According to Larken Rose:
Teaching Blind Obedience. The purported purpose of schools is to teach reading, writing, mathematics, and other academic fields of thought. But the message that institutions of “education” actually teach, far more effectively than any useful knowledge or skills, is the idea that subservience and blind obedience to “authority” are virtues. Simply consider the environment in which the majority of people spend most of their formative years. Year after year, students live in a world in which:
• They receive approval, praise and reward for being where “authority” tells them to be, when “authority” tells them to be there. They receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for being anywhere else. (This includes the fact that they are coerced into being in school to begin with.)
• They receive approval, praise and reward for doing what “authority” tells them to do. They receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for doing anything else, or for failing to do what “authority” tells them to do.
• They receive approval, praise and reward for speaking when and how “authority” tells them to speak., and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for speaking at any other time, in any other way, or about any subject other than what “authority” tells them to speak about, or for failing to speak when “authority” tells them to speak.
• They receive approval, praise and reward for repeating back whatever ideas the “authority” declares to be true and important, and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for disagreeing, verbally or on a written test, with the opinions of those claiming to be “authority,” or for thinking or writing about subjects other than what “authority” tells them to think or write about.
• They receive approval, praise and reward for immediately telling “authority” about any problems or personal conflicts they encounter, and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for trying to solve any problems or settle any disagreements on their own.
• They receive approval, praise and reward for complying with whatever rilles, however arbitrary, “authority” decides to impose upon them. They receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for disobeying any such rules. These rules can be about almost anything, including what clothes to wear, what hairstyles to have, what facial expression to have, how to sit in a chair, what to have on a desk, what direction to face, and what words to use.
• They receive approval, praise and reward for telling the “authority” when another student has disobeyed “the rules,” and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for failing to do so.
The students clearly and immediately see that, in their world, there are two distinct classes of people, masters (”teachers”) and subjects (”students”), and that the rules of proper behavior are drastically different for the two groups. The masters constantly do things that they tell the subjects not to do: boss people around, control others via threats, take property from others, etc. This constant and obvious double standard teaches the subjects that there is a very different standard of morality for the masters than there is for the subjects. The subjects must do whatever the masters tell them to, and only what the masters tell them to, while the masters can do pretty much anything they want.
Not long ago, the masters would even routinely commit physical assault (i.e. “corporal punishment”) against subjects who did not quickly and unquestioningly do as they were told, while telling the subjects that it was completely unacceptable for them to ever use physical violence, even in self-defense, especially in self-defense against the masters. Thankfully, the use of regular, overt physical violence by “teachers” has become uncommon. However, though the force has become less obvious, the basic methods of authoritarian control and punishment remain.
In the classroom setting, the “authority” can change the rules at will, can punish the entire group for what one student does, and can question or search any student – or all students – at any time. The “authority” is never seen as having any obligation to justify or explain to the students the rules it makes, or anything else it does. And it is of no concern to “authority” whether a student has a good reason to think that us time would be better spent being somewhere else, doing something else, or thinking about something else. The “grades” the student receives, the way he is treated, the signals he is sent – written, verbal, and otherwise – all depend upon one factor: his ability and willingness to unquestioningly subvert his own desires, judgment and decisions to those of “authority.” If he does that, he is deemed “good.” If he does not, he is deemed “bad.”
This method of indoctrination was not accidental. Schooling in the United States, and in fact in much of the world, was deliberately modeled after the Prussian system of “education,” which was designed with the express purpose of training people to be obedient tools of the ruling class, easy to manage and quick to unthinkingly obey, especially for military purposes. As it was explained by Johann Fichte, one of the designers of the Prussian system, the goal of this method was to “fashion” the student in such a way that he “simply cannot will otherwise” than what those in “authority” want him to will. At the time, the system was openly admitted to be a means of psychologically enslaving the general populace to the will of the ruling class. And it continues to accomplish exactly that, all over the world, including in the United States.
The reason most people do whatever “authority” tells them to, regardless of whether the command is moral or rational, is because that is exactly what they were trained to do. Everything about authoritarian “schooling” (and authoritarian parenting), even the modern version that pretends to be caring and open-minded, continually hammers into the heads of the youngsters the notion that their success, their goodness, their very worth as human beings, is measured by how well they obey “authority.”
Is it any wonder, then, that rather than applying logic to evidence to reach their own conclusions, most adults look for an “authority” to tell them what to think? Is it an]ywonder that when a man with a badge starts barking orders, most adults timidly obey without question, even if they have done nothing wrong? Is it any wonder that most adults sheepishly submit to whatever interrogations and searches “law enforcers” want to inflict upon them? Is it any wonder that many adults will run to the nearest “authority” to solve any problem or settle any dispute? Is it any wonder that most adults will comply with any order, however irrational, unfair, or immoral it may be, if they imagine the one giving the order to be “authority”? Should any of this be surprising in light of the fact that nearly everyone went through many years of being deliberately trained to behave that way?
Dr. Milgram’s experiments made it quite clear that the kind of people produced even by our modern, supposedly enlightened society, even in the good old U.S.A. – that supposed bastion of liberty and justice – are, for the most part, callous, irresponsible, unthinking tools for whichever megalomaniac claims the right to rule. When the people are intentionally trained to humbly submit to the beast called “authority” – when they are taught that it is more important to obey than it is to judge – why should we be at all surprised at the extortion, oppression, terrorism and mass murder that are committed just because a self-proclaimed “authority” commanded it? All of human history makes the deadly formula as plain as it could possibly be: A few evil rulers + many obedient subjects = widespread injustice and oppression. [MORE]
