That’s the goal
by Jon Rappoport
January 31, 2018
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“There is a form of mind control that is really mind-chaos. It shatters the processes of thought into, at best, vaguely related fragments. There is no direction, no development, no progress along a line of reasoning. This is how you disable a person. You disrupt his ability to move from A to B to C. At that point, he becomes passive. He’s willing to be programmed, because it’s easier. He wants to be programmed.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
“I learned twenty-four new things today at school,” the child said. “One right after the other. I felt so happy. My teacher told me I was learning accelerated. I wrote on my iPad. I saw pictures. I did group harmony. I added. I divided. I heard about architecture. The teacher said we were filled with wonder at the universe. We solved a problem. We’re all together. I ate cheese. A factory makes cheese.”
The new education is ADHD.
It’s a method of teaching that surrenders ground on each key concept, deserting it before it’s firmly fixed in the mind of the student.
It hops around from idea to idea, because parents, teachers, administrators, students, departments of education, and educational publishers have given up on the traditional practice of repetition.
Repetition was old-world. For decades, even centuries, the time-honored method of instruction was: introduce an idea or concept or method, and then provide numerous examples the student had to practice, solve, and demonstrate with proficiency.
There was no getting around it. If the student balked, he failed.
There were no excuses or fairy tales floated to explain away the inability of the student to carry out the work.
For those students who have the desire to be in a classroom to receive instruction, repetition works. It may lack glitz, but it works because the vast majority of people can’t learn to read, write, or do math any other way.
You can’t gloss over these subjects with a broad brush and a lot of personality or caring. It’s all about digging in the dirt, one scoop at a time.
Some people would call it robotic education. I don’t think it is. It’s just doing what’s necessary—unless reading, writing, and math are deemed unimportant.
Now, these days, if you want to induce ADHD, teach a course in which each new concept is given short shrift. Then pass every student on to the next grade, because it’s “humane.”
Think of it this way. Suppose you want to climb the sheer face of a high rock. You know nothing about climbing. You engage an instructor. He teaches you a little bit about ropes and spikes and handholds. He briefly highlights each aspect and then skips to the next.
So later…while you’re falling five hundred feet to the ravine below, you can invent stories about why the experiment didn’t work out.
Since the advent of organized education on the planet, there has been one way of teaching young children…until recently. Explain a new idea, produce scores of examples of that idea, and get the students to work on those examples and come up with the right answers.
Subtraction, division, decimals, spelling, reading—it all works the same basic way.
For the last hundred years or so, however, we’ve seen the gradual intrusion of Teacher ADHD.
School text ADHD.
Not enough examples. Not enough exercises.
Education has nothing to do with a full frontal attack to “improve the self-esteem” of the student. It has nothing to do with telling children they’re valuable. It certainly has nothing to do with trying to embed social values and team spirit in children.
And no matter how many fantasies educators spin, schools can’t replace parents.
If what I’m writing here seems cruel and uncaring…look at the other side of the picture. Look at what happens when a student emerges from school with a half-baked, “dumbed-down” education.
He can sort of read. He can sort of write. He sort of understands arithmetic. He tries to skate through the rest of his life. He fakes it. He adopts a front to conceal the large territory of what he doesn’t know.
He certainly can’t think straight. Give him three ideas in succession and he’s lost. He goes on overload.
He operates on association. You say A and he goes to G right away. You go back to A and he responds with R. He’s up the creek without a paddle.
That’s what’s cruel.
Forty years ago, I was on the verge of landing a lucrative job with a remedial education company. The owner gave me a lesson plan and told me to write a sample program.
I did. He looked at it and said, “There are too many examples and exercises here. You have to move things along faster.”
I told him the students would never comprehend the program that way. They had to work on at least 20 exercises for each new concept.
He was shocked. “That’s not how it’s done now,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, “you mean now the student and teacher both fake it?”
And that was the end of that.
Several years ago, I explained much of what’s in this article to a sociologist at a US university. His response: “Children are different now. They don’t have patience. There are too many distractions. We have to operate from a new psychology.”
I asked him what that psychology was.
“Children are consumers. They pick and choose.”
While I was laughing at his assessment, he capped his display of wisdom with this: “There is no longer such a clear division between opinion and fact. They overlap.”
Perfect.
I know all about how the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations torpedoed education in America in the 20th century. But their major effort then was cutting off teachers and students from the history of the nation and the meaning of individual freedom.
What I’m talking about here is a different perversion. The unhinging of the young mind from any semblance of accomplishment and continuity. This goes far beyond the agenda of outfitting children to be worker-drones in a controlled society.
This is the induction of confusion and despair about what used to be called thinking. This is the imprinting of “gaps” that make it very hard for a person to operate, even as a drone.
In addition, if you seed children with all sorts of debilitating psychiatric drugs, and you have a profound and dangerous mess that only dedicated parents can undo, one child at a time.
People may wish it weren’t so, but that doesn’t change the facts of the matter.
The upside is, when you explain a concept to a child, and you then take him through a great many exercises designed to help him understand that concept, he’ll achieve a victory.
Then you’ll see the lights go on in his mind.
(For the “Long Read” version of this article, click here.)
(My collection, The Matrix Revealed, has a Logic & Analysis course for High School students.)
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Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
Excellent analysis.
Oh yeah! I am diggin it! I get excited with new ways of looking at things. ADHD makes perfect sense. Anything will take repetition to sink in and remain.Suzuki used this method, along with having parents be the teachers, even if they are just learning, too. Forming a pattern in the brain, especially when it is tedious, require the very repetition you prescribe. I note things that I have learned at one time or another. I dabbled in programming, but after deciding on other things, much of that knowledge is no longer there. It would come back fast enough, but without constant refreshment, the mind will let it fade, through the trial/path seems to remain.
I note subjects that I was on the top of, when I dug deep and often. But left on their own, I would need to refresh and it would come back. Patterns need engraved in the mind, no doubt. and they stay strong if continually used. and it helps if they are connected to other parts of our life, making them more relevant. ADHD reminds me of a Beatles song, Here, There and Everywhere, and to add, no place in particular. But I see school as far worse than that.
School is the application of a mild form of “Sensory Deprivation,” which taken to the extreme, can literally cause completely lost contact in the mind with reality and function, which is the intended goal of putting one in a sensory deprivation tank. School sensory deprivation is the same, just on a milder, not very recognizable scale.
but I have to say, as regards school, rather than learning, or learning at all, the idea, sinister as it is, it to prevent leaning at every level.
Encourage bullies. Hold back learning new things. Slow the pace down so that boredom and distraction kick in. Oh, how well I know that. A good strong healthy mind will react to very slow pace, far more than the dull minds will. Its almost like a rebellion by the smart mind. I think a lot of ADHD is just rebellion against boredom and mindless repetition, having nearly same effect sensory deprivation.
the old saying: use it or lose it. That’s how the mind works. Feed it or it will rebel or die. The mind needs stimulation and that stimulation can become a drug, an addiction. A good one of course, to a degree.
Then there is the emotional comfort and reassuring. But that is another topic, altogether. Love is the best teacher, by far.
I just came across this quote from the Blog, Cultocracy:
Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.
Nikola Tesla
Bringing computers into schools shifted the focus to ‘information’ – making educators giddy over the amount now instantly available – but relegated the processing of that information to the dust bin. What you end up with are thousands of disconnected bits. I call this the ‘shotgun approach.’ If, as we’re told, an individual’s capacity to recognize sight words caps at 1,000, I’d conclude that retention of ‘information bytes’ hovers similarly close. The addition of ‘sound byte’ focused TV and wireless device time emitting brainwave altering electro-magnetic fields, all projecting visual vignettes of inane absurdity falling well outside of reality, completes the equation to produce bouncing-ball brains – confirmed by the bell curve IQ shift… the legacy of our infatuation with technology. We will only truly progress when we recognize that nothing produced by Man will ever match that of the brain, the human body, and Nature.
Bingo. Internet creates ADHD. How many tiny bites that rarely even relate to each other can a person hold in their mind? Throw in pop up adds and pages readjusting ad naseum and you have a perfect environment for getting nowhere.
Dear Jon, as you very well know our schools are indoctrination facilities. No truth is presented there. Everything is focused on programming the mind to become an obedient servant to the system. Since there are some people who managed to escape this indoctrination, the program was redesigned and as you are pointing out, thing got worse but this is to be expected from everything that is connected to the government.
The solution is to minimize the government and make it transparent. No government secrets ever for no reason.
Love and light brother.
Welcome!
To the co-opted “government” program, “Common Core”.
they haven’t used common core in awhile. they switched quietly to a new system called trauma-based education. 2015 i think.
Great comment Rastafari. Trauma based is very honest and accurate.
I’ve noticed this same phenomenon in movies for some time now. The hopping from one event to another. Leaving one in suspense about ‘what did the text say’ or ‘what was written on the letter.’ When they come back to the situation that created the suspense, the screen shows you the text that is unreadable because it’s white on white or blue on blue and it’s strobed on the screen so briefly even the fastest reader can’t read more than a couple words, IF they could see them. The same with the letter which eventually is shown to the viewer, held sideways for a brief second too short to read more than a few words, if that, Too many times the letter is even shown to us, leaving us to wonder what’s going on. I’m no dummy and have always enjoyed spy movies where the plot thickens in a steady pattern that can be followed while i’m guessing who did what, which is always revealed in due time. Today, there’s too much confusion and not much to think about. Too much action that last too long and not enough substance. I can see how this can profoundly affect the young mind, as it gives even me a sense of haziness and a feeling of floundering in a sea of mind-control and deadens my emotions. It was difficult to explain this. I hope it’s understandable.
“The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else… Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.” – H. L. Mencken – (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic
“I know all about how the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations torpedoed education in America in the 20th century. But their major effort then was cutting off teachers and students from the history of the nation and the meaning of individual freedom.
“What I’m talking about here is a different perversion. The unhinging of the young mind from any semblance of accomplishment and continuity. This goes far beyond the agenda of outfitting children to be worker-drones in a controlled society.
“This is the induction of confusion and despair about what used to be called thinking. This is the imprinting of ‘gaps’ that make it very hard for a person to operate, even as a drone.”
— Jon Rappoport
Jump cut ed. Media and education are in sync. Media were there before education.
I had another thought. I have noticed over the years that many small towns and places have a lot of the young who learn early about sex and engage in it. there are several factors for it, I would say. small towns are isolated and without many attractions or options. No mall loaded with teens. No big theater. Not much for stores. Its nature and the freedom form oversight as one venture into remote places adults would not likely visit, if even know about. no distractions and lots of opportunity and interest among similar ages.
If one does not have interesting things to pursue, one will naturally gravitate toward instinct. Suburbs have more options and maybe more oversight among some, so that one has better chance of being entertained/distracted from meaningful learning and also chances to be alone with just one person.
if minds are not fed good interesting things, by default, they will gravitate to the natural urges.
Repetition is the way to learn in all fields.of life
If you want to be a great guitar player, you have to practice everyday.
Same thing for artists.Paint everyday and enjoy your work.and see it getting better and better.
Same thing when you want to become an athlete or speak another language,.. and so on.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.repeat.is the way to go.
Jon, I like your answer to whoever that guy was:( Oh,” I said, “you mean now the student and teacher both fake it?” ) (LOL).
I like that this post is condensed version of yesterday’s, suitable for those already suffering from ADHD.
I attended a “beginners” Salsa lesson last night. We learned FOUR different moves in one hour. At the end of the class, the instructor told us we should be able to dance all night with just those four moves. Imagine that, we learned Salsa in just one hour!
I guess that’s why we see nightclubs packed with good dancers everywhere we go.
School is so very different now I do not recognize it. What is with the compulsion to group desks into 3s or 4s in elementary school? Half the class isn’t facing the teacher. What kindergartener wouldn’t be distracted by the person they are facing? As an adult I would be distracted. They did this at work with shared cubicles. Distraction.
Jon
As you are aware, the product of “education” with scant exception today is either
Mediocre standards or
System parasites
“What are system parasites?” you may ask.
Good question.
These are copycats. Painters can only work by numbers now, following the template. They can neither execute nor think for themselves.
Incidentally, when I saw ADHD, I thought your article might refer to something different. That term is a joke (which you play on). Autism began its journey as Kanner Syndrome in 1912 after Leo Kanner’s diagnosis. ADHD is the 1987 “rebrand”.
https://ozziethinker.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/strange-encounters-of-the-autistic-kind/
Best
OT
You have declared that in round-a-bout way. That we are a collections of our experiences; our Pavlovian conditioning; in early and middle school. We are a narrative that is first created, by our mothers, and that constantly is being reshaped, edited, added to and revised. We are an invention. Our minds are an invention. And that the world of education, should keep that entrainment continuing…via ABC..
ADHD is the state of boredom…
” […] You disrupt his ability to move from A to B to C. […]”
…is this not convergent thinking? A psychological construct for the purpose of what? Conformity?
Better he diverges and wanders the creative side of himself and finds another reality — by accident he finds this reality, is more perfect than the one society demands he abide by…and for what.
English is a language of slaves Jon. It is made by slaves…it is added to by slaves. It is based on A to B to C. The subject–verb–object (SVO).
But there are other languages, millions of them even the true language of the self.
Convergent thinking is a sociopolitical event of one, were mirror neurons inform the mind of what the social taboos are…what the society, what the herd thinks and so an answer is obtains. The necessary filters that place d on truth, to make more palatable. But it is not learning, it obedience to a process of learning…leearning is the only think that we do. And each to his own way…
On the other hand, divergent thinking is a stream of consciousness so thing, a tapping into a gnosis — an inherent knowing, perhaps culmination of previous life experiences distilled down to what is important, and that the great well of creativity fuels into an unfiltered response to that same query.
In the end the little fellow decides whither he is either a team player, or he is going to go it alone as an individual allowing unfiltered truth to fall from his mouth. To have the courage to say the right things to wrong society.
In the beginning of such an exploration of reality, can cause extreme suffering and mental anguish. Anxieties sometimes in the need to be excepted, to be part of the great glob of mankind that really have nothing to offer but, will try their best to bring you down to their level. Humans are by nature in a competition.
Those who fly the divergent path, eventually see, the doors of perception yawn wide and the cosmos comes flooding in and the wonder of it all, is yours. And in that, you gain something unteachable, something; words or equations or history does not know of…something unique in understanding, something language dares not to try to explain. Because it fails terribly. Something of a poet is born here, real courage is found, for one realizes there is nothing really in this world to lose or to fear. In the fact the whole thing is fake…
“There was no getting around it. If the student balked, he failed.”
Failed? So final Jon, care to rephrase it…not that failure is a bad thing, in proper situations, but upon thinking about ‘balking’…an intelligent player might balk for a number of reasons. And surely they are not failure. Balking might occur from the enlightened response to being overly trained, being conditioned in a redundancy that was fully understood in the beginning, but is so tedious to repeat until spirit is releases slightly to accept finally the lesson. An elephant that was once chained when it was very young, may now be tethered then, with a thread then.
Might one profit more by asking that the child think about the solution and use an already available answer. Let face it John, your way, their way is that…you creates more robots and then complain when they haven’t larn to think. Your way does not create critical thinkers…critical thinkers are gained from risk, danger.
“For those students who have the [desire] to be in a classroom to receive instruction, repetition works.”
Who do you know desires to spend their youth, the wonder time, the magic time, in a fluorescent room stuffy from old flatulence and a droning noise at the head of the room, from a tenured school marm, or curmudgeon that can barely get up the enthusiasm to hand out the papered lessons for the day — and around you the yes people; the cowed eyes of your peers surround you. And the cheeky are drugged…
“Those that can, do. Those that can’t , always teach.”
You continue through your article to use this word: desire…have you forgotten what it means…
Let’s clarify…
Desire: to long or hope for, exhibit or feel for…to express a wish, a love an appetite; to feel a loss of something important and care to gain it back as quickly as one can.
In the end the best thing you can do for a child is never send that child to school, never enroll them, never allow a school teacher to infect their mind. Never allow a school nurse to inject poisons in their bodies.
In the long run, they are much better of, if they never ever go to school, their minds are easier to teach to educate themselves; if they never go to school…but who is that caring, who is that loving. Surely not you Jon with what you proselytize here. You speak as a sort of expert on learning…
“[…] because the vast majority of people can’t learn to read, write, or do math any other way.”
Are you sure about that? Is that becoming a cemented hardened symbol in your head; in your head.
The uninvented languages of the world, the uninvented theories of existence, the uninvented methods of counting and expressing and learning, the uninvented history…the newly invented reality of a new-born. Leave it alone.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/05/uninvented-history/
“Think of it this way. Suppose you want to climb the sheer face of a high rock. You know nothing about climbing.”
The first thing you learn as a child is to climb… is to climb and climb…an it is as natural to you as the air that passes from lungs to atmosphere…have you forgotten?
Most climbers I know are self-taught, do I know a lot of climbers, yes…do I climb? Not the really big stuff anymore, but that thirty-five foot spruce outside my back yard… I regularly go up it, to toss crows out of every spring, I take offense to their noise, and murdering ways. They are noisy bastards at four in morning. I will not stop climbing trees, or going onto roofs, or ledges or short climbs…no. And the first thing I learned was to climb alone.
Sure there are courses and forums and rules and no-no’s. As in all things in a fake society, there are exploiters who will impress on you how ignorant you really are, and how climbing is dangerous, yes that right, life is dangerous…now you can go through this existence with a safety net and live a long riskless life, or live… really live and teach yourself. But feign ignorance, and plastic expertise, is of little help. And going from A to B to C, makes you into a machine, a robot.
No one can teach you anything, you only submit; you can teach yourself everything.
Convergent thinking is the type of thinking that focuses on coming up with the single, well-established answer to a problem….well established! A consensus; a group thought? What everyone else wants to hear… because society wants to hear the right answer — what the society wants — but it is not truth. It is not your reality.
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions…brain storming the real position of profound thought, the wellspring of critical thought and the beginning of wisdom…real knowledge. It about risk taking and daring to explore the forbidden.
What you express is obedience, you express subservience to ancient thinking, and not new ways of thinking Jon. You can teach a child to read and write and count in six weeks. And then another six weeks to teach that child how to think — then the world is opened by a child’s mind. Teach a child to be divergent first…convergence is easy, it is about conformity.
Nonconformists are divergent thinker; artists (the real ones) are divergent thinkers; risk takers and entrepreneurs are divergent thinkers, people who are in love with their lives and thinking and learning are divergent thinkers. Divergent thinkers are usually great book lovers and crave learning.
Be honest, be really honest about what-you-are, and no one can stop you from learning, no one can ever get in the way of that curiosity.
You preach obedience, that is not learning to think. And learning to think is the whole purpose of education. I not about facts, I am here to learn what you think you know of the world, we don’t live long enough as humans to understand this great thing…
There is obedience and conformity, don’t confuse what you say as education.
Michael,
I think we both agree that thinking is fundamentally an experiential phenomenon, driven by the results one wishes to attain. For the creative artist who needs to generate new ideas, thinking is a different process than for the artist who needs to solve a series of technical problems to attain his or her goal. There is also the thinking skills required to organize one’s thoughts and express them clearly. To understand distinctions in meaning, syntax, grammar.
All thinking can be used for good or bad. Divergent thinking can lead one to a sublime discovery or utter chaos. Convergent thinking can lead to successfully organizing and synthesizing oneself, or becoming a slave to someone’s presuppositions.
What lies behind thinking and thoughts is more mysterious. Where do thoughts come from? The conformist can only build on the thoughts of others, some kind of authority that says – “this is what is.” A non-conformist who can think clearly, though, can disassemble what is disseminated in his education and re-synthesize it, and discover what is missing from within his own mind. Synthesis of one’s perceptions, thoughts, and feelings is the challenge of individual existence. Having the skills necessary to construct one’s own synthesis allows a person to re-define one’s self.
– Greg