Dumbing From the Top Down

How do you dumb a population down to the point that the sheeple are controllable? You certainly don't want intelligent, analytical, questioning citizens seeking truth and opportunity. Not if you are going to seize power, regulate, profit and control. No, you've got to make them think they  are in control while simultaneously outfitting them to be compliant. Ignorance is your ally in this battle.

Where do people learn?

The default answer is the schools. The less obvious answer is their environment, their families, their peers and their mentors. But schools are the default. We have given the schools over to our government and therefore the battle is half won.

We determine curriculum, textbooks, teacher qualification, funding and tenure criteria by government action. We elect and appoint boards of education for school districts, municipal departments, state boards and federal regulatory agencies. Unnoticed is the fact that these decision-makers are not required to have any qualification for their position other than a campaign manager, a sincere smile and a bit of fund-raising ability.

That's how we get this:

Afraid of Truth, Cowed by Students, Ambivalent on Science

The teachers don't know the subject so they don't correct the students. They fear for their jobs so they don't respond to student challenges based on their ignorance and indoctrination. The teachers can't intelligently support their positions therefore they waffle on the reality.

I teach government or political science. That is arguably an inexact science. Biology, on the other hand, is a "hard" science. Facts in hard science are immutable. Either subject, however, is amenable to the scientific method.

You observe. You gather data. You postulate on the causes of the data. You confirm relationships. Sometime your theory fits and sometimes it is only partially correct. But, you never start with opinion, state it as fact and then ignore data that is contrary.

I can't deny a Supreme Being. I can't explain the enigmatic Uncaused First Cause. The Big Bang needed a source. OK, that's fine.

But I can demonstrate that life existed more than 10,000 years ago. I can show that species that once roamed are no longer around. I can see relationships between the past and the present. Is there a divine hand involved? I can't disprove it but neither can I affirm it. But, I could support evolution and a relationship to science more strongly than I can creationism or literal interpretation of the Bible.

Ignorant, uninformed, unqualified teachers leading to another generation and then another of ignorant serfs for an increasingly docile and dependent society. Once we were men.