. 2999-3004. http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/AJBM/article-abstract/754CD8D25237 Institute of Public Policy and Administration (IPPA), University of Calabar, Cross-Rivers State, Nigeria. E-mail: drikeji@yahoo.com.

Crowther, Jim. “Popular Education, Power and Democracy”. June 1, 2013. Adult Learning. pg. 45-47. “Popular Education Network” PEN.

Kuran, Kezban. “Teacher perspectives on civic and human rights education.” May 23, 2014. Educational Research and Reviews. Vol. 9 (10). Pgs. 302-311. http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1400506908_Kuran.pdf

Laguardia, Armando and Arthur Pearl. “Necessary Educational Reform for the 21^st Century: The Future of Public Schools in our Democracy”. November 1, 2009. Urban Review.

Matsepe, Mokone W. “Democratic involvement of students in high school governance in Lesotho.” April 10, 2014. Educational Research and Reviews. Vol. 9 (7). http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1399387665_Matsepe.pdf

Peim, Nick. “Education, Schooling, Derrida’s Marx and Democracy: Some Fundamental Questions”. March 1, 2013. Studies in Philosophy and Education.

Snow, Rodney. “Education on the Fundamentals of Our Government and Democracy is on Life Support: We Can Help.” May/Jun2012. Utah Bar Journal Vol. 25 Issue 3, p8-13.

"There is Space, and There are Limits": The Challenge of Teaching Controversial Topics in an Illiberal Democracy.

HO, LI-CHING. Teachers College Record Volume: 116 Issue 5 (2014) ISSN: 0161-4681

International Journal of Lifelong Education

Volume 32, Issue 6, 2013

galling to think;And our public education is to blame.

“Civic learning is, at its heart, necessary to preserving our system of self-government. In a representative democracy, government is only as good as the citizens who elects its leaders, demand action on pressing issues, hold public officials accountable, and take action to help solve problems in their communities...