Schools as Black-Holes by Butler Shaffer

Ask yourself whether, at any stage in your formalized education, you were encouraged to think outside the boundaries of the assigned curriculum. Were the institutional keepers of the questions you were expected to pursue tolerant of any independent inquiries you might undertake? Might continued efforts to pursue your own agenda of discovery land you in the principal’s office or, worse, subject you to behavior-modifying drugs or other treatment? At what point – if at all – did it become evident to you that the system of formal education to which you had been sentenced had, as its purpose, the turning of you and your fellow inmates into well-conditioned servo-mechanisms whose energies were to be devoted to fostering institutional interests?

More: Schools as Black-Holes by Butler Shaffer

I personally think that public institutional schools are like prisons, or maybe more like purgatory, because when you wake up and have the desire to escape, it is within your power. If only students weren't being institutionalized en mass, almost fast-tracked from school to the prison system.

Autodidactic: Individual Self-Learning

Millions of people pay a king's ransom for college tuition to learn what is free for the taking when motivated by a compelling desire to learn. In the movie Good Will Hunting, Will (played by Matt Damon) chides an arrogant Ivy League student for paying a fortune for an education that would be free but for the price of a library card. Although this is absolutely valid, very few people believe it. Instead they are convinced the knowledge they could acquire on their own is secondary to paying a lot of money to an institution which will attest that they have, even if they cheated their way through the process. 

As they say, cheating only suffers the cheater.

Credentialism has existed for centuries in one form or another as groups with an information or knowledge advantage have tried to maintain their position of superiority with everything from guilds and associations to secret societies and esoteric languages. And even though teachers and educators have noble intentions, their position in our economy, by design is dependent upon a psychology of the scarcity of knowledge. 

Time is the most scarce resource, with knowledge being freely available, whether in institutional settings, or for the individual to discover. There are also those in between, who look to those before them for guidance or example, and then set off on their own.

Whole categories of attributes from self-help to self-directed inquiry have been coined to disguise and set apart individual learning as an aberration so as not to displace the hierarchical power of educators. And yet, throughout history self-educated men and women from all walks of life and social stations have risen to the occasion of the challenges facing them. In so doing, they have set new standards for learning, which without question have raised the bar of achievement for their respective societies. But only in the latter half of the twentieth-century has the insidious notion that one must have the blessing of an institution to function in society been generally accepted without protest. 

More: Autodidactic Hall of Fame

We don't necessarily need more teachers and schools, but more educators and more willing students. Institutionalization or confirmation of knowledge by universities isn't what we need, but simply a facilitation of the process of learning. What we have now is a predatory system which simply uses and feeds off of students through debt. 

The Costs of Education

I benefit from and am vested in the success of this company and industry, but can see a need to end waste and increase efficiency, a shift away from public education back toward the private sector. Why would anyone seek to dismiss that which benefits them? Reason:

“There's no other state in the country that comes even close to this level of punitive requirement on students," her mother, Dineen Majcher, explains.
The Austin mother is a member of TAMSA, or Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment.
The group believes the state puts an unnecessary emphasis on standardized testing and pays Pearson, the British company hired to administer the tests, too much money.
According to state records, the Defenders found Texans spend more money on standardized testing than any other state.

The state's contract with Pearson requires Texas to pay the company $95 million this year. By 2015, tax payers will have paid the company $1.1 billion.

Pearson does not set policy in Texas. It won its contract after multiple companies submitted bids about 13 years ago.

Consider that the gross waste of the education industry is funded through theft, and that there is little economic incentive for efficiency as a result.

The Price of Pearson | kvue.com Austin

A Mises Academy Education in Economics

When interventionism becomes more and more apparent in markets, we need more than ever to look to those with a practical and factual understanding of economics. With the Mises Academy, we see the door opening and more and more minds coming online, seeking out this knowledge:

This is also my first course. I'm looking forward to it. It is impossible to find an education in the Austrian School anywhere else but here.

Sign up at: Course: Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln: The Curse of Economic Nationalism

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, you are mentally ill if you:
Are addicted to coffee —Caffeine-Related Disorders, page 212,
Have trouble speaking in public —Expressive Language Disorder, page 55
Can’t handle math problems —Mathematics Disorders, page 50
Can’t write a good essay —Disorder of Written Expression, page 51
Don’t think you're crazy? Then you’re suffering from Noncompliance With Treatment , page 683.
"To read about the evolution of the DSM is to know this: It is an entirely political document. What it includes, what it does not include, are the result of intensive campaigning, lengthy negotiating, infighting, and power plays."
—Louise Armstrong, And They Call It Help: The Psychiatric Policing of America’s Children, 1993 (Addison-Wesley)

More: In Their Own Words

In Their Own Words

"Schools will become clinics whose purposes is to provide individualized, psycho-social treatment for the student, and teachers must become psycho-social therapists. This will include bio-chemical and psychological mediation of learning, as drugs are introduced experimentally to improve in the learner such qualities as personality, concentration and memory… Children are to become the objects of experimentation." (Emphasis added)
—A U. S. National Education Association report, titled: Education in the 70s.

In Their Own Words

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

This video is just a brief introduction to a very serious subject. There are six books listed at the end which will go much further into the subject.

The soundtrack is now available at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/exposed-the-soundtrack-ep/id444615015 and https://market.android.com/details?id=artist-Add5o4qqbmxyhwr7qwdawbyvcmu

To see/hear more of Neal's work go to http://www.TheRealNealFox.com and http://www.TheArtOffensive.com

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America - YouTube