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The Prussian (German) Educational School System


After the defeat of the Prussians (Germans) by Napoleon at the battle of Jena in 1806, it was decided that the reason why the battle was lost was that the Prussian soldiers were thinking for themselves on the battlefield instead of following orders.


The Prussian philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), described by many as a philosopher and a transcendental idealist, wrote “Addresses to the German Nation” between 1807 and 1808, which promoted the state as a necessary instrument of social and moral progress. He taught at the University of Berlin from 1810 to his death in 1814. His concept of the state and of the ultimate moral nature of society directly influenced both Von Schelling and Hegel, who took an similarly idealistic view.


Using the basic philosophy prescribing the “duties of the state”, combined with John Locke’s view (1690) that “children are a blank slate” and lessons from Rousseau on how to “write on the slate”, Prussia established a three-tiered educational system that was considered “scientific” in nature. Work began in 1807 and the system was in place by 1819. An important part of the Prussian system was that it defined for the child what was to be learned, what was to be thought about, how long to think about it and when a child was to think of something else. Basically, it was a system of thought control, and it established a penchant in the psyche of the German elite that would later manifest itself into what we now refer to as mind control.


The educational system was divided into three groups. The elite of Prussian society were seen as comprising .5% of the society. Approximately 5.5% of the remaining children were sent to what was called realschulen, where they were partially taught to think. The remaining 94% went to volkschulen, where they were to learn “harmony, obdience, freedom from stressful thinking and how to follow orders.” An important part of this new system was to break the link between reading and the young child, because a child who reads too well becomes knowledgable and independent from the system of instruction and is capable of finding out anything. In order to have an efficient policy-making class and a sub-class beneath it, you’ve got to remove the power of most people to make anything out of available information.


This was the plan. To keep most of the children in the general population from reading for the first six or seven years of their lives. Now, the Prussian system of reading was originally a system whereby whole sentences (and thus whole integrated concepts) were memorized, rather than whole words. In this three-tier system, they figured out a way to achieve the desired results. In the lowest category of the system, the volkschuelen, the method was to divide whole ideas (which simultaneously integrate whole disciplines – math, science, language, art, etc.) into subjects which hardly existed prior to that time. The subjects were further divided into units requiring periods of time during the day. With appropriate variation, no one would really know what was happening in the world. It was inherently one of the most brilliant methods of knowledge suppression that had ever existed. They also replaced the alphabet system of teaching with the teaching of sounds. Hooked on phonics? Children could read without understanding what they were reading, or all the implications.


In 1814, the first American, Edward Everett, goes to Prussian to get a PhD. He eventually becomes governor of Massachusetts. During the next 30 years or so, a whole line of American dignitaries came to Germany to earn degrees (a German invention). Horace Mann, instrumental in the development of educational systems in America, was among them. Those who earned degrees in Germany came back to the United States and staffed all of the major universities. In 1850, Massachusetts and New York utilize the system, as well as promote the concept that “the state is the father of children.” Horace Mann’s sister, Elizabeth Peabody (Peabody Foundation) saw to it that after the Civil War, the Prussian system (taught in the Northern states) was integrated into the conquered South between 1865 and 1918. Most of the “compulsory schooling” laws designed to implement the system were passed by 1900. By 1900, all the PhD’s in the United States were trained in Prussia. This project also meant that one-room schoolhouses had to go, for it fostered independence. They were eventually wiped out. One of the reasons that the self-appointed elite brought back the Prussian system to the United States was to ensure a non-thinking work force to staff the growing industrial revolution. In 1776, for example, about 85% of the citizens were reasonably educated and had independent livelihoods – they didn’t need to work for anyone. By 1840, the ratio was still about 70%. The attitude of “learn and then strike out on your own” had to be broken. The Prussian system was an ideal way to do it.


One of the prime importers of the German “educational” system into the United States was William T. Harris, from Saint Louis. He brought the German system in and set the purpose of the schools to alienate children from parental influence and that of religion. He preached this openly, and began creating “school staffing” programs that were immediately picked up by the new “teacher colleges”, many of which were underwritten by the Rockefeller family, the Carnegies, the Whitney’s and the Peabody family. The University of Chicago was underwritten by the Rockefellers.


The bottom line is that we had a literate country in the United States before the importation of the German educational system, designed to “dumb down” the mass population. It was more literate that it is today. The textbooks of the time make so much allusion to history, philosophy, mathematics, science and politics that they are hard to follow today because of the way people are “taught to think.”

Now, part of this whole paradigm seems to originate from an idea presented in The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon (1627). The work described a “world research university” that scans the planet for babies and talent. The state then becomes invincible because it owned the university. It becomes impossible to revolt against the State because the State knows everything. A reflection of this principle can be seen today with the suppression of radical and practical technologies in order to preserve State control of life and prevent evolution and independence. The New Atlantis was widely read by German mystics in the 19th century. By 1840 in Prussia, there were a lot of “world research universities”, in concept, all over the country. All of them drawing in talent and developiong it for the purposes of State power and stability.


The Birth of Experimental Psychology in Germany


By the middle of the 19th century, Germany had developed a new concept in the sciences which they termed “psycho-physics”, which argued that people were in fact complex machines. It was the ultimate materialist extension of science that would parallel the mechanistic view of the universe already under way. This new view of people became more or less institutionalized in Germany, and by the 1870′s the “field” of experimental psychology was born. The ultimate purpose of experimental psychology was to discover the nature of the human machine and how to program it.


The main proponent of this new experimental psychology in Germany was Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who is today widely regarded as the “father” of that field. He is described by orthodoxy as having “freed the study of the mind from metaphysics and rational philosophy.” Presumably in favor of irrational philosophy. Wundt obtained his PhD in medicine from the University of Heidelburg in 1856, and embarked on the study of sensory perception. His most famous work was “Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception” , done between 1858 and 1862. It is described by orthodoxy as the first work of experimental psychology. In 1875, Wundt was appointed to a chair in philosophy at Leipzig, where he instituted a laboratory for the “systematic, experimental study of experience.” Back then, the phase “get a life” was not in vogue, and evidently he didn’t have much interpretable experience of his own.


In 1873, he began a year-long writing project which resulted in “Principles of Physiological Psychology”, which became a “classic” that was subsequently reprinted through six editions over the next 40 years, establishing psychology’s claim to be an “independent science”. Wundt also wrote on philosophical subjects such as logic and ethics, but as he did not subscribe to “rational philiosophy”, his writings presumably yielded irrational interpretations of both areas. It is conceivable that his warped view of humanity and the universe contributed in some small way to the eventual Nazi penchant for experimenting on those they didn’t like, producing for them an irrational experience they would never forget. American students of Wundt who returned to the United States between 1880 and 1910 became the heads of Psychological Departments at major universities, such as Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania, to name a few. Wundt trained James Cattell, who on his return to the United States trained over 300 PhD’s in the Wundt world view. The system of “educational psychology” evolved from this. Funded by the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations, the Wundtian system gains control over educational testing in the United States for soldiers of World War I.


The “Educational System” Expands

The wave of immigration which began in 1848, combined with the visibility of revolutions taking place all over Europe, helped foster uncertainty in the public mind. Laws requiring compulsory schooling were then legislated. It was all very Hegelian. We wouldn’t want those little tykes to become reactionaries, would we? In 1890, Carnegie wrote a series of essays called The Gospel of Wrath, in which he claimed that the capitalistic free enterprise system was dead in the United States. It really was, since Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan, by then, owned the United States. It was about 1917 that a great “Red Scare” was instituted in the United States in order to set up a reactionary movement intended to get the public to accept the idea of compulsory schooling – Prussian compulsory schooling, of course.


The implimentation of the German educational nightmare in the United States met some initial resistence. In Carnegie’s home town of Gary, Indiana, the system was implemented between 1910 and 1916, mostly through the efforts of William Wirt, the school superintendent. It involved no academic endeavor whatsoever. It worked so well in supplying willing workers for the steel mills that it was decided by Carnegie to bring the system to New York City. In 1917, they initiated a program in New York in 12 schools, with the objective of enlarging the program to encompass 100 schools and eventually all the schools in New York. William Wirt came to supervise the transition.


Unfortunately for Carnegie, the population of the 12 schools was predominently composed of Jewish immigrants, who innately recognized what was being done and the nature of the new “educational system”. Three weeks of riots followed, and editorials in the New York Times were very critical of the plan. Over 200 Jewish school children were thrown in jail. The whole political structure of New York that had tried this scheme were then thrown out of office during the next election. A book describing this scenerio, The Great School Wars, was written by Diane Ravitch on the subject. Curiously, William Wirt was committed to an insane asylum around 1930, after going around making public speeches about his part in a large conspiracy to bring about a controlled state in the hands of certain people. He died two years later.


In order to make sure that the independence of the one-room schoolhouse and the penchant for communities to hire their own independent teachers would cease, the Carnegie group instituted the concept of “teacher certification” – a process controlled by the teaching colleges under Carnegie and Rockefeller control. No one knew that the Communist revolutions were funded from the United States. The buildup of the Soviet Union, as well as that of Nazi Germany, would also be funded later from the United States in order to get a reactionary public to bend to the will of controlling political factions. It was a plan that worked well in the 1920′s, and worked well again in the 1950′s in the psychological creation of the “cold war”, providing funding for the buildup of the military, industrial and pharmaceutical complex. The “non-thinking” American public never suspected a thing. Such a thing would have been “unbelievable.”


Because the United States was owned by wealthy businessmen, a synthetic free enterprise system was created and anti-trust laws were passed to prevent anyone else from gaining power. Everything that had already been consolidated was “grandfathered” out of the law. It was a brilliant scheme, and it worked very well.

Earlier in the century there were “school boards” in every town. Between 1932 and 1960, the number of school boards dropped from 140,000 to 30,000. Today there are about 15,000 – all controlled by extensions of the Carnegie-Rockefeller educational complex. In 1959, with the advent of the “sputnik” and the public realization that “another country was ahead of us”, the embarassed educational system was forced to temporarily create a synthetic focus on science which produced a generation of scientists and technicians in order to resolve the apparent decifit in the public mind.


In retrospect, in 1889 the U.S. Commissioner of Education assured a prominent railroad man, Collis Huntington, when he protested that the schools seemed to be over-educating (producing too many engineers and people who could think), that schools had been scientifically designed not to over-educate. It was a reference to the German system of education inculcated into the United States between 1806 and 1819.



The Prussian School System


A year after Napoleon’s amateur army defeated the professional forces of Prussia at the battle of Jena in 1806, German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte delivered his celebrated “Address to the German Nation.” In essence, he told the Prussian people that forced schooling in which all would learn to obey orders was the only way for Prussia to rebound from this most ignominious defeat.


Modern compulsory schooling began in Prussia in 1819, the first time in human history that education was foisted upon a nation by force. The goals were simple: obedient soldiers to the army, subservient workers to the mines, submissive civil servants to the government, compliant clerks to industry and citizens who thought alike about major issues. The results were no doubt pleasing to the Prussian ruling elites; industry boomed and warfare was successful.


In Prussia, the Volksshule educated 92 percent of the children. Its purpose was not to develop the intellect, but to socialize the children in obedience and subordination. Only eight percent of children were schooled in Real Schulen. For the masses, intellectual development was seen as the major contributing factor causing armies to lose battles.

Compulsory Schooling Arrives in America

How did Prussian-style compulsory education make its way to America? Thousands of young men from important American families went to Prussia in the 19th century and brought home Ph.D. degrees, a credential that was then unknown in the States. Eventually, those with Ph.D.s assumed the highest positions in government and academia, effectively closing such opportunities to those lacking the degree. Almost all the founders of American schooling had made the pilgrimage to Germany; many, most notably Horace Mann in his legendary 7th Report of 1844, extolled the virtues of the Teutonic methods.


In 1852, the famous “Know-Nothing” Massachusetts legislature rammed though education by compulsion. Within 50 years, state domino after state domino fell in line, ending school choice and creating a vast government monopoly.


Minimizing the Individual in Favor of Collectivism


By 1889, U.S. Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris was assuring railroad magnate Collis Huntington that American schools were “scientifically designed” to prevent “over-education” from occurring. In 1896, John Dewey at the University of Chicago said “independent, self-reliant people were a counter-productive anachronism in the collective society of the future.” Dewey went on to assert that, in modern society, “people would be defined by their associations – not by their own individual accomplishments.”


Such was a long leap toward state socialism, a vision that runs counter to the traditional American purpose – to prepare the individual to be self-reliant. The underlying premise of Prussian schooling, and therefore that of the American system, is that the government is the true parent of all children, i.e., the State is sovereign over the family.


What can be done about this deplorable state of affairs?


Solutions to the Public Education Debacle


Political candidates on all levels, and from both major parties, continually trumpet the need for more tax dollars to be spent on education. They accurately perceive that the electorate considers the education of our children to be an important issue. Opinion polls consistently show education to be one of the chief topics of concern among the American people.


Since the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was signed into law in 1965, the federal government has spent more than $130 billion to improve public schools. The latest education bill passed by Congress is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which provides $44.5 billion for the Department of Education for fiscal year 2002, an 11.5 percent increase in budget authority.


I would argue that the government spends far too much on education, not too little. If that sounds controversial, you are not alone. But counting on politicians to solve the education problem is sheer folly. The crux of the problem is the politicians themselves.


The current dismal state of education in America is directly attributable to the government’s monopoly, wherein more than 90% of school-age children are forced into this failed system.


The Ultimate Solution


Government schooling is a duress-based system, a monopoly funded with confiscatory taxes. Rolling back the income tax and property taxes and kicking government at all levels out of the education business is the supreme solution to what ails us. The government’s one-size-fits-all model of education is archaic. With the State out of the picture, entrepreneurs would be free to develop a myriad of educational solutions that would be tailored to fit the many different learning styles of our children. While some traditional schools might remain to serve the needs of children who do learn well in that setting, new education paradigms, some not even conceived at this time, would emerge in a free market of ideas and school choice.

The chances of this happening in the foreseeable future seem remote, especially with the stranglehold that the National Education Association (NEA) has on the Democratic Party. We are 150 years into compulsory government education, and it may take decades before enough people stand up and say, “Enough is enough!” Until that time comes, only one viable option exists.


The Interim Solution


Private schools offer an alternative to government education. Limitations exist, however, and foremost among them is the sometimes prohibitive cost of tuition. Aside from that, most private schools labor under some degree of government regulation. Most also employ the government model of grouping kids together by strict age divisions, beginning and ending learning sessions at a prescribed time by the sounding of a shrill bell, and subjecting students to the same pre-determined academic standards, grading policies and behavior standards. So while private schools may have superior teachers, more rigorous standards and a safer environment than their government school counterparts, the model is similar.

The best option at the current time is to homeschool your children. Homeschooling is based on a foundational American belief in freedom. Such freedom allows families to teach whatever they want, on their own schedule, in order to suit their lifestyles. Homeschool parents may teach their children evolution or creationism without the fear of offending any politically correct interest groups. Very importantly, homeschool families don’t take any money from the taxpayers.


When most people think of homeschooling, they imagine Johnny at the kitchen table with mom, buried under a stack of books. While instruction of this type is common in homeschool families, the flexibility and range of homeschooling promotes an immense variety of alternative educational models. They range from child-led learning, or “unschooling,” to the more traditional classroom model with professional instructors. Some methods that can comprise a homeschooling education include distance learning (correspondence courses), commercial learning centers, tutors, cooperative teaching between parents, and taking community college or university courses. Such is the great advantage to homeschooling: flexibility and variety.


More Advantages of Homeschooling


Besides the aforementioned flexibility of the homeschool paradigm, many other benefits of homeschooling have become apparent. The average homeschooling family spends approximately 10% of the per-pupil costs typical of government schools. The academic achievements of homeschoolers cannot be denied. An extensive 1999 study by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) analyzed the standardized test scores of more than 20,000 homeschooled students across the country and revealed that a large majority of homeschooled students scored well above the national average, with most of the scores in the 75th to 85th percentile.


Beyond standardized test scores, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation selected 150 homeschooled high schoolers as semifinalists in 2000. Homeschoolers have also excelled in the National Spelling Bee and the National Geographic Bee.


The Socialization Question


Perhaps the most often-mentioned objection to homeschooling is “How will a homeschool child acquire social skills? How will he make and keep friends?” Government schools have a well-earned reputation as non-democratic societies in which cliques emerge and bullies dominate weaker kids. Defining socialization is capricious at best. In fact, a study by J. Gary Knowles and James A. Muchmore at the University of Michigan revealed that homeschoolers appear to grow up to be content, hard-working adults with a strong sense of right and wrong.

Believing that kids can only make social contacts at school is narrow-minded at best. Homeschool kids can make just as many friends by joining sports teams, attending scout meetings, going to church, volunteering, working part-time jobs and engaging in countless other activities. In addition, many homeschool support groups have emerged, where parents can combine their efforts to provide educational and social opportunities for their children. Parents are the greatest judges as to how their children will best achieve socialization.


A Worthy Sacrifice


There can be no doubt that a considerable sacrifice must be made by parents who opt to homeschool. Parents may need to forego certain creature comforts, or live on one salary to accommodate the homeschool experience. But the alternative is to turn children over to the government for six to eight hours a day, 180 days a year, where they will be subjected to ideological indoctrination, inferior academic instruction, and a one-size-fits all system that is antithetical to their nature as individuals with very different needs. All kids need education, but parents, not government, should provide it. To allow government to educate kids is no different than to allow government to provide their religious training. Homeschool your kids.


Rick Gee resides in paradise, also known as Santa Fe, New Mexico. He writes about liberty, sports, film and other topics for The Valley News. In addition to being a Root Striker, he is a columnist at anti-state.com and a commentator at LewRockwell.com.

Written by: Rick Gee
25 September 2006



Norman Dodd tells how the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Guggenheim and Ford Foundations set out to control education and rewrite American history in order to merge America into the one-world government they could control.

Perhaps we are seeing an example of the fruits of their history rewrite now that our government and the mainstream media (also controlled) claim that President Herbert Hoover didn’t do enough to avert the Great Depression, while true history says the opposite: AMAZING!!! Historians Twist History of the Great Depression(s) to Make Gov’t Intervention Appear Desirable.

Here is the incredible testimony of this great man, interviewed by G. Edward Griffin in 1982:

Norman Dodd (June 29, 1899 – January 1987) was a chief investigator in 1953 for U.S. Congressman B. Carroll Reece Special Committee on Tax Exempt Foundations (commonly referred to as the Reece Committee). Wikipedia



 G. Edward Griffin begins (full transcript):


The story you are about to hear represents a missing piece in the puzzle of modern history. Without this knowledge, many contemporary events are simply beyond understanding.

You are about to hear a man tell you that the major tax exempt foundations of this land since at least 1945 have been operating to promote a hidden agenda. And that agenda has nothing to do with the surface appearance of charity, good works, or philanthropy.

This man will tell you that the real objectives include the creation of a world-wide collective estate including the Soviet Union which is to be ruled from the behind the scenes by those same interests which now control the tax exempt foundations.

Norman Dodd says this starting at 25:45:

We are now at the year 1908 which was the year that the Carnegie began operations. And in that year the trustees meeting for the first time raise a specific question which they discuss throughout the balance of the year in a very learned fashion, and the question is, is there any means known more effective than war assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that no more effective means than war to that end is known to humanity.

So then in 1909 they raise the second question and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war? Well I doubt at that time if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country that it’s involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows in the Balkans but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were.

Then finally they answer that question as follows: We must control the State Department. And then that very naturally raises the question how do we do that? And they answer it by saying we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and finally resolve to aim at that as an objective.

Then time passes and we are eventually in a war which would have been World War I and at that time they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly.

And finally, of course, we are, the war is over. At that time their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914 when World War broke out. And they arrive at that point, they come to the conclusion that to prevent a reversion we must control education in the United States.

And they realize that that’s a pretty big task. So it’s, to them, it is too big for them alone so they approach the Rockefeller Foundation with the suggestion that that portion of education which could be considered domestic be handled by the Rockefeller Foundation and that portion which is international should be handled by the Endowment.

And they then decide that the key to the success of these two operations lay in [an] alteration of the teaching of American history. So they approach four of the then most prominent teachers of American history in the country, people like Charles and Mary Bird and their suggestion to them is will they alter the manner in which they present this subject and they get turned down flat. So they then decide that it is necessary for them to do as they say, build our own stable of historians.

And then they approach the Guggenheim Foundation which specialized in fellowships and say, when we find young men in the process of studying for doctorates in the field of American history and we feel that they are the right caliber, will you grant them fellowships on our say so. And the answer is yes. So under that condition eventually they assembled 20 and they take this 20 potential teachers of American history to London and there they’re briefed into what is expected of them when as and if they secure appointments in keeping with the doctorates they will have earned.

And that group of 20 historians ultimately becomes the nucleus of the American Historical Association. And then toward the end of the 1920’s the Endowment grants to the American Historical Association $400,000 for a study of our history in a manner which points to what can this country look forward to in the future. And that culminates in a seven-volume book study….

In an interview with Norman Dodd, the 1954 staff director of the Reese congressional special committe to investigate tax-exempt foundations,…all »

G. Edward Griffin asks near the end of the interview:

How would you describe the motivation of the people who created the foundations, the big foundations in the very beginning? What was their motivation?

Norman Dodd responds:

Their motivation, well, let’s take Mr. Carnegie as an example. His publicly declared, steadfast interest was to counteract the departure of the colonies from Great Britain. He was devoted to just putting the pieces back together again.

Griffen then asks:

Why do the foundations generously support Communist causes in the United States?

Dodd:

Well, because to them Communism represents a means of developing what we call a monopoly, that is the organization we’ll say of large scale industry into an administrable unit. … They will be the beneficiaries of it.




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