Andre Breton on Education

And he's not the only one

“Today's education is entirely defective to the extent that, calling itself positivist, it begins with abusing the child's trust by presenting as true what is only either a temporary phenomenon or a hypothesis, when it's not a blatant untruth; and to the extent that it prevents children from forming in good time their own opinions by creasing into them certain habits that make their freedom of judgement an illusion”

― André Breton, Arcanum 17

“But what is now encompassed by the one word (“school”) are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve entirely different roles. Both are needed for our nation’s governance. But children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed. The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.”
― Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

Illich is concerned with human relationships at a fundamental level. He sees schooling, the mass, compulsory, public schools as providing an induction into a way of life which is consumerist, packaged, institutionalized and impoverished. He claims it is patently false to claim that most learning is the result of teaching. On the contrary the teacher in a modern school is in fact acting in three roles; as custodian of societies' rituals, as therapist and as preacher. Illich proposes instead a learning society, where skills training is widely available and divested of the ritualistic elements of schooling, and where citizens freely associate to develop a critical education, perhaps guided by 'masters'. Illich sees in modern schools a false myth of salvation. He points to the fact that however much money is poured into public schooling it always requires more and the outputs do not increase. It is chasing the myth of unlimited progress. He sees educational credentials as an element in this; one gets credentials to enter on the next level but credentials don't measure competence so much as attendance at a school.

A review of Illich’s DeSchooling Society-http://ektr.uni-eger.hu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/deschooling-society-a-brief-summary.pdf

Can we agree that as a nation thanks to school we have become worse off and. not better off? We are not capable of self government. Worse we find the interest in Sport to occupy far more attention than the sport of ruling. We cheer our political teams forgetting who owns them, forgetting who finances the stadium, but paying attention to the hero athlete. The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level, according to The Literacy Project. Medical information for the public should be written at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level, according to the American Medical Association, National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However going a bit deeper-

• Nationwide, on average, 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2022.

• 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022.

• 54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level.

• Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.

• 34% of adults who lack proficiency in literacy were born outside the US.

• Massachusetts was the state with the highest rate of child literacy.

• New Mexico was the state with the lowest child literacy rate.

• The state with the highest percentage of adults who were considered literate was New Hampshire.

• The state with the lowest adult literacy rate was California.

• On average, nationwide, 66% of 4th grade children in the U.S. could not read proficiently in 2013.

We might discuss how this works out politically. Covid vaccines- in light of trust in Authority-are killing highly educated conformists. Our polity disintegrated in 2020. We can see the STUPIDITY, the STULTIFICATION, the creation of MISERY, both in school and on Zoom learning.

In closing an excerpt from the DUNCIAD

The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings

The Smithfield Muses to the ear of Kings,

I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!

Call’d to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;

You by whose care, in vain decried and curst,

Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;

Say how the Goddess bade Britannia sleep,

And pour’d her Spirit, o’er the land and deep.

In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read,

Ere Pallas issued from the Thund’rer’s head,

Dulness o’er all possess’d her ancient right,

Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:

Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,

Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave;

Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,

She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.

Still her old empire to restore she tries,

For, born a Goddess, Dulness never dies.