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12. Honor the highly graded. Keep grading and real world accomplishment as strictly<br />

separate as possible so that a false meritocracy, dependent on the support of authority to<br />

continue, is created. Push the most independent kids to the margin; do not tolerate real<br />

argument.<br />

13. Forbid the efficient transmission of useful knowledge, such as how to build a house,<br />

repair a car, make a dress.<br />

14. Reward dependency in many forms. Call it "teamwork."<br />

15. Establish visually degraded group environments called "schools" and arrange mass<br />

movements through these environments at regular intervals. Encourage a level of<br />

fluctuating noise (aperiodic ne<strong>gat</strong>ive reinforcement) so that concentration, habits of civil<br />

discourse, and intellectual investi<strong>gat</strong>ion are gradually extinguished from the behavioral<br />

repertoire.<br />

Schoolbooks<br />

Until his death in an accident a few years ago, the president of Macmillan Publishing company,<br />

one of the largest school material suppliers in the world, was a third-grade dropout. Actually,<br />

like other children in his (Russian) village, he received seven years of schooling. He was also<br />

president of Berlitz Language Schools.<br />

Almost The End<br />

And so we arrive at the end of our journey together. You have seen the trap conceived, the trap<br />

built, the trap sprung, and its quarry turning in panic within until the bright light of living spirit<br />

goes dull behind its eyes and it grows indifferent to its banal fate in a comprehensively planned<br />

society and economy without any hope of escape. You have watched the trap grow like Arch<br />

Oboler’s demonic chicken heart, 4 maintained by an army of behaviorally adjusted functionaries<br />

reproducing its own mechanistic encoding in the lives of schoolchildren. You have watched the<br />

listless creatures caught in the trap pressing a bar to get their food while they await instructions to<br />

their final meaningless destiny. How the trap was conceived hardly makes much difference at this<br />

point, except to warn us we are not dealing with any ordinary mistake; this trap was intended to<br />

be as it is. It is a work of great human genius.<br />

Mass schooling cannot be altered or reformed because any palliative from its killing religion will<br />

only be short-lived as long as the massification machinery it represents remains in place. That’s<br />

why all the well-publicized "this-time-we-have-it-right" alternatives to factory schooling fizzle out<br />

a decade after launch. Most sooner.<br />

Table of Contents<br />

Page 430

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