Question: One thing I wonder is: How many generations ago did we sell out and start lying to our children, until the lie was forgotten? – Molly

It started fairly early. But it is largely a product of the strategic application of the Ten Planks. But, in addition world circumstances helped a great deal:

Education evolved along with industry so education stopped being a craftsmanly product for small shops delivered by professionals, and instead became a manufacturing process delivered as were all manufactured goods. This is the heart of it.

Soldiers in WW1 were widely distributed in ability ( the southern problem was real at that point it appears) mostly due to literacy and ignorance.

The expansion of consumer society in tandem with first inexpensive print, then radio, then television, meant that the public was constantly hammered with sentimental nonsense at low levels of education, in order to sell new consumers newly available household goods.

We had successfully integrated ‘the flood’ of post-civil war immigration into ‘the american way’ by 1960, but the postwar economic period, in which the world manufacturing and production system had been destroyed leaving only the USA intact, led to a class-shift as our lower classes were paid middle class wages due to temporary scarcity (which has been ending, now that the world has recovered, and former socialist and communist countries have entered the world economy). These new people now were able to exercise influence in the market and in politics, and even in the educational market because of their newly acquired wealth. And sought to rebel against previous generations – just as all generations do.

The addition of the underclasses to the university system postwar provided great incentive, and lack of regulation of colleges and universities allowed the dilution of the meaning of education.

The (real) problem of integrating less capable minorities into grade schools dependent upon 110 IQ’s. (yes). Then once they had been, getting them into colleges where 110iq was necessary to manage the work. This is not statistically possible since the Pareto optimum is around 115 – meaning that only about 20% of people or so actually could complete college course work (adjusting for willingness to work on the down side, and character flaws on the up side.) So education had to be dumbed down **A LOT** so that this many people could get into and graduate from college.

The economic incentive of selling college tuition to women – which like selling representation, or ANYTHING for that matter, is more effective than selling to men (I go by the data and that’s what it says).

The success of cosmopolitan socialism in the 1960’s because of their successful capture of media and the ‘soft disciplines’ in colleges (white collar occupational training) and universities (‘education proper’).

Big mistakes were not having many but smaller schools, not keeping boys separate from girls, and not keeping multiple grades in the same room, low standards for teachers (still), reducing time reading, and reducing the physical education (movement) time.

In other words we should educate our children as large families where they are subject to the same material repeated over and over, and then bring them together to play a few sports and get some exercise.

Curt Doolittle