The Attempted Coup
On Wednesday, January 6th, we were witness to an unimaginable insurrection, at attack on the United States Capitol, the center of our democracy.
How could this have happened? To understand it, it is important to understand the history of public education. In his book, the Underground History of American Education, John Gatto finds the smoking gun that showed that some of the founders of the current education system were clear about their intent to create a process to control and manipulate students, rather than to foster creativity and empowerment.
We’ve often said that the best way to prepare children to participate in a democracy is for them to grow up in one. Conversely, it makes no sense to have children spend 12 years in an authoritarian school system if we want them to become good citizens in a democracy.
In the current system, students are rewarded for following orders, doing what the teacher says, respecting the teacher’s and the principal’s authority, not for being entrepreneurial or independent.
This is perfect training to prepare students to be part of an authoritarian, dictatorial society. This, then would naturally lead to training people to follow orders, be competitive, climb over others to be the top ones, and crave authoritarian leaders.
I was witness to this process when I visited the USSR and Russia, just as the coup happened. There was an explosion of creativity and innovation, especially in education. But as time went on, many of the people felt uneasy about their freedom and craved the system in which there was an authoritarian leader who would tell everyone what to do. Now they have it.
And in the past four years, many of the authoritarian oriented people in the United States began to follow a very authoritarian president. Those people tended to follow him in a cult-like fashion, even if he often promoted capricious and prejudiced ideas. No matter how bad it got, the “base” (a well-chosen word) believed and followed everything he said, the way an abused and unloved child might still worship their father, no matter what he did.
Therefore, is it no surprise that this process may have led to January 6th? Yes, it was a minority of people. Most of us were appalled at this attack. But when that authority called upon his followers to attack the heart of our democracy to keep him in power, they gleefully complied. Father had spoken.
A significant number of American people are authoritarian in orientation, enough to almost reelect him (over 70 Million). We are not the only country in which this process is taking place. This general approach to education is world-wide.
If we hope to move humanity away from this dangerous precipice, we need to change our education system NOW. It must become one that respects and empowers students, helps them become cooperative not competitive. It needs to encourage creativity, entrepreneurialism, tolerance and initiative. It needs to be democratic!
