Education, as it’s sold to the public, is a fraud.  What people call “education” is imitation.  Children are trained to mimic approved opinions, not to think.  This doesn’t end with school.  The pattern continues for the rest of their lives so they repeat the same packaged falsehoods without ever examining them.  The goal is simple: destroy real education before it begins.  This has been the practice for generations.  Truth has no value to the statist.  Truth and justice are not determined by majority vote.  If honest education is to exist at all, it must be resurrected.

There seems to have been a Faustian bargain in education.  The bargain is simple: the state offers “free” education, and in return it gains control over the minds it teaches.  The price of the gift is obedience.  The state gets subjects who repeat its doctrine, the masses get the illusion of learning without the effort of seeking truth.  Once this bargain is accepted, real education is replaced with a state-managed script.

There is a tendency toward laziness.  If the masses are lazy, they will not pursue truth.  That laziness is exploited.  Education is buried beneath layers of statist claims, slogans, and fashionable opinions.  A population that refuses to seek truth becomes incurious and obedient.  Obedience may be advertised as a virtue, but it is the root of oppression.

People think they know what education is supposed to be.  They imagine learning, discovery, and understanding.  In reality, people are taught to repeat nonsense.  This repetition is more dangerous than any biological epidemic.  False education is a mental epidemic.  The statist has no concern for truth, he only has concern for power.  If you hear anything from a statist, assume it is nonsense—because it likely is.  A population that doesn’t thirst after truth is a population walking into the slaughterhouse.

The entire system exists to produce obedient subjects.  The goal is to ensure that the average person never questions the absurdities he is ordered to believe.  If obedience is secured, the population becomes passive.  A passive population becomes a herd.  A herd can be led anywhere, told anything, and trained to accept whatever lies they hear first.  Once nonsense becomes the starting point, it becomes almost impossible to uproot.

Consider this example.  Crusoe gives Friday a handful of sand on day one, then gives him a fish on day two.  Friday will not reject the fish simply because sand came first.  He will not anchor his judgment to the first absurdity.  He will use his common sense.  The example is obvious, but the logic is the same.  Friday refuses to accept nonsense, so should you.  Do not sell your mind—or your soul—the way Faust did.  The price of accepting statist education is far higher than you think.

Reference

Friedrich Nietzsche; The Untimely Meditations