Public Education Conditions Us For War

The purpose of education has been warped. Education used to be about more than educating people in the kind of math and technological skills that make them good cogs in the machinery of the State. It used to be about expanding and liberating the minds and spirits of people by exposing them to the greatest thinkers and ideas that human history has to offer so that they learn the ideas that will make them better people, so that they will be better humans. But since the government has assumed control over the education systems in every nation this purpose has been falling ever more steadily by the wayside. Instead, today people are educated and miseducated into the ideologies, moralities, and values that justify the ever-expanding power of the police state and the unceasing waging of wars abroad. As this article argues, this condition is not some perverse accident caused by state mishandling of education. Rather, educating us into the beliefs and ideas that convince us to remain subservient and obedient to the State is the very point of public education, a cause that finds its ultimate expression in war.