day no. 16,731: the educrats achieve what they want

“The word success can of course be used in two senses. It may be used with reference to a thing serving its immediate and peculiar purpose, as of a wheel going around; or it can be used with reference to a thing adding to the general welfare, as of a wheel being a useful discovery. It is one thing to say that Smith’s flying machine is a failure, and quite another to say that Smith has failed to make a flying machine. Now this is very broadly the difference between the old English public schools and the new democratic schools. Perhaps the old public schools are (as I personally think they are) ultimately weakening the country rather than strengthening it, and are therefore, in that ultimate sense, inefficient. But there is such a thing as being efficiently inefficient. You can make your flying ship so that it flies, even if you also make it so that it kills you. Now the public school system may not work satisfactorily, but it works; the public schools may not achieve what we want, but they achieve what they want. The popular elementary schools do not in that sense achieve anything at all.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World

Government schools are good at what they do. The educrats achieve what they want. They produce the kind of person they want. They are good at catechizing kids into the kind of citizens they desire. It is a very successful method of discipleship. They may not achieve what the parents of the children wanted, but they achieve what the State wanted, so by that metric, they are very successful.

"Public education has not produced an educated public." — G.K. Chesterton

When it comes an educated public, State schools are a failure; when it comes to a truncated public, they are a success. If their goal had been to train free men in liberal arts, their failure would be obvious, but since their goal has been to create lackeys for the State, their success is equally obvious.

"In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, 'nurses' – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says 'I’m as good as you.'" — C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast

Egalitarianism produces the kind of citizens Democracies desires. Despotic Democracies cannot survive free thinking free men and women, so they grab them early to ensure they never become them.

 "A democracy does not want great men.” — C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast

State education is designed to produce a lowest common denominator citizenry.

Christians, of all peoples, who ought to know better, have no business subjecting their children to this kind of dehumanizing catechism.

Ephesians 6:4

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instruction of the Lord.