I thank God there are no free schools nor printing. And I hope we shall not have these for 100 years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both.
William Barkley
Governor of Virginia
1671
From Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: A Cultural History) by David Hackett Fischer
[One has to wonder if a similar attitude in our present government is the explanation for the poor quality of our schools.—Joe]
I think so. Now that I’m more exposed to millennials, I’m surprised by how many of them are strong technically, but utterly ignorant and uneducated when it comes to even basic knowledge of history, English, current events, etc.
It could be worse. By Dutch standards, American schools teach history at a fantastically high level.
Consider that, growing up in Holland, I never learned there is any such thing as the Dutch declaration of independence, much less any of its text. Nor do Dutch high schools teach the content of the Dutch constitution (though they do admit that one exists). Not that there’s much good to say about that document, so I suppose that’s not such a big loss.
I don’t wonder if there’s a ‘similar attitude’. If it looks, walks and quacks like a duck….well.
Ignorant people are more easily controlled.
That is the thinking of the authoritarian system. That which cannot be controlled (by the authoritarian system) is hated, and must be either assimilated or destroyed. That which CAN be controlled is hated also, for its weakness, blindness, cowardice and capitulation. Therefore genocide is always the end result, if not the goal. Either way you look at it, we almost all empower it, for it cannot exist without us. It is entirely parasitic, and parasites cannot exist without hosts.
Thus we are in fact superior to that which enslaves us, and so the game is to keep us as dumb as possible for as long as possible, for as soon as we wake up it’s all over.