Logic and the Declaration of Independence

—What are your premises? State them. What implications flow from your premises? State them. What conclusion do you draw? State it. In a bygone era, this used to be called a formal logical argument—

by Jon Rappoport

January 29, 2018

Note: My collection, The Matrix Revealed, contains a basic logic course. And my collection, Power Outside The Matrix, contains an extensive 11-hour audio presentation, Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation.

Logic, these days, has been replaced in schools with a mind-control apparatus that involves the following:

EVERY POINT OF VIEW IS EQUAL.

EVERYBODY HAS TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE WHOLE.

TRUE CRITICAL THINKING, WHICH IS THE EXCLUSIVE TERRITORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, LEAVES PEOPLE OUT OF THE GROUP AND IS THEREFORE PREJUDICIAL.

If you favor this new formulation and think it’s useful, I have condos on Jupiter for sale.

The point of modern education, more and more, is:

“Good people belong to the group.”

“The Group is everything.”

“If you don’t belong to the Group, you have a mental disorder.”

Why is all this emphasis put on the Group?

The answer to that question also gives you the reason logic isn’t taught in schools anymore:

The independent self-sufficient individual is being phased out.

The independent individual who knows how to think and make lucid judgments on his own is a threat to the EMERGING RELIGION OF GLOBALISM.

Some people think education has been hijacked for the purpose of training children to become robotic workers for the State. That’s partly true, but education is also the proving ground for the religion of the Group.

This religion doesn’t need or want logic. Logic would be disruptive. It would differentiate one student from another.

A few years ago, I spoke to a teacher who was introducing his class to logic. He told me, “These are very bright kids. They’re all going to college. They said they couldn’t learn logic. They couldn’t do it. They had some kind of mental block.”

As we talked further, it became obvious that the mental block was an idea of THE GROUP. These kids had already been indoctrinated into “cooperative thought.” They instinctively realized that, if they studied logic, the Collective would break apart. Each student would have to stand on his own, and that prospect was frightening.

A person either wants to think for himself—and knows how to—or he prefers the hazy hive-like existence of belonging to something that is less than he is.

It’s that simple.

Several years ago, I came across a letter to the editor of Commentary Magazine, from its January 1979 issue. The author was a Thomas Jefferson scholar, Wilbur Samuel Howell.

Howell made several key points. As a college student, Jefferson studied philosophy and logic under Professor William Small, at William and Mary. Small had come to the college from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had studied under William Duncan, a renowned logician and author of Elements of Logick. Indeed, Jefferson later remarked that Professor Small had gone a long way toward shaping his life.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Jefferson-authored Declaration of Independence would adhere to a logical structure. Indeed, the Declaration is a kind of argument from first premises, through to a conclusion.

I went back and read the Declaration, and I’ll open up its logical structure.

It begins with this:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson, in this prologue, indicates that the people should state their reasons for separating from a ruling power. Before he goes on to do that, he enunciates his first premises.

All men have rights, and to secure them, they create governments.

Second, the people have the authority to abolish any ruler that tries to destroy those rights, and, in its place, the people should institute a new government.

Third, when a long history of tyrannical abuse proves that the old government cannot be corrected, the people have a duty to overthrow it.

Here is the relevant text:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

What remains is for Jefferson to list the abuses of the British Crown; to prove, in other words, that the King has, in fact, brought on such a stream of tyrannical actions.

Well, here are the abuses—the first 20 of a longer list:

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

“He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

“For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

“For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

“For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies…”

At this point, Jefferson makes it clear that the colonists have tried, without success, to correct these tyrannical abuses through peaceful means. They are not acting in haste:

“In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Jefferson then announces his conclusion, based on the prologue, the original premises of his argument, and the examples he has cited to show that the heart of these premises is true:

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

—Fire, passion, even poetry, held within the flow of a logical progression.

Jefferson was not only a devoted student of logic, he wanted to make the great case for freedom and independence by using its power.

In his mind, freedom and logic were connected.

If in our schools, in 2017, logic as a distinct subject has been reduced to paltry terms, how are students able to grasp the majestic nature of freedom, as expressed in the Declaration? How are they able to understand that living in freedom is more than vaguely drifting from one slogan to another, one addled piece of political rhetoric to another?

Note: James Madison, thought of by many as the father of the Constitution, studied logic intensely at the College of New Jersey. The course followed the pattern laid down in a famous 17th-century book, Logic or the Art of Thinking.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

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 29^th 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 NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Logic: the student’s edge, the investigator’s gold

Jan27

Logic: the student’s edge, the investigator’s gold

by Jon Rappoport

January 27, 2018

Note: This article stems from my Logic and Analysis course, which is part of my collection, The Matrix Revealed; and also from a long audio presentation, Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation, which is part of my collection, Power Outside the Matrix.

Part One

Twenty-four-hundred years ago, in ancient Greece, something unprecedented happened.

Three men changed the course of the world by introducing the discipline of logic: Socrates, Plato, and finally, Arisotle, who codified the principles of reasoning in The Organon (see also this).

Since then, all the way up the present day, mathematicians and philosophers have added to that store of knowledge, through intensive research.

In many countries, logic used to be an integral part of secondary education. It was often presented as a series of fallacies or errors one needed to avoid while thinking through a problem or assessing an argument.

Now, however, like the dinosaur, it has disappeared.

Why has it vanished from secondary-school curricula? Perhaps for the same reason fewer and fewer students study Latin or Greek. Logic is deemed irrelevant. It’s “old-fashioned.”

We used to understand the formal meaning of the word “argument.” It was a presentation in which the speaker or writer aimed to move from a first set of ideas, along a specific, path, to a conclusion. In order to understand and evaluate an argument, one had to be able to spot departures from the rules of logic. More basically, one had to be able to follow the course of reasoning, like a stream, and not lose the way.

Today’s students are generally lacking in that tracking ability. They often don’t even realize an argument is being made. Rather, they read a chapter in a book and pick and choose what they feel are the most interesting bits of information. They drift; they founder.

They see themselves as consumers in a marketplace of ideas and words, and they buy the most attractive pieces.

This strategy breaks down the farther the student moves along the road of education.

As a former teacher, I have seen students who were, in fact, equipped with a background in logic. In every course they took, they possessed an edge that was enviable.

Logic underlies academic subjects. It is the rock on which those subjects are built. Physics, math, biology, history, languages are taught on the basis that a rational approach to the material is essential. And logic is the essence of rationality.

At best, students pick up logic piecemeal, haphazardly. The obvious step is to teach it as its own subject. If this is done, students suddenly are ahead of the game. They have an indispensable tool for thinking lucidly in any situation, in any classroom, using any text, taking any exam, writing any essay.

It is, so to speak, the difference between mapping a large area by haphazardly walking the land, and filming it from the air with high-resolution cameras.

Academic achievement, as the degree of difficulty grows, is all about mastering larger and larger quantities of information. This is the primary challenge. Armed with logic, a student can win this challenge, because he sees and follows the underlying architecture around which all information is organized.

A youngster can take apart an old clock. He can examine the pieces and figure out what each piece does. But then, if he comprehends the structure, the logic of the clock, he can go further. He can understand, more deeply, how all the parts combine to produce the clock that tells time. At that point, his knowledge is unshakable.

This is what the study of logic accomplishes.

Part Two

We not only live in an age of information, we live in an age of disinformation.

When concealment and deception are official goals, an outside person who is examining facts, arguments, premises, and lines of reasoning needs to spot patterns of propaganda, cover stories, intentionally placed distractions, and purposeful omissions of vital data.

In other words, these days we are routinely dealing with spokespeople and experts who are deploying all manner of anti-logic propaganda, in order to persuade audiences.

Never mind high schools; rarely will you find a good course of study on propaganda at any college or university in the world. I make that statement, because colleges are compromised from the get-go. They receive monies for research involving, for example, vaccines, medical drugs, mind control, climate change, advanced weapons systems, human genetics, pesticides, GMO crops. Propaganda and polemic on these subjects are everywhere. A real course on propaganda would expose the very colleges that teach it.

A professor who went full-bore on propaganda would be cut off at the knees by his administration. He would be attacked, defamed, smeared, hounded, and exiled by his bosses and his own colleagues.

Therefore, the study of disinformation falls outside the academic spectrum.

In my third Matrix collection, Power Outside the Matrix, I include a long audio section called Analyzing Information in the Age of Disinformation. It is based on my experience as a reporter over the last 30 years.

It all started with my first book, AIDS INC., Scandal of the Century (included as a bonus in both collections). I was inundated with a flood of information on all sides. As soon as people became aware I was writing the book, they gave me their “best opinions” on the subject.

Those opinions ranged all the way from “virus produced in a lab” to “cosmic debris landing on Earth”—and everything in between.

At the same time, I was assembling my own discoveries re the illogical arguments government and university researchers were presenting about “the AIDS virus.”

I was standing in a vast muddle, because I had not yet identified the most basic premises inherent in the official scenario about HIV and AIDS. That was the real kicker. I didn’t see the most basic assumptions.

In other words, I was still unconsciously buying certain official ideas about HIV and AIDS. And given that, I couldn’t move beyond a certain point. I couldn’t take the thousands of pieces of data I had and see them from the correct viewpoint. I had part of the puzzle, but not enough.

Then I realized there was no such thing as AIDS.

The very real suffering, pain, and death that was being called AIDS was not one thing, not one syndrome, not one disease, not one condition. There were a number of causes, not one.

That was the first and foremost error (piece of disinformation) in the official scenario.

Now I could finish the book.

I learned a key lesson, which has stood me in good stead ever since. Go to the most basic of all the basic assumptions in the official scenario.

Check THAT assumption. Very carefully.

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

In the year 2052 no one can read

Nov5

In the year 2052 no one can read

by Jon Rappoport

November 5, 2017

In the year 2052, no one can read. Well, those who can, can’t handle more than 50 or 60 words at a time. And they certainly don’t know what fiction is. Or if they do, they don’t like it. It bothers them. WHAT ALREADY EXISTS is so much more compelling. Fiction seems ridiculous. Who cares what might be? Who cares about something someone made up?

Courtroom; the year 2052; the defendant was locked up hundreds of miles away; he did not appear at his trial.

JUDGE: What is the charge against John Doe?

PROSECUTOR: Espousing freedom. Claiming he is a free man.

JUDGE: He knows freedom is an illusion. Our schools teach that above all else.

PROSECUTOR: We have no record of him attending schools.

JUDGE: How is that possible?

PROSECUTOR: Unknown at this time. John Doe is a builder.

JUDGE: What does he build?

PROSECUTOR: Shrines to freedom.

JUDGE: Hmm. Sounds to me like a verdict of life without parole or death is in order.

PROSECUTOR: The psychiatrists want to go to work on him. They say he’d make a fine test subject. Because of his extreme views and actions. If they can turn him into a model citizen, they’d advance the research significantly.

JUDGE: However, there is the contagion factor. John Doe is infected with a freedom plague. No telling what he might transmit.

PROSECUTOR: Agreed, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Can he be kept in a sealed room?

PROSECUTOR: The shrinks say yes.

JUDGE: By statute, if I sentence him to life in prison or death, you and I must expose ourselves to him, in order to discover whether we become infected. It’s a harsh but fair rule. Do you want take that chance?

PROSECUTOR: I suppose so, if you’re willing, sir.

JUDGE: Who knows? It might be interesting to experience this “freedom.” Then of course, we could be treated to knock out the illness.

PROSECUTOR: I was thinking the same thing.

JUDGE: What does freedom feel like?

PROSECUTOR: Hard to say.

JUDGE: One defendant described it as the wind on his face while he was at sea in a small boat. Very bracing, he said. Go anywhere, do anything.

PROSECUTOR: Fascinating.

JUDGE: Psychotic, of course. Still…

PROSECUTOR: The opportunity of experiencing a crime from the criminal’s point of view would be instructive.

JUDGE: Freedom. The ultimate moral temptation. We would be stronger for having resisted it.

PROSECUTOR: Many citizens of the 20th and early 21st century were infected. However, most of them did nothing about it. They didn’t act out. They merely…they refused to believe they had any power, individually.

JUDGE: So I’ve heard. They stumbled at the gate of power.

PROSECUTOR: Imagine if you and I could combine freedom and power.

JUDGE: That would be unique. What would we do?

PROSECUTOR: I don’t know. Nullify a structure?

JUDGE: Which structure?

PROSECUTOR: Any official structure. Doing something like that would border on magic.

JUDGE: We could at least write a new document to recast the role of government.

PROSECUTOR: A what?

JUDGE: A declaration of some kind. Something that changes the constitution of government.

PROSECUTOR: Where did you get THAT thought from?

JUDGE: I don’t know. Suppose, for example, we said people had the right to assemble in public.

PROSECUTOR: You mean to compare smart connections?

JUDGE: To…share ideas.

PROSECUTOR: What does that mean?

JUDGE: The way we’re sharing ideas now.

PROSECUTOR: Is that what we’re doing?

JUDGE: I’m not sure. Maybe…

PROSECUTOR: People talking to each other about ideas?

JUDGE: Strange.

PROSECUTOR: I doubt it would be a popular practice.

JUDGE: People would treat it as some kind of joke.

PROSECUTOR: On the other hand, it could be the start of a pandemic. If you said people could assemble FREELY in public and FREELY exchange ideas, perhaps the temptation would catch on…and then…

JUDGE: If people understood what an IDEA is. I’m not sure what an IDEA is, when I stop and think about it. I’m pretty sure I know what a THOUGHT is, but what is an IDEA?

PROSECUTOR: Let me get back to you on that.

JUDGE: Is freedom an idea?

PROSECUTOR: It’s a virus.

JUDGE: Of course, but is that all it is?

PROSECUTOR: It’s a “psychotic predisposition caused by a combination of endocrine malfunction and neuronal delay.”

JUDGE: Hmm. “People have the right to assemble in public and share ideas.” Even if that statement is gibberish, it’s interesting. It’s like saying a person can own a gun or a cow can fly over the moon. It means nothing, but it has a magnetic pull.

PROSECUTOR: This is why many laws exist: to outlaw magnetic pull. You can’t have magnetic pull in a sane society. It’s a danger.

JUDGE: Yes, of course. But for the defendant in this case, and in other cases, the pull feels real. That’s the key. That’s the experience of freedom. These people are utterly convinced of the delusion…they can’t think otherwise. They’re trapped.

PROSECUTOR: Agreed.

JUDGE: I hereby sentence John Doe to life in prison.

PROSECUTOR: Thank you, Your Honor.

JUDGE: And if while in prison, he continues to spread his malicious thoughts, we will reconvene and consider brain cancelation or burning at the stake.

PROSECUTOR: Now that you’ve delivered your verdict, we’ll both have to expose ourselves to John Doe, to see if we catch his infection.

JUDGE: Exactly. It’s an old law. It was decreed because the original Planners wanted to make sure officials of the court had the courage of their convictions. And also to render those officials immune to the various dangerous plagues. And to root out officials who succumbed to the infections.

PROSECUTOR: I’ve been exposed to a dozen different plague infections, but never to freedom.

JUDGE: Likewise. This will be interesting.

PROSECUTOR: Where is John Doe being held?

JUDGE: In an old building in Philadelphia called Liberty Hall.

PROSECUTOR: Ironic. Never heard of it.

JUDGE: It’s a psychiatric ward. Very heavy security. The CIA and the Pentagon have field offices there.

PROSECUTOR: Well, they would.

JUDGE: Yes. A few years ago, there was a reading outbreak in the area. Several people at a library read pieces more than a thousand words.

PROSECUTOR: They actually got to the end?

JUDGE: Yes. It caused a major flap…

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

NY State cancels literacy test for teachers: it’s racist

Mar14

NY State cancels literacy test for teachers: it’s racist

by Jon Rappoport

March 14, 2017

I was going to post an article today about the empty-headed propaganda called “social sciences.” It’s part of my ongoing exposure of the destruction of the American education system.

But then I came across this from the NY Times:

“The [New York] Board of Regents eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers pass a literacy test after the test proved controversial because black and Hispanic candidates passed it at significantly lower rates than white candidates.”

Bad enough that only 64% of white candidates passed the test on the first try in 2014; 46% of Hispanic candidates passed it; and 41% of black candidates passed it.

The logic here is stunning. Horrible test scores? Eliminate the test.

The next step: reading is too difficult; don’t teach reading.

And/or: reading is racist.

It’s, of course, the students who suffer. How can they be taught literacy when the teachers aren’t literate?

And these illiterate aspiring teachers? Who taught them?

It’s obvious that the New York State education system is rotten at the core. Fixing it would be like trying to turn around an oil tanker in a small space. This latest move by NY Regents officials proves there is no will and determination to undertake a comprehensive fix. They just want more teachers, no matter what. And they will get them. Why don’t they just hire teachers off the street? Anyone who can breathe and walk will do.

There’s really no need for classrooms, either. A great deal of money could be saved by holding classes in parks and empty lots.

Here is the “social sciences” article. It’s a hustle at a whole different level:

The rise of the “social sciences”: one long scam

Yet another vector has produced generations of empty-headed college students: the social sciences that aren’t sciences.

Anthropology, sociology.

Their practitioners study groups. National groups, ethnic groups, tribal groups, clans, religious groups, groups defined by gender, nomads, farmers, office workers; any way you can slice people up into groups, somebody is there with a notebook and a camera and a hot journal paper waiting to be published.

The focus is on traditions, practices, rituals, ceremonies, customs, rules, hierarchies.

The key is what is omitted.

The individual.

The last thing these minds want to acknowledge is the unique individual. That would be heresy.

Also, there are no useful “individual common denominators” to be found—and the social sciences are all about common denominators. Without them, the whole enterprise falls apart.

Individual-ology? No such thing.

By focusing on the group, the student is taught, by inference and osmosis, that the individual doesn’t count. Doesn’t count in society, in civilization, in history, in the future.

This is good, if you’re a collectivist. Quite good.

That’s why you can attend a college and obtain a degree in group-ology, but you can’t graduate with a diploma in “individual studies.” The latter curriculum doesn’t exist.

It’s quite interesting when you stop and think about it. You have all these students (individuals) attending colleges, and they can’t study themselves.

Professor: “Today, we’re beginning our investigation of the 16th-century XYZ Islanders, who lived for centuries off the coast of QRS.”

Student: “Were they all the same? Were there any individuals within XYZ who pursued their own unique and separate objectives?”

Professor: “Excuse me? I don’t even know what that means. I suggest you listen to my lectures and read the studies. Hopefully, you’ll be disabused of asking such questions.”

And after a few years, it’s likely the student will forget his initial objection. He’ll float with the tide. He’ll learn that the group is all.

Here’s a lesson in contemporary sociology: watch television for a year and find a drama series that features an individual who refuses to belong to any group or team (and isn’t a criminal). Writers wouldn’t have a clue about how to build story lines on that basis.

Colleges batter the minds of the young until they give in and submit to the proposition that the world is the group.

And this is considered a sign of maturity.

I have seen many of those students’ faces. If they exhibit maturity, it’s a state of mind to be avoided at all costs.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)

Jon Rappoport

ADHD is the new education

May18

ADHD is the new education

by Jon Rappoport

May 18, 2016

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

“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.

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. And it certainly has nothing to do with trying to embed social values and team spirit in children.

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. We have to accommodate them.”

While I was laughing at his assessment, he capped his display of wisdom with this: “There is no longer a division between opinion and fact.”

Perfect.

I know all about how the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations torpedoed education in America. But their major effort 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, seed children with all sorts of debilitating psychiatric drugs, and you have a profound 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.

When you see the lights go on in his mind, it’s very satisfying.

Jon Rappoport

ADHD is the new education

Apr22

ADHD is the new education

by Jon Rappoport

April 22, 2015

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