Forced Schooling: The Antidote for Genius

by Todd Walker

What’s nepenthe?

Nepenthe – (nuh-PENTH-ee)

noun

1. a potion used by the ancients to induce forgetfulness of pain or sorrow

2. something capable of causing oblivion of grief or suffering

My cache of fancy words is limited. I try to follow this simple rule when writing: Don’t be tempted by a 20-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy.

Sometimes, only the 20-dollar word will do.

Nepenthe popped up in my “Word of the Day” email on my school computer. A curious word, no doubt.

I had just finished Lew Rockwell‘s podcast interview with John Taylor Gatto on my morning commute. Both men being heroes of mine, this post began taking shape.

One statement John made that got my attention was…

genius is as common as the air we breathe. 

That’s a bold statement. If I made that statement around some teacher friends, we’d all give it a good chuckle and a resounding, “Right!”

We can’t see the genius for all the compulsory regulations and restrictions. To counteract genius and critical thinking in schools, we serve heaping doses of the balm of forgetting. Sweet relief comes by removing all recollection of our history and replacing it with the revised Hollywood version.

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

– Samuel Butler

Is genius really that common today?

According to Mr. Gatto, it is, and history proves it.

• The U.S. was the patent king at the beginning of the 20th century. We owned 92% of the worlds patents. 
• How could a no good 12 year-old worker named Andrew Carnegie coiled twine on bobbins and one day become one of the richest men on our planet?
• Other notable figures were written off early in life who later reveled their genius.

Before the turn of the 20th century, forced schooling in America was nowhere near the size and scope of today’s Leviathan-like institution. There were no centers for habit training where intellectual development was retarded. Now we train students to be obedient and pliable conformists. Our colonial forefathers would have never resisted tyranny had they been government schooled.

Our present consumerist economic model requires that future wage slaves never reach self-sufficiency. Any independent thinking threatens to sever the head of the beast. His fight or flight primal instinct kicks in. The serpent tempts us with another mind-numbing-dumbing dose to help ease the pain of forgotten genius.

Laissez-fair schooled geniuses

In “Is Public Education Necessary?“, Samuel Blumenfeld performs a great service in exposing the intellectual elite’s plan to reign in the “rebel” individualist and pioneering spirit that founded this nation. Ask any loyal educrat and they probably won’t know that wholesale government education didn’t exist in the 18th century. And somehow our population was educated without coercion and force – even without Al Gore’s internet.

Our cherry picked curriculum doesn’t mention that educational freedom in colonial days, free of governmental control, produced far better results than modern government-run schools. Here are a few inconvenient facts educated elites hope remain forgotten.

• Based on the evidence of signatures on deeds, wills, militia rolls, and voting rosters, adult male literacy in American colonies ran from 70 to 100 percent. 
• George Washington was educated by his father and half-brother.
• Benjamin Franklin was taught to read by his father and attended a private school for writing and arithmetic.
• Thomas Jefferson studied Latin and Greek under a tutor.
• Of the 117 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, one out of three had only a few months of formal schooling, and only one in four had gone to college.

5 tips to finding your genius within

Could little geniuses be filling cramped public school houses all across America? Of course! They’ve just never been weaned off the nepenthe of forced schooling.

Here are 5 tips to help you discover your child genius.

Stop sipping on your potion of forgetfulness for a second.

Start listing all your ideas. Sticky notes, napkins, notebooks. Doesn’t matter where you write them. Just write them down.

1. Practice writing ten new ideas everyday. You’ll find that one idea will spawn new ideas. Keep writing. Ten daily is the minimum maintenance required. This keeps your idea machine from rusting. Think of it as motor oil for the brain. When I neglect this practice, my mind doesn’t run at peak performance levels.

2. Shamelessly steal ideas. I’m not saying plagiarise here. But when you see a good idea, make it better. A “nobody” could improve a product or machine or idea, patent it, and put the original out of business.

Your masterpiece is carved by removing the stuff that doesn’t fit…little pieces at a time. What are you creating?

3. Read. Widely. Outside your field. Create connections to what may seem unrelated to your idea. Use the shotgun approach. Cross pollination in the garden of ideas is a good thing.

4. Get lost. Daydreaming may get you a reprimand from your teacher or boss, but it’s such an important incubator for creativity and genius. I hate telling students to get back on task. I really want to join them in their mental adventure. They seem lost in their own weird little world. It’s a survival technique.

Creativity is the residue of time wasted.
~Albert Einstein

There’s a time to focus on our job or work, but daydreaming is time well spent. Do it often.

5. Live unplugged. Throw it in the woods. Cure your nature deficit-disorder. In “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” Richard Louv relates the importance of getting in touch with the wild side of our nature. I haven’t finished the book, but definitely see Nature Deficit-Disorder in kids today. Here’s a telling quote from a fourth grader response in the book:

“I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” 

If you can’t get in the woods, simply sitting outside to read your paper and drink your coffee or tea stimulates your senses. Do stuff differently. Stay out sterile environments as much as humanly possible.

Another path exists. What’s keeping you from discovering your child genius?

Doing the stuff,

Todd

P.S.

Here’s a sample of my brain working to come up with possible headlines for this post:

School History: Drink Nepenthe to Swallow It

Does Your Child Drink the Nepenthe Potion in School

You Must Drink Nepenthe to Swallow the Lies…

Drink this Potion and Live Happily Ever After

Washing Down the Dumbness with Nepenthe

Genius is Forgotten with Nepenthe

Forgetting Your Genius Within

The Potion That Kills Genius

Nepenthe: Dumbing Down Your Unique Genius

This Tempting Potion Washes Your Child’s Genius Away

Did I choose correctly?

Related articles

• John Taylor Gatto On The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher & The Root Causes Of Tyranny (westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com)
• Against School – John Taylor Gatto (antioligarch.wordpress.com)
• School Alchemy: Turning Students into Gold for the State (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• An Unlikely Hero: Reflections on John Taylor Gatto, Sir Ken Robinson and the Education Revolution (seanhamptoncole.wordpress.com)
• Get Outside (everydayfamily.com)
• Six Dangerous Miseducation Lessons You Should Unlearn Immediately (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• A Warning for Prepared Parents and Public Schooling (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• Life Learners: Unschooling the Prepper Community (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)

How Government Schools Destroy Self-Reliance

by Todd Walker

I taught a kid one year that would get upset and start smashing his head against the institutional green walls. I was once guilty of this as well, figuratively. Banging your head against government walls will only give you a head ache and doesn’t even chip the paint. Schools in America are wildly successful in their mission. Before you stop reading, hear me out please. I base my statement on the founding principles of public (government) education. The truth, which slumbering Americans fail to realize, is that our system of forced schooling fosters dependence on the state. The confusion is intentional. Victims students are disoriented from their pre-schooled lives on their first day of schooling. Little Johnny is forced to give up interest led learning and replace it with the corrupting concept that learning only takes place by experts teaching him and 30 of his fellow captives. Some resist and hold true to their nature. We label and drug these non-conformists.

An Act of War

In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education wrote:

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.”

Reforming the system is impossible. It performs perfectly. The circling school drain sucks self-reliance and individualism down the sewer line.

Here’s how…

Tag and Track

There is no expectation of privacy in a surveillance state school. A Texas school district tracks its students every movement with microchips. Security cameras already blanket every move of students and faculty in the school house. Why track the herd with RFID chips? Follow the money. Attendance is tied to federal and state dollars to fatten the district coffers. Now government snoops can know whether your child is home playing hooky, boarding the bus, sitting on the toilet, or at that doctor’s appointment. Sadly, so can any pedophile or tech-savvy predator with a RFID reader. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. All in the name of keeping our children safe and secure.

At least they’re not implanting them … yet. Wouldn’t it be easier to just implant this device under Johnny’s skin? Don’t think for a minute that the-powers-that-be (collectivist control freaks) haven’t already contemplated it. Wearily similar to laboratory animals or livestock, students are conditioned for compliance. Made to be useful, but to whom?

The herd is conditioned to wear straightjackets built to restrict individuals for the good of the group. What if your son or granddaughter isn’t interested in algebra? Doesn’t matter. The collective knows what’s best for your children…and will force feed it to them – in 50 minute segments – on hard seats – while telling them how much they’ll need this in later life. If they’ve been taught the basics of how to read, write, and multiply, they can figure out how to cross that algebra bridge if they ever have to in real life. It’s not that difficult. The State just makes it look hard so only licensed teachers are qualified to dispense knowledge. This is only one dirty little secret in the educrat’s toolbox of lies. You have no choice but to play alone.

With a little digging you’ll also discover these myths promoted as fact…

• Passing a grade level equals education
• Life is supposed to be fair
• Learning can only takes place with State licensed teachers (arrogant monopoly)
• A diploma equals competence
• The government is here to help you
• Schools perform unconstitutional search and seizures to keep your children ‘safe’ (simple conditioning exercises for the real world)
• The pharmaceutical industry wants you healthy (mercury flu vaccines anyone?)
• Eating from the USDA Food Pyramid makes you strong, healthy, and fit
• You’re considered drug free in school if you’re popping ‘approved’ mood altering pills
• Reality TV and professional wrestling are real…and Elvis is alive!
• Individualism marks you as mentally ill
• The individual must be sacrificed for the good of the collective
• Thought I’d throw this one in for free since it’s election time… You vote matters

Resistance is futile. One contumacious student is feeling the Texas heat. “Andrea Hernandez, a sophomore at John Jay, said educators have ignored her pleas to respect her privacy and told her she cannot participate in school elections if she refuses to comply with the tracking program. Hernandez said in an interview with Salon that subjecting herself to constant monitoring through an RFID chip is like being branded with the ‘mark of the beast.'”

Shut up and take the mark! Quit criticizing our scheme. This is the fate of any individual in the collective’s grip.

Collective Sameness vs. Self-Reliant Individuals

Over two million families have made a logical choice to de-school their children. A few families are reading the handwriting on the institutional wall of forced educational tyranny. Our ancestors forged this country without compulsory pubic education. Somewhere on our amazing journey Americans gave our responsibility of educating our offspring to the statist gulags.

Taking responsibility for one’s learning or life is deemed irresponsible. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve heard fellow teachers, with scowled faces and rolled eyes, disparage parents who yank their students from the grip of institutional schooling to teach at home. At best, they’ll become a greeter at Wally world or ride on the back of a trash truck is the usual tone of their comments. On the other hand, I’ve also heard a few enlightened coworkers declare that their children will never attend public school. They’ve experienced the mind-numbing, creativity-killing, one-size-fits-all school setting first hand.

I work along side with some the best teachers around. I see the hard work, extra hours, and dedication in their attempts to educate. Many burn out and either leave teaching or just go through the motions to preserve some semblance of sanity. Like so many in our society, most teachers have mistakenly assumed it’s our job to educate children. The system isn’t set up to educate. It’s set up to take individuals through a meat grinder to produce homogenized humans useful to the ruling elites. As Nikita Khrushchev said,

“Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.”

Mr. Khrushchev, along with every other totalitarian dictator, placed a high value on indoctrinating young minds to create the cult of compliance.

That’s why individualism and self-reliance must be crushed for the collective to thrive. Resistance is futile!

Zero Tolerance Zone

Nanny state schools give us a glimpse into the mind of our elite rulers. Ideas are dangerous. Act on this ‘silly’ ideas of self-defense, self-ownership, healthy living, free speech, and liberty and the boot of tyranny soon stomps on your neck. Schools are no weapon zones (AKA – Victim Zones). School administrators across America must be told to never use common sense by TPTB (The Powers That Be). How else could one explain the enforcement of Zero Tolerance rules?

• A Tennessee elementary school boy was punished for waving a gun at his lunch table. No, not a real gun, wait for it…a deadly pizza gun! Administrators can’t have boys being boys. They’ve got to be melted and poured into the compliant mold. For his crime, he spent the next five days eating alone at the silent lunch table. If he chews another piece of dough into the shape of a gun and starts brandishing the pizza, he’ll get suspended. Whee, I know the parents and fellow students feel safe now!
• When did lunchroom ladies turn into the Food Gestapo? Recently, a 7th grader in California, wishing to eat something other than GMO laden lunches, brought a bottle of tea to drink with his home prepared lunch. One of the brown-shirts spotted it and alerted her superiors. They descended on the child and confiscated the contraband. The FDA label stated that the kombucha contains .5% alcohol and this violates the school Drug and Alcohol Policy. WHAT!? My fermenting homemade sauerkraut probably contains more alcohol than this stuff. Even the FDA says that it’s not an alcoholic beverage and is easily purchased by minors. Ignorance knows no bounds!
• Middle schoolers arrested for protesting dress code.
• Dropped cake leads to broken wrist and arrest of high school student and mother.

If a multitude is to be subjected to a plan, it must be militarized. If individuals are allowed a free choice, the plan is thrown into confusion. Bureaucracy, under an absolute ruler, or rulers, is necessary. – Dean Inge

The schooling scheme designed by intellectual elitist shapes individuals to be dependent on powerful others for all their wants and needs. Showing up to school is all that’s needed. With enough time and pressure, even the most self-reliant student is molded into passive objects.

Public schooling is so good, we’ve made it mandatory. Now, get on that yellow bus and be a good student (a useful consumer of collectivism).

What’s the solution? I don’t fool myself into thinking I have a solution for millions of individuals and their own self-interests. Don’t let politicians and bureaucrats fool you either. Families should do their own research, think for themselves, and come up with their own method of educating their children – and preparing for the uncertain future. Ask what’s best for you, the individual. Do you want your children to have critical thinking skills, voluntary associations, creativity, self-reliance, and self-ownership? These and much more are available to you if you search.

Class dismissed!

Keep Doing the Stuff of Self-Reliance,

Todd

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