When America's kids go to school it's almost like sending them to a military or spy academy. Grade school: Learn the elementals of warring and spying Middle school: Learn some more. High School: Become more skilled in warring and spying Higher Education: Get and MS (Master Spy) and PhD (Doctor of Drones)

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The roots of American education were grounded in two necessities. One was the need for the Industrial Revolution to depend on, as the wit and social critic, H.L. Mencken put it, "a standardized citizenry." [1] The other was the need to help get America ready for WWI, and so the American Council on Education was hurriedly formed to ensure a supply of trained military personnel. [2]

Since WWI and Mr. Mencken's time American education, whether the public or private version has had to endure countless critics. And the critics are often right but not always for the right reasons. The evidence for what this American education produces is all around us and is often described in very unflattering terms; the uneducated American, the functionally illiterate American, the dumbed-down American, the moronic or idiot American.

But this is not the place to go into a discourse on the dysfunctional condition of American education. That has already been done by many authoritative critics. [3] This, instead, is the place to illustrate briefly some of the ways in which the government's warriors and spies and the war and intelligence industries directly and indirectly influences American education and through it young minds by infiltrating early school years; by actually teaching warring and spying; by constantly putting on displays of jingoistic patriotism; and by using public high schools as recruiting stations.

Infiltrating Early School Years

Give me your youth

Said the war/spy shape monster

Shape them slowly I shall

Shape them surely I will

---The author

l

Of all the humanities' subjects the teaching of American history is the most vulnerable to "militarization." As the saying goes, history belongs to the victors. Their wars are the facts to which self-serving reasons are given and conclusions drawn.

Let's consider, for example, how the deadly and divisive Civil War and Vietnam War get treated in the classroom. They don't get ignored because that would be a glaring omission. But they aren't exactly "taught" either. They are propagandized and rationalized.

In a feature article for the Washington Post on the occasion of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, reporter Nick Anderson told about how fourth graders in a school in Virginia, a state that had been embroiled in the war, built and floated models of two war ships to reenact the naval Battle of Hampton Roads. [4] Reenactments are a perfect tool of the establishment. They are entertaining and they teach children how to think and act militarily. Children are taught the obligatory rationale that abolition of slavery was the war's reason, with no mention of Lincoln's racism and imperialistic reasons for keeping the nation intact for future expansion.

Now let's move forward from the end of that war to the Vietnam War, one of the most senseless and shameful wars America ever waged. Few high school students apparently are told how joyous the Vietnam people were over regaining their independence once America left humiliated in defeat or that a string of five American presidents and their administrations lied about the reason for that war, starting with President Truman when America first supported France's attempt to retain colonial rule of Vietnam and then took over when France failed. America's corporate/militaristic state had no intention of letting Vietnam rule itself. Although there's passing mention of the revealing "Pentagon Papers" in high school textbooks, few if any apparently delve into those papers or quote Daniel Ellsberg's conclusion that, "It wasn't that we were on the wrong side; we were the wrong side." [5]

Even if a classroom textbook were more rather than less objective and comprehensive about America's history, teachers are not independent agents and must be careful what they teach from the textbook and beyond it. Teachers who question or criticize America's warring and spying risk losing their jobs and some have. [6] It is thus hardly surprising that most social studies teachers in America spend scant time on controversial issues such as America's wars and discourage students from talking or writing about them. [7] Administrators who fire teachers for what they teach have the backing of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled against America's warring and spying, and believes it's perfectly constitutional to muzzle teachers. [8]

By Actually Teaching Warring and Spying

Not for an instant would I think that that fourth grade teacher meant to teach her pupils elementary naval battle maneuvers to be remembered and perfected as they continue their education. That opportunity comes later in a variety of ways, and the war/spy complex doesn't miss any of them. One of the most blatant examples that I know about is the Air Force's "CyberPatriot" program to teach middle and high school students with the aim of recruiting them later for careers in cyber security. [9] I would call that "grooming future spies in the skies."

Then there's the case of Chicago's public school system, reportedly "the most militarized in the country, boasting five military academies, nearly three dozen smaller Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs within existing high schools, and numerous middle school Junior ROTC programs---nearly all located in low-income, minority neighborhoods." [10] The person apparently most responsible for this militarized education in the Windy city was its CEO of public schools who later became President Obama's Secretary of Education. This probably means that as Chicago goes so does the nation.

What could be considered as sort of an enlarged, walk-in classroom are museums that imbue impressionable young minds with the "patriotic" spirit of war. For example, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War" is an ongoing exhibit at the National Museum of American History in the nation's capital. David Swanson, author of numerous anti-war books says "The exhibit is an extravaganza of lies and deceptions," but then adds that "---overwhelmingly the lying is done in this exhibit by omission. Bad past excuses for wars are ignored, the death and destruction is ignored or falsely reduced." [11]

Moving up to adulthood the war and spy agencies take total charge and turn the education of young adults into targeted (s)kill training. What do schools like Kansas State University, the University of North Dakota and the private Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University have in common?

They offer "feet-on-the-ground" four-year degrees in drone piloting. One student graduated with a 4.0 GPA and landed a job "as a flight operator for a military contractor in Afghanistan." [12] Within our own borders the market is also growing for trained operators of drones for domestic surveillance, and it won't be long before the FAA, concerned about drone crashes over our heads, drops its ban so that eager, money squandering local police departments will no longer be confined to practicing with their new drone planes over warehouse parking lots. [13]

Don't laugh. Conceivably there will be some day MDs (Masters of Drones) and PhDs (Doctors of Drones).

Moving on, there's the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program on state college campuses. The Vietnam War protests torpedoed compulsory ROTC (I was forced to take two years' worth in the early 50's) and several of its programs were ejected from their campuses. In recent years however it has reappeared at some universities.

There are the online Military University, the U.S. Army War College (nothing subtle about its agenda) and the familiar military academies like West Point. Not to be left out, spies have their own "university," the probably less familiar National Intelligence University that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the basic and advanced science of intelligence-where the "BS" and "MS" degrees could stand for "basic and masterful spying respectively."

Finally, in Fort Bennington, Georgia there's what used to be called "The School of Assassins" because Latin American dictators and their thugs were trained there in the fine arts of torturing and killing dissidents who threatened the dictator's rule and America's parasitic corporations in their countries. The school's sordid reputation eventually became so embarrassing that the school was given a new name, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. [14]

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals

to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

---Henry Kissinger

The "statesman" actually made that unstatesman-like comment. [15] While I am anti-war I am not anti-human being and do not believe "military men are just dumb, stupid animals." They just got a militarized education that taught them to follow orders traceable to people like the "statesman." And as a matter of conjecture, couldn't America's statesmen and stateswomen (count the latter on a piece of one hand) just as easily if not accurately be referred to as dumb, stupid members of the regime in power?

By Jingoistic Patriotism

But before textbooks are opened in children's classrooms across America the Pledge of Allegiance is most likely to be recited. In one of its more judicious reversals, the US Supreme Court changed its mind and ruled that public school children no longer could be compelled to recite the pledge, and added in the majority opinion that---"no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." [16] Try telling that, however, to impressionable young children anxious to conform and avoid being bullied.

Outside the classroom are many other arranged opportunities for the expression of jingoistic patriotism and the teaching of bad loyalties. Democracy writing contests (my wife won one sponsored by the local public school), school assemblies and sporting events are some of those opportunities. .

Bad loyalty, like jingoistic patriotism, depends on emotionalism that is easily taught and contagious. Bad loyalty is like Hitlerism. Good loyalty is unwavering support of a good cause, a good person, a good state. Good loyalty, like respect, is earned. Good loyalty is more a reasoned than an emotional response. A nation that instills bad loyalty in its youth in the service of ignoble ends is unworthy of any loyalty. Good loyalty is to a real democracy. Bad loyalty is to a corpocracy masquerading as a democracy with flags, anthems and pledges.

By Captive Recruiting

Ever since conscription was ended to avoid protests on the scale of the Vietnam War protests the military has had difficulty in getting new soldiers, especially in war time, which is standard USA Time. To take up the slack waivers have been given by the Army and Marines to felons, allowing them to join---now they can loot in foreign lands. [17] Additionally, and of more pertinence here is that Congress allowed military recruiters to scour available personal information about 11th and 12th graders and to go into public high schools hunting potential recruits instead of relying only on walk-ins to downtown recruiting offices. "It was overwhelming. To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters,---I thought the recruiters had too much information about me." a college student told a reporter, who added that "Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect---the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents." [18]

Hello, Billy?

This is Corporal Armor

Your grades and martial arts

hobby are really impressive

You could go far in the Army

---The author

Concluding Remarks

Education is much like religion. Both receive government funds. Both are a source of employment. Both cross over sometimes into the other's territory. Both start with young formative minds. Both fill those minds with doctrines, leaving little room left for critical reasoning to question those doctrines, including learning how to discover and distinguish real knowledge from beliefs. Both do more believing and seeing. And both are petri dishes for nourishing America's warring and spying habits.

The future of America belongs to her impressionable youth today. Who knows and capitalizes on that more than our government and her war and spy business?

Grade school: Learn the elementals of warring and spying.

Middle school: Learn some more.

High School: Become more skilled in warring and spying.

Higher Education: Get and MS (Master Spy) and PhD (Doctor of Drones).

Endnotes

1. Mencken quote: Think Exist.com

2. The American Council on Education. www.acenet.edu.

3. This alphabetized list of sources about the condition of American education and its "pupils" hardly scratches the surface but includes a few that have been informative for me: Gatto, JT. The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling. NY: The Oxford Village Press Oxford, 2000; Hedges, C. The Perversion of Scholarship. Truthdig.com,July 30, 2012; Kohn, A. The 500-Pound Gorilla: The Corporate Role in the High-stakes Testing Obsession & Other Methods of Turning Education into a Business. Phi Delta Kappan, October, 2002; Lendman, S. A Nation of Morons. OpEdNews, April 26, 2012; Livergood, ND. The Destruction of American Education And What We Must Do About It. OpEdNews, August 31, 2012; McGettigan, T. A Bungling Fox in the Henhouse: The Corporatization of Higher Education. OpEdNews, December 7, 2011; Payne, M. Corporatism's Plan for the Dumbing Down of America. OpEdNews, May 17, 2012; Wolchover, N. People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say. Live Science, February 28, 2012; Pierce, CP. Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. NY: Doubleday, 2009; Simon, S. U.S. Spends Big on Education, but Results Lag Many Nations: OECD. Reuters, June24, 2013;and Washburn, J. University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. Basic Books, 2005.

4. Anderson, N. Teaching the Civil War, 150 years later. The Washington Post, April 10, 2011.

5. Bigelow, B. Camouflaging the Vietnam War: How Textbooks Continue to Keep the Pentagon Papers a Secret. HuffPostPolitics, June 21, 2013.

6. See, e.g., Hathaway, W.T. From Cheerleader to Enemy of the State. Dissident Voice, February 18, 2013; and Zimmerman, J. What's Not Being Taught about the Iraq War. Salon, March, 2013.

7. Zimmerman, J. Ibid..

8. Wikipedia. Pledge of Allegiance.

9. Mead, C. Military Recruiters Have Gone Too Far: The Pentagon is Using Video Games to Infiltrate Middle Schools. Time.com, September, 17, 2013.

10. Kroll, A. The Duncan Doctrine: The Military-Corporate Legacy of the New Secretary of Education. TomDispatch.com, January 18, 2009.

11. Swanson, D. Teach the Children War. OpEdNews,com, March 20, 2013.

12. Raftery, I. Anticipating Domestic Boom, Colleges Rev up Drone Piloting Programs. NBC News, January 29, 2013.

13. Raftery, I. Ibid.

14. Wikipedia. The Schools of America.

15. Bernstein, C. and Woodward, B. The Final Days. Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition, 2005, 194.

16. CNN. Army, Marines Give Waivers to More Felons CNN.com/US, April 21, 2008.

17. Alvarez, L. Army Giving More Waivers in Recruiting. The New York Times Online, February 14, 2007.

18. Goodman, D. A Few Good Kids? How the No Child Left Behind Act Allowed Military Recruiters to Collect Info on Millions of Unsuspecting Teens. Mother Jones, September/October 2009.

Authors Website: http://www.911rescueamerica.com

Authors Bio:

Retired organizational psychologist.

Author of "911!", The Devil's Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lur ch; America's Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying; and Corporate Reckoning Ahead.

I may be aged but I am still an indefatigable foe of America's power elite who are ruining our nation and the world. If they wrongdoing and evildoing are not stopped there will be no humanity later this century. My newest book, "911!" explains why America needs rescued from the death grip of the power elite and proposes a detail plan for rescuing America and creating a new People's America.