Curiosity Has No Important Place In My

As A Writer, Politician, Scientist, And Businessman, [ben] Franklin Had Few Equals Among The Educated Of His Day-though He Left School At Ten. (...)boys Like Andrew Carnegie Who Begged His Mother Not To Send Him To School And Was Well On His Way To Immortality And Fortune At The Age Of Thirteen, Would Be Referred Today For Psychological Counseling; Thomas Edison Would Find Himself In Special Ed Until His Peculiar Genius Had Been Sufficiently Tamed.

A Lot Of The Strings That Hold Us Like Puppets Are Really Inventions Of Our Own Minds. I'm Not Saying That There Aren't Armies And Police And Various Ways To Punish Deviants, But There Isn't Any Way To Punish A Large Number Of Deviants. It's Too Expensive To Even Try. So, The Solution Is To Colonize The Minds Of Children As They're Growing Up, So That They Become Their Own Police, And To Report On Others Who Are Deviating.

Growth And Mastery Come Only To Those Who Vigorously Self-direct. Initiating, Creating, Doing, Reflecting, Freely Associating, Enjoying Privacy-these Are Precisely What The Structures Of Schooling Are Set Up To Prevent, On One Pretext Or Another.

In Our Secular Society, School Has Become The Replacement For Church, And Like Church It Requires That Its Teachings Must Be Taken On Faith.

The Shocking Possibility That Dumb People Don't Exist In Sufficient Numbers To Warrant The Millions Of Careers Devoted To Tending Them Will Seem Incredible To You. Yet That Is My Central Proposition: The Mass Dumbness Which Justifies Official Schooling First Had To Be Dreamed Of; It Isn't Real.