"Superior" Education that was Actually Inferior
Nazi education from elementary school through high school and all throughout college consisted of brainwashing, pseudoscience, and the indoctrination of undeserved self-esteem.
Male students found themselves honored with a dagger engraved with the self-esteem-raising phrase: “Be more than you seem.”
And by 1942, only 1 in 4 Hitler schoolboys believed in God.
School became a place to teach Nazi morality and the pseudoscience of eugenics, to teach Aryan children that they were little gods intended to rule the world, and to create a superior fighting force.
Male students found themselves honored with a dagger engraved with the self-esteem-raising phrase: “Be more than you seem.”
And by 1942, only 1 in 4 Hitler schoolboys believed in God.
School became a place to teach Nazi morality and the pseudoscience of eugenics, to teach Aryan children that they were little gods intended to rule the world, and to create a superior fighting force.
When I was in school, evolution was taught as a fact.
And there were also the infamous you-know-what-ed classes (boys and girls together).
In 7th grade(!), such a class was taught by one of the Phys. Ed teachers, who was inclined toward her own gender only and rumored to be having an affair with a like-minded teacher. We thought it was funny.
After all, what did such a woman have to teach us about this subject? Ha-ha!
But now I think teaching this in school is sick.
It's the norm in such classes, for example, for the teacher to pass around different forms of birth control to get the students familiar with, snicker at, and silently puzzle about. (How exactly would I ever use this? Where do I put this exactly?—it looks really uncomfortable.)
The pretty colored concentric circles in the Pill package were attractive, yet confusing with their different colors. The instructions were also confusing. And why does the Pill-popper need to take the differently colored placebos again?
(Remember: 7th grade girls either have not yet started getting their cycles or are still fairly new at it, and are still learning the ropes, so to speak.)
As one homework assignment, the students were given a list of phone numbers provided by an information organization. If you’d call one of those numbers, you would get a recording explaining to you all about that particular topic. The topics covered diseases transmitted you-know-how, abortion, same-gender attraction, and other topics I’m embarrassed to mention here. Students looked at the list and wondering what those diseases were and you pronounce their names. But they did the assignment even though the cheerful pre-recorded sound-bite was boring and beyond their comprehension.
All this was supposed to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy, and make young people feel “okay!” about any dissolute or deviant behavior while enhancing their ability to make “informed decisions.”
It never seemed to work, however, because both junior and high school students consistently make irresponsible decisions in this area and the teen pregnancy rate is only rising.
And there were also the infamous you-know-what-ed classes (boys and girls together).
In 7th grade(!), such a class was taught by one of the Phys. Ed teachers, who was inclined toward her own gender only and rumored to be having an affair with a like-minded teacher. We thought it was funny.
After all, what did such a woman have to teach us about this subject? Ha-ha!
But now I think teaching this in school is sick.
It's the norm in such classes, for example, for the teacher to pass around different forms of birth control to get the students familiar with, snicker at, and silently puzzle about. (How exactly would I ever use this? Where do I put this exactly?—it looks really uncomfortable.)
The pretty colored concentric circles in the Pill package were attractive, yet confusing with their different colors. The instructions were also confusing. And why does the Pill-popper need to take the differently colored placebos again?
(Remember: 7th grade girls either have not yet started getting their cycles or are still fairly new at it, and are still learning the ropes, so to speak.)
As one homework assignment, the students were given a list of phone numbers provided by an information organization. If you’d call one of those numbers, you would get a recording explaining to you all about that particular topic. The topics covered diseases transmitted you-know-how, abortion, same-gender attraction, and other topics I’m embarrassed to mention here. Students looked at the list and wondering what those diseases were and you pronounce their names. But they did the assignment even though the cheerful pre-recorded sound-bite was boring and beyond their comprehension.
All this was supposed to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy, and make young people feel “okay!” about any dissolute or deviant behavior while enhancing their ability to make “informed decisions.”
It never seemed to work, however, because both junior and high school students consistently make irresponsible decisions in this area and the teen pregnancy rate is only rising.
In 8th grade, our Social Studies/Geography teacher was showing us a film and then paused the camera. "The following scene shows an abortion," he announced. "But I am not allowed to show it because YOUR PARENTS objected. I feel that you are mature enough to deal with the subject matter, but SOME PARENTS disagree." Then he continued with the rest of the film (after the abortion part).
I was relieved, personally. I had no desire to see the murder of an unborn baby (even if I didn't think of it in those terms back then).
But the clear message was that our rights were being violated somehow.
Yes, violated!
By our PARENTS!
Woe are us!
And also that this was censorship and condescension.
It was confusing because on one hand, I was relieved not to have to watch it, but on the other hand, I got the sense I was supposed to be outraged and offended -- as if my initial feeling of relief was not the correct one.
(I know...you’re probably wondering what that film had to do with geography. I don’t know.)
But my friends who attended exclusive private schools had it even worse. Super Liberal, those top teachers decided that part of the high school Language Arts curriculum MUST include a movie so disturbing and traumatic that every woman I know who saw it STILL has the occasional nightmare about it 2 or 3 decades later. Baruch Hashem, I never saw it for some reason, even though it was an extremely popular cult classic.
I could go on and on, but you’re probably nauseated enough by now.
I was relieved, personally. I had no desire to see the murder of an unborn baby (even if I didn't think of it in those terms back then).
But the clear message was that our rights were being violated somehow.
Yes, violated!
By our PARENTS!
Woe are us!
And also that this was censorship and condescension.
It was confusing because on one hand, I was relieved not to have to watch it, but on the other hand, I got the sense I was supposed to be outraged and offended -- as if my initial feeling of relief was not the correct one.
(I know...you’re probably wondering what that film had to do with geography. I don’t know.)
But my friends who attended exclusive private schools had it even worse. Super Liberal, those top teachers decided that part of the high school Language Arts curriculum MUST include a movie so disturbing and traumatic that every woman I know who saw it STILL has the occasional nightmare about it 2 or 3 decades later. Baruch Hashem, I never saw it for some reason, even though it was an extremely popular cult classic.
I could go on and on, but you’re probably nauseated enough by now.
Why No Pushback?
Interestingly, both my junior high and my high school populations comprised a huge percentage of Christians and Mormons. And while they gave some pushback, it was very weak considering their number.
Sometimes, Christian students did speak up in the classroom, but their comments were always short, pathetically simple, and unpersuasive. (Usually something along the lines of: “But my pastor says…!” or “But the Bible says…!”)
And they could never respond to a teacher's counterclaim in any way.
I remember one teacher, in response to a student's protest of learning evolution, explained that he was obligated to teach it and students who didn't believe in evolution could just take it as a theory, sort of like learning different schools of philosophy.
At second glance, it's strange how that was dealt with.
I mean, science deals with fact, right? It should be able to stand up to the basic questions of a preteen at least.
It's weird that schools were required to teach a "science" and then tell students to treat it as an alternative fictitious theory. This never happened with biology or physics or algebra.
But this way, the students couldn't really ask questions or present counter-arguments and the teachers never needed to defend their "evidence."
Looking back, it's bizarre how passive and uninformed about their own positions the Christian students were. They had their churches, communities, families, and youth groups, but they could not launch an effective counterattack against the onslaught. I guess it's not surprising seeing as Christianity's foundation insists on a ignore-the-obvious mindset that doesn't exactly sharpen the mind.
When learning about carbon-dating in 7th grade, I asked the teacher how we knew that it was the same then as now.
She smiled and said, "Well, we can't know. But we assume."
"Why do we assume that?" I asked. "What if it changed?"
I was confused. After all, we were talking about tens of millions of years ago, with a different climate in the kind of world that sported many active volcanoes, T-Rexes, Brontosauruses, and Pterodactyls.
"We just do," she said cheerfully. "But good question!"
Much later, I realized that the phrase "We assume" is one of the most popular in science.
It's somewhat disturbing that a field that prides itself on "proven theories" and "experiments" and "fact" and "evidence" uses the phrase "We assume" with such regularity.
Sometimes, Christian students did speak up in the classroom, but their comments were always short, pathetically simple, and unpersuasive. (Usually something along the lines of: “But my pastor says…!” or “But the Bible says…!”)
And they could never respond to a teacher's counterclaim in any way.
I remember one teacher, in response to a student's protest of learning evolution, explained that he was obligated to teach it and students who didn't believe in evolution could just take it as a theory, sort of like learning different schools of philosophy.
At second glance, it's strange how that was dealt with.
I mean, science deals with fact, right? It should be able to stand up to the basic questions of a preteen at least.
It's weird that schools were required to teach a "science" and then tell students to treat it as an alternative fictitious theory. This never happened with biology or physics or algebra.
But this way, the students couldn't really ask questions or present counter-arguments and the teachers never needed to defend their "evidence."
Looking back, it's bizarre how passive and uninformed about their own positions the Christian students were. They had their churches, communities, families, and youth groups, but they could not launch an effective counterattack against the onslaught. I guess it's not surprising seeing as Christianity's foundation insists on a ignore-the-obvious mindset that doesn't exactly sharpen the mind.
When learning about carbon-dating in 7th grade, I asked the teacher how we knew that it was the same then as now.
She smiled and said, "Well, we can't know. But we assume."
"Why do we assume that?" I asked. "What if it changed?"
I was confused. After all, we were talking about tens of millions of years ago, with a different climate in the kind of world that sported many active volcanoes, T-Rexes, Brontosauruses, and Pterodactyls.
"We just do," she said cheerfully. "But good question!"
Much later, I realized that the phrase "We assume" is one of the most popular in science.
It's somewhat disturbing that a field that prides itself on "proven theories" and "experiments" and "fact" and "evidence" uses the phrase "We assume" with such regularity.
Indoctrination University
There’s really no reason why most BAs need four years of college.
Two or three years is sufficient in most situations.
(For example, Israeli universities take only 3 years to get a BA.)
College today is largely political and social brainwashing with very little actual education going on, just like it was in Nazi Germany.
Yet I think that, say, Harvard Law School will actually still give you an excellent education in Law, but I’m not sure that is true with all its subjects and it is certainly not true for many colleges, especially anything in the category of Liberal Arts.
At one college I attended, I remember getting lots of books to read and many interesting class discussions that resembled late-night dorm mate discussions about life rather than academic discussions. Regarding one book, our professors told us that if it was too hard, we didn’t need to read it; we could just listen to the discussions of it among the students who did read the book.
Wow! Thanks, Professor Easy-Does-It!
Furthermore, because a BA is becoming so common, many people feel the need to go for a Masters in order to stand out.
Just looking around at my family and old friends, did they (their parents, actually) really need to spend 4 years of college and tens of thousands of dollars for a degree in hotel management? Or jewelry-making? Or business? Or to become a pharmacist?
One of my relatives dropped out of community college after flunking computer programming (out of lack of motivation), but because he is a computer genius, he later joined a cell phone company and is making a darn nice salary in their hush-hush innovations department.
Sure, some careers demand a dedication of time. Law and medicine come to mind.
But most careers just don’t need that.
Furthermore, there is an enormous amount of brainwashing and Leftist force-feeding. One of the most noticeable examples is how pro-Israel students feel intimidated or even fearful on campus nowadays. And the anti-Israel demonstrations are truly stomach-turning to watch.
Similarly in Nazi Germany, elite schools were created and lionized. Students selected for these schools were told what a privilege attendance was and the scholastic level was greatly exaggerated. Enrolled students felt like (and were told) that they’d “made it” just by being accepted.
Likewise, when Modern Orthodox activist for right-wing Conservatism Ben Shapiro entered Harvard Law school for the first time, he recalls Elena Kagan getting up and announcing that the “competition” was over. Just by virtue of having been accepted to Harvard, he and his classmates would be “the future leaders, making policy.”
He recalls her giving them the feeling that “we were smarter, more qualified, and morally wiser than the rest of the country.”
Later, Shapiro marveled, “And we hadn’t even done anything yet!”
But they had the elite guarantee.
(See Kagan was My Dean at Harvard.)
Yet Nazi Germany’s top schools were actually inferior to parallel schools in other European countries (which I don’t think is completely true yet in the USA), much to the shock of young German students upon meeting fellow students from those European institutions. The Nazi students couldn’t believe that they didn’t know more than their non-Nazi counterparts.
And like many American places of higher education, the Nazi schools of higher education padded their curriculum with bogus subjects like “Folklore” and “Schooling in Worldview” and “Religion Lore.”
American college students are made to feel superior by getting a college education, which was actually inferior, just like Nazi-German college students were made to feel superior despite their inferior education. “I’m going for my bachelor’s” is said as a statement of pride and achievement, even if the achievement isn’t worth much or padded with extraneous subjects and vastly overpriced.
A friend of mine who worked as an assistant professor at an Ivy League school recalls two assistant professors who used to design their curriculum to torment their students. (She didn’t specify how, but you can imagine things like assigning a convoluted project that would require foregoing several nights of sleep to hit the unrealistic deadline, and so on.) She said she frequently heard them say things like, “Yeah, let’s do this! This will REALLY make them suffer!”
I was convinced they must have been joking.
But she said no, they weren't.
At first, she thought they were just joking, too, but then she heard their talk with such frequency and also heard about their students’ reactions and complaints. She found it unnerving, but I don’t believe she ever did anything about it.
Two or three years is sufficient in most situations.
(For example, Israeli universities take only 3 years to get a BA.)
College today is largely political and social brainwashing with very little actual education going on, just like it was in Nazi Germany.
Yet I think that, say, Harvard Law School will actually still give you an excellent education in Law, but I’m not sure that is true with all its subjects and it is certainly not true for many colleges, especially anything in the category of Liberal Arts.
At one college I attended, I remember getting lots of books to read and many interesting class discussions that resembled late-night dorm mate discussions about life rather than academic discussions. Regarding one book, our professors told us that if it was too hard, we didn’t need to read it; we could just listen to the discussions of it among the students who did read the book.
Wow! Thanks, Professor Easy-Does-It!
Furthermore, because a BA is becoming so common, many people feel the need to go for a Masters in order to stand out.
Just looking around at my family and old friends, did they (their parents, actually) really need to spend 4 years of college and tens of thousands of dollars for a degree in hotel management? Or jewelry-making? Or business? Or to become a pharmacist?
One of my relatives dropped out of community college after flunking computer programming (out of lack of motivation), but because he is a computer genius, he later joined a cell phone company and is making a darn nice salary in their hush-hush innovations department.
Sure, some careers demand a dedication of time. Law and medicine come to mind.
But most careers just don’t need that.
Furthermore, there is an enormous amount of brainwashing and Leftist force-feeding. One of the most noticeable examples is how pro-Israel students feel intimidated or even fearful on campus nowadays. And the anti-Israel demonstrations are truly stomach-turning to watch.
Similarly in Nazi Germany, elite schools were created and lionized. Students selected for these schools were told what a privilege attendance was and the scholastic level was greatly exaggerated. Enrolled students felt like (and were told) that they’d “made it” just by being accepted.
Likewise, when Modern Orthodox activist for right-wing Conservatism Ben Shapiro entered Harvard Law school for the first time, he recalls Elena Kagan getting up and announcing that the “competition” was over. Just by virtue of having been accepted to Harvard, he and his classmates would be “the future leaders, making policy.”
He recalls her giving them the feeling that “we were smarter, more qualified, and morally wiser than the rest of the country.”
Later, Shapiro marveled, “And we hadn’t even done anything yet!”
But they had the elite guarantee.
(See Kagan was My Dean at Harvard.)
Yet Nazi Germany’s top schools were actually inferior to parallel schools in other European countries (which I don’t think is completely true yet in the USA), much to the shock of young German students upon meeting fellow students from those European institutions. The Nazi students couldn’t believe that they didn’t know more than their non-Nazi counterparts.
And like many American places of higher education, the Nazi schools of higher education padded their curriculum with bogus subjects like “Folklore” and “Schooling in Worldview” and “Religion Lore.”
American college students are made to feel superior by getting a college education, which was actually inferior, just like Nazi-German college students were made to feel superior despite their inferior education. “I’m going for my bachelor’s” is said as a statement of pride and achievement, even if the achievement isn’t worth much or padded with extraneous subjects and vastly overpriced.
A friend of mine who worked as an assistant professor at an Ivy League school recalls two assistant professors who used to design their curriculum to torment their students. (She didn’t specify how, but you can imagine things like assigning a convoluted project that would require foregoing several nights of sleep to hit the unrealistic deadline, and so on.) She said she frequently heard them say things like, “Yeah, let’s do this! This will REALLY make them suffer!”
I was convinced they must have been joking.
But she said no, they weren't.
At first, she thought they were just joking, too, but then she heard their talk with such frequency and also heard about their students’ reactions and complaints. She found it unnerving, but I don’t believe she ever did anything about it.
And Now?
The recent election of Donald Trump as President has been a welcome punch in the eye to the caricature environment of the media.
But it is hard to see how America can heal from all its ills, especially when the Right is still so weak (and just being angry doesn't make you strong) while the Left is so convinced and so determined -- and still so much in control.
But it is hard to see how America can heal from all its ills, especially when the Right is still so weak (and just being angry doesn't make you strong) while the Left is so convinced and so determined -- and still so much in control.
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