As an EFL teacher, I stress this point, that you can't understand English (or any language) without learning about the culture. A lot of my students get this, but some are very instrumentalist. "I only want to learn business English" or whatever. "Weeelll, you at least need to learn the basics of a few sports to really understand the metaphors, to say nothing of spontaneously using them, especially on other context." (They are all baffled by baseball, since it's quite weird compared to the 'get the ball to the other end of the play area and into a ring or box' team sports they're most familiar with.)
I'm going to read this with some of my more advanced students.
Tangential, but your fellow hiker not knowing who/what the pope was reminded me of this. I had a student who didn't know who Winston Churchill was. I was shocked, especially since she knew who Stalin and Rooservelt were. And she was like your young companion: smart, well-educated, etc.
If it gets them thinking a bit more about the importance of culture and language, it will!
In a way, I have it pretty easy. US culture is everywhere, and everyone here in Brazil watches US films and series. Even some of my younger students get Star Wars references, and nearly everyone gets Matrix refs. Literature is tougher, since reading of novels has been in decline, and Brazil has its own native literature to study, of course. But most know a little Shakespeare and a few others.
That's a bold claim. I'm curious how you explain the functioning of these long-term and vast conspiracies. I do not for a moment believe that a deliberate effort to stunt the minds of children could exist for this long without someone in the structure outside of the conspiracy finding out and opening up resistance. Teachers don't get paid nearly well enough to be in it for the money, they're true believers in the value of educating children. How is it that across an entire civilization comprising dozens of nations and governments and education systems you have a uniform commitment to deliberate erasure of cultural history without any meaningful resistance from those in the system who passionately believe it should serve noble ends?
Bureaucracies are often stultifying, but they aren't deployed on-command by sinister puppetmasters. They grow on their own by the decisions of people within them reacting to incentives. The leviathan isn't a machine with an operator, it's a metaphysical living thing which acts and reacts according to its own rules and needs.
There's no conspiracy here. It was a relatively open agenda from the very beginning. The Prussian education system was created for the sole and explicit purpose of uniting the disparate principates of Germany and creating a common identity, and making the cornerstone of that identity a loyalty to the state in order to make soldiers easier to recruit and more pliable to train. It was based on conditioning principles that would later be codified by Skinner et.al. (but that have been known by those who've wished to learn them since time immemorial).
The Prussian system was imported into the US because it would serve the interest of industrialists who needed pliable, compliant workers who cold hew to a clock and wouldn't cause trouble (something that agriculturalists and craftsmen who live their lives by natural rhythms, couldn't do).
The agenda and goals of the system were quite transparent, some of it in the congressional and state legislative records (albeit at a time when you had to be pretty motivated to actually read such records). It was sold to the public on the not-altogether-dishonest grounds that "people who go through the state schools will be able to hold a job."
State schools were rapidly adopted during the Progressive Era for reasons that are most accurately characterized as fascist. They were used (by force of law) to obliterate local and native cultures, and made compulsory. They taught "good citizenship" and "prepared a child for the exciting world of tomorrow."
None of this was ever secret or concealed.
Nor was the strategy to conduct revolution via ideological capture of the schools of education by the protoges of Herbert Marcuse and Paolo Fieri, et.al.
Your understanding of the history of the movement, and of propaganda and how it works, and of how elites and power function is very thin and common-sensical. This isn't a knock on you--it's the default for a normal intelligent person. It's one of the reasons I'm writing this column.
If you want a litany of references for all of the above, you're going to have to wait until late this summer when The Art of Agency makes its debut. I am too busy at the moment to copy it all out. But if you wish to so some background reading on the mechanics of power before then, start with:
The Prince by Nicholo Machiavelli
The Machiavellians (and also The Managerial Revolution) by James Burnham
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Lifting the Veil by me (article from February 2025, published on this substack--has *extensive* historical citations).
With the background these books offer, the mechanics of how the world around you works become a lot clearer.
I'm not so conspiratorial to think that literary culture was *deliberately* denuded by the school system, just that like so many facets of our culture - the town square being my personal bugbear - it was doscarded by modernism as simply no longer significant enough to merit putting resources in to. Better that square becomes a parking lot and that lesson on the Illiad becomes one on geometry goes the thought.
I'm remimded of Chaplain - "Do not give yourself to these machine men with their machine mearts and machine minds! You are not machines! You are men!"
Great article! Thanks.
As an EFL teacher, I stress this point, that you can't understand English (or any language) without learning about the culture. A lot of my students get this, but some are very instrumentalist. "I only want to learn business English" or whatever. "Weeelll, you at least need to learn the basics of a few sports to really understand the metaphors, to say nothing of spontaneously using them, especially on other context." (They are all baffled by baseball, since it's quite weird compared to the 'get the ball to the other end of the play area and into a ring or box' team sports they're most familiar with.)
I'm going to read this with some of my more advanced students.
Tangential, but your fellow hiker not knowing who/what the pope was reminded me of this. I had a student who didn't know who Winston Churchill was. I was shocked, especially since she knew who Stalin and Rooservelt were. And she was like your young companion: smart, well-educated, etc.
I am honored. I hope it helps in their language acquisition :-)
If it gets them thinking a bit more about the importance of culture and language, it will!
In a way, I have it pretty easy. US culture is everywhere, and everyone here in Brazil watches US films and series. Even some of my younger students get Star Wars references, and nearly everyone gets Matrix refs. Literature is tougher, since reading of novels has been in decline, and Brazil has its own native literature to study, of course. But most know a little Shakespeare and a few others.
“Paging Drs. Lakoff and Turner, lobby courtesy phone…..paging Drs Lakoff and Turner….”
Absolutely great article — one imagines one can hear John Gatto cheering from his heavenly repose…
That's a bold claim. I'm curious how you explain the functioning of these long-term and vast conspiracies. I do not for a moment believe that a deliberate effort to stunt the minds of children could exist for this long without someone in the structure outside of the conspiracy finding out and opening up resistance. Teachers don't get paid nearly well enough to be in it for the money, they're true believers in the value of educating children. How is it that across an entire civilization comprising dozens of nations and governments and education systems you have a uniform commitment to deliberate erasure of cultural history without any meaningful resistance from those in the system who passionately believe it should serve noble ends?
Bureaucracies are often stultifying, but they aren't deployed on-command by sinister puppetmasters. They grow on their own by the decisions of people within them reacting to incentives. The leviathan isn't a machine with an operator, it's a metaphysical living thing which acts and reacts according to its own rules and needs.
There's no conspiracy here. It was a relatively open agenda from the very beginning. The Prussian education system was created for the sole and explicit purpose of uniting the disparate principates of Germany and creating a common identity, and making the cornerstone of that identity a loyalty to the state in order to make soldiers easier to recruit and more pliable to train. It was based on conditioning principles that would later be codified by Skinner et.al. (but that have been known by those who've wished to learn them since time immemorial).
The Prussian system was imported into the US because it would serve the interest of industrialists who needed pliable, compliant workers who cold hew to a clock and wouldn't cause trouble (something that agriculturalists and craftsmen who live their lives by natural rhythms, couldn't do).
The agenda and goals of the system were quite transparent, some of it in the congressional and state legislative records (albeit at a time when you had to be pretty motivated to actually read such records). It was sold to the public on the not-altogether-dishonest grounds that "people who go through the state schools will be able to hold a job."
State schools were rapidly adopted during the Progressive Era for reasons that are most accurately characterized as fascist. They were used (by force of law) to obliterate local and native cultures, and made compulsory. They taught "good citizenship" and "prepared a child for the exciting world of tomorrow."
None of this was ever secret or concealed.
Nor was the strategy to conduct revolution via ideological capture of the schools of education by the protoges of Herbert Marcuse and Paolo Fieri, et.al.
Your understanding of the history of the movement, and of propaganda and how it works, and of how elites and power function is very thin and common-sensical. This isn't a knock on you--it's the default for a normal intelligent person. It's one of the reasons I'm writing this column.
If you want a litany of references for all of the above, you're going to have to wait until late this summer when The Art of Agency makes its debut. I am too busy at the moment to copy it all out. But if you wish to so some background reading on the mechanics of power before then, start with:
The Prince by Nicholo Machiavelli
The Machiavellians (and also The Managerial Revolution) by James Burnham
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Lifting the Veil by me (article from February 2025, published on this substack--has *extensive* historical citations).
With the background these books offer, the mechanics of how the world around you works become a lot clearer.
I'm not so conspiratorial to think that literary culture was *deliberately* denuded by the school system, just that like so many facets of our culture - the town square being my personal bugbear - it was doscarded by modernism as simply no longer significant enough to merit putting resources in to. Better that square becomes a parking lot and that lesson on the Illiad becomes one on geometry goes the thought.
I'm remimded of Chaplain - "Do not give yourself to these machine men with their machine mearts and machine minds! You are not machines! You are men!"
I was of a similar opinion until I did the research underlying Reclaiming Your Mind and Art of Agency (forthcoming).
The important aspect, though, is the fact that it did happen, regardless of why.
Chaplain definitely had his moments :-)