Pep Rallies and Public Schools: How the State Programs Us for War

by J. L. Bryan
 

Anyone who attended those giant child-processing centers the state insists on calling "schools" will recognize the scene:

You walk into the million-dollar cinderblock gymnasium, immediately dwarfed by the size and sound of the crowd. The school's thousands of students have been herded together to cheer the glory that is "their" team as it prepares for "the big game." Teachers and students dress in school colors, wave the school pennant, and join in the school fight song.

All this is a Very Big Deal, and woe unto he who questions any of it. There may be a speech from the principal, or from that annoying kid who successfully rode a wave of apathy into the student council presidency. The cheerleaders dance and praise the team. The team members themselves run out to thunderous applause, the crowd cheering for whatever it is they presumably accomplish for the school community – and never mind that the biggest jerks in the school are invariably found within their ranks.

Here and there you may notice small, dark clumps of the disaffected, those dour punk/goth/whatever kids who don't seem impressed by any of this. They will be treated harshly by teachers for being negative, antisocial, or – heaven forbid! – lacking in proper "school spirit." There is something wrong with them, most would agree, or they just want attention. And these malcontents are all freshmen or sophomores. Upperclassmen of their ilk have long since learned that such rallies are the perfect time to sneak behind the school for a cigarette or a few bong rips.

Of special significance is the rally against the major rival school down the road, the archenemy who must be denounced, ridiculed, and defeated. No one can tell you why that particular school is the big rival. "Because they're the Broncos (or whatever the rival mascot might be)" is a typical, circular answer. Some don't even bother moving in a circle: "They just are," such people say, probably convinced, after a lifetime of learning to accept such answers from teachers, that this would appropriately resolve the question.

In my experience, one revealing answer came from my high school Latin teacher: "You must support the home team. Support the home team. Support the home team." (Also, teaching Latin by rote had apparently programmed her to repeat all statements three times. Not kidding.) She didn't follow up with any explanation of the virtues and benefits to accrue from home-team-supporting behavior. It was just crazy to think that, although the state forced us into this ridiculous institution, with its ridiculous rules and overlords, we would ever consider the school to be anything but our "home." We were certainly intended to identify it as such. The football team was there to defend our honor (against what, nobody knows).

Having read some Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson, I concluded that the entire culture and organization of public schools must be a mistake. There were so many authoritarian attributes, I thought, they weren't teaching kids to be responsible citizens of a republic, but subjects of a police state. Serious reforms were clearly needed. (Years later, having studied John Taylor Gatto and Austrian economics, I realized that a) the state raises kids this way deliberately, not by mistake, and b) a free market in education would quickly find and disseminate the best methods for teaching children.)

The whole weird culture of government school still puzzled me when I graduated in 1996. A little more than five years later, starting on 9/11/2001, I began to discover what all the weird ritualism and pressure to conform had really accomplished for the state.

Flags went up everywhere – you had flag bumper stickers, flag lapel pins, flag t-shirts, flags draping homes and buildings, flag-colored bunting. Across the South, people even traded their defiant Confederate flags for Old Glory – swapping out their scrimmage jerseys for the team colors. The Pledge of Allegiance took on a new, more sacred quality, as did the drinking game that is our national anthem (from the article: "If you could sing a stanza of the notoriously difficult melody and stay on key, you were sober enough for another round").

President Bush, until then known for his questionable election, the Enron scandal, and taking long vacations, suddenly became the great leader, warrior, and protector. (Yes, the same guy who completely didn't protect anyone from the attacks was now going to keep us safe – but let's not digress into reason). We had Britney Spears and Ann Coulter to cheerlead the Prez. Men and women in any sort of government-issued uniform became hallowed saints. Our wise and noble leaders, all in their matching lapel pins, sat down at their desks and led the charge to war – war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, and a hoped-for war in Iran, if they could squeeze it in.

Sure, here and there were clumps of the disaffected, those left-wingers and libertarians who didn't support the Patriot Act, the Iraq invasion, or the general sense that our politicians and thinktankers would kill anyone who stood between them and the oil supplies of the Middle East and Central Asia. But these were not serious people, not people who had TV talk shows and columns in the New York Times. Not people who held high office. Thanks to public education, we all knew that these were just that predictable handful of fringe weirdos, who are probably even now sneaking out back for a cigarette or a few bongs rips. The serious, sober-minded folks were out buying little flags to pin on themselves.

Question the war in those days, and many people would just give you a puzzled look, as if asking why they hated the Broncos. "Because they're our enemies!" According to whom? Had Iraq attacked us? "What are you, on their side? You're either with us or against us!" And the countless innocents who would die from the invasion? Probably fans of the other team, the jerks.

Even if you didn't support the war, you should of course "Support the Troops," preferably with a yellow magnet on your car (don't use a sticker, it could scuff the paint). Naturally, they're fighting for us, and it's important to support the home team, don't you know, even if the game itself seems pointless to you. And support them only by keeping them at war, no matter what, for years and years and years, because quitters don't win the championship ring. We need to bring home the gold. For our country, our honor, etc.

And when it comes to politics, the same logic applies. You can choose "your" team – there are two big ones – and then cheer for them, wear their t-shirts, wish harm upon the opposing team, and feel as if something's been accomplished when someone from your team wins a major office. Between the shouting matches at bars and the flaming blog posts, you'll barely notice how truly powerless you are.

Gatto's work reveals many ways government schools are designed to break human beings into mindless, obedient machines. There's the common teacher tactic of insulting and humiliating the kid who acts differently, or asks too many questions. There's the charming custom of begging for permission to carry out basic bodily functions, which many a teacher gleefully denies – and you must have that hall pass so you can show your papers to the hall monitors, proving you have a right to pee.

Possibly most effective is the practice of age-ranked classes. Every child naturally looks to older children and adults as role models. The school denies us this, forcing kids to look to other kids their own age as role models. Everybody strives to be like everybody else, the source of the common teenage lament that "Everybody else dresses this way!" or "Everybody else is going to the party!" After more than a decade of this, we become adults desperate to prove to everyone else that we are just like everyone else. Much character development is also lost in the other direction – older kids never learn the responsibility of looking out for younger kids, the understanding of subject matter that comes from helping to tutor them, or the fulfillment that comes from helping someone smaller and weaker than yourself.

All of this is useful for training obedient subjects who constantly adjust themselves to whatever they are told. When it comes to the martial virtues, however, there's nothing quite like a properly managed team-sports program. Kids can learn loyalty, teamwork, obedience, aggressiveness, and an animosity toward the "enemy" that can be snapped on at will. Some of these may sound virtuous by themselves – but what about the German soldier who remains steadfastly loyal to Hitler, or engages in teamwork by helping operate a concentration camp? Those soldiers were several generations into the Prussian school system on which the American system is based.

Clearly, the individual needs an inner core of principles that he values more highly than the approval of the team, the coaches, and the rest of the school community. Such fierce individualism is at the heart of what it means to be American, and what it means to be human, and it is something government schools will never teach.

June 23, 2009

J. L. Bryan [send him mail] lives in Atlanta. His novel Dominion is free at his website.

Are you serious?

Sure, why not?

I hated pep rallies when I was a teenager. I used to hide out in the computer room with other geeky friends and play games or sneak into a cubicle at the library. All the cheering and applauding in the gym aggravated my tinnitus anyway.

The main problem with the liberty people is that right there - foreign policy isn't for them.  They refuse to admit there is real danger in the world and don't recognize the need for defense spending. 

Anonymous said :

The main problem with the liberty people is that right there - foreign policy isn't for them.  They refuse to admit there is real danger in the world and don't recognize the need for defense spending. 

I disagree.  I would say instead that we understand that there's a big difference between defense and global hegemony.  I'd be more than happy to discuss it in more detail, if you like. 

I originally asked if you were serious because I think that the thesis is unsupported by the evidence presented.  I'm going to assume that you've posted this article because, to some extent, you agree with the author.

1. Of all of the institutions or cultural influences leading to war, the author has decided to focus on public education, which makes me believe that he or she simply has something against public education. Much of his or her ire for public education, at least in the beginning, is really focused on team sports and related pageantry, which makes me believe that he or she also has something against team sports.

2. The author has mentioned weird "ritualism and pressure to conform" as part of the response to 9/11 and cited bumper stickers, lapel pins, flags, and a drinking game (and I'm assuming he or she didn't learn the drinking game via public education).  I can see the case for the media beating the drum for war, or for our collective sense (even a misguided sense) of patriotism or honor causing us to rush into war, or even our more tribal and primal reaction to the destruction of our towers as leading us to war.  But, I think it is a bit absurd to place the blame on public education.

3. The author has also points out the "charming custom of begging for permission to carry out basic bodily functions" as a way of "breaking human beings into  mindless, obedient machines."  How is this different from asking to be excused from the dinner table and more importantly, how is this unique to public education?

4. The author also links properly managed team-sports programs to Hitler and cooperation in concentration camps.  First, the ability to function on a team -- at least according to most -- is a desired trait because we, as humans, tend to form teams to accomplish our tasks.  Second, private education institutions tend to focus on team-oriented exercises as well.  Some of them even have sports teams.  Besides, I can draw links between personal hygiene and Hitler, but that doesn't mean that one really has anything to do with the other.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I think you're off-base.  If you're advocating home schools (at the expense of both public schools and private schools), then extol the virtues of home schooling and the evils of sports.  If you're saying that society and civilization seek to promote conformity, then point out the various other ways that society and civilization squash the fierce individualism.  If you're saying that the State programs people for war (as opposed to programming them for some other purpose like maintaining a corporate job or functioning in a society), then make the argument and point out where other institutions (including churches) fit into the equation.

But the article that you posted seems more appropriate as an argument against organized team sports for youth than as a coherant argument against public education (or in this case, any formal system of education).

I suggest you read the 1933 Secular Humanist Manifesto I and the 1930 pre goals statement to it. then follow up with all the manifesto after, and you will see, they had a clear vision to overtake the education system and they succeeded in every goal.

In 1963, THE HUMANIST ,  Dumphy updated  the goals 

'' The battle for humankinds. future must be wagged and won in the public school classroom, by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselyizers of a new faith. a religion of humanity--utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values into wherever they teach.

The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new.''

Too bad they got away with destroying nationalism at the same time.

Dee05

"Too bad they got away with destroying nationalism at the same time."

I'd say nationalism is alive and well, actually. Blind nationalism too, sadly. Public education does an excellent job fostering this, starting with the Pledge of Alleigance, which was created by Baptist minister and socialist Francis Bellamy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bellamy

Original version of the Pledge:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"

We'll see when the Supreme Court, once again takes up the challenge to the pledge, this term. O f course they have upped the ante, by declaring in their official court brief"GOD does not exist.

I personally prefere the American Creed

" I believe in the United States of America, as a goverment of the people, by the people for the people, whoes just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy, in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign states, a perfect union, one and inseperaable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which Americsn patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes .

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag and to defend it against all enemies"

Dee05

"We'll see when the Supreme Court, once again takes up the challenge to the pledge, this term. O f course they have upped the ante, by declaring in their official court brief"GOD does not exist."

Please cite where the SCOTUS has declared God does not exist. Too many conservatives are on it for that to happen IMO. And even if "under God" isn't in the pledge- big deal... it isn't as though people are going to stop believing in God. People in America believed in God before the pledge even existed and "In God We Trust" was printed on Federal Reserve Notes.

I think this J.L. Bryan would be well advised to see a therapist to find out what in his past...perhaps in his social inabilities/failures while in public schools...has caused him to believe as he says he does.

The group who filed the suit,  said that in their brief.

The court has yet to rule in the second case.

The Non-Orwellian View of American History

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Recently by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Krugman Failure, Not Market Failure

The segment gave us a neat little history of the expansion of government power and the various transformations of the economy that have taken place over the past 150 years. Each time, the segment explained, a terrible problem created by the free market was followed by a brilliant government response. For example: "When the free-market system allowed monopolies to emerge in the nineteenth century, the Interstate Commerce Commission was created to control them."

I love that sentence. It has fourth-grade teacher written all over it, as in: You see, children, our wise overlords, when they saw greedy people taking advantage of the public, did just the right thing, as usual. Without them, we’d all be living in rickety tenements begging for food, and at the mercy of men with white mustaches carrying money-filled sacks with dollar signs on them.

It is just this kind of thing that it gave me so much pleasure to take apart in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. And it comes up so often that I can’t resist addressing it here.

For the sake of argument we can overlook the capture theory of regulation, which holds that the industries being regulated tend to "capture" the regulatory agencies themselves, transforming them, beneath a rhetorical nod to the common good, into engines of privilege and protection. We can be extremely good sports and even overlook Gabriel Kolko’s argument in Railroads and Regulation that the railroads themselves pushed for the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. That would unduly complicate the little cartoon version of American history it’s the job of the regime’s mouthpieces to impart.

We’ll stick just to the claim that the "free-market system" gave rise to "monopolies." (For our purposes we can define a "monopoly" in the colloquial sense of a single or overwhelmingly dominant supplier of a good or service, since this is clearly the sense in which people who peddle this view intend it.) This is pretty much what every child is fed in our official propaganda centers, as indeed was I all through high school. Put forth in tandem with this claim are lurid tales of the so-called robber barons, who we’re told ruthlessly exploited the public to satisfy their insatiable greed – a human inclination that never seems to afflict our selfless public servants, I might add.

To be sure, no one should try to excuse those who sought to use state power to cripple their competitors. Burt Folsom made a helpful distinction between political entrepreneurs, who got ahead using underhanded tactics like this, and market entrepreneurs, who prospered because they produced what the public demanded at prices people could afford.

Andrew Carnegie almost single-handedly managed to reduce the price of steel rails from $160 per ton in the mid-1870s to $17 per ton in the late 1890s. Given the importance of steel to a modern economy, that massive price reduction yielded greater wealth and a higher standard of living for everyone. Carnegie was so efficient, in fact, that the 4000 people who worked at his Homestead plant in Pittsburgh produced three times more steel than the 15,000 workers at Germany’s Krupps steelworks, Europe’s most modern and renowned facility.

Likewise, John D. Rockefeller was able to reduce the price of kerosene from one dollar per gallon to ten cents per gallon. People could finally afford to illuminate their homes. Rockefeller also developed 300 products out of the waste that remained after the oil was refined. Claims that Rockefeller was an "unfair" competitor (whatever that means), the usual gripe of those who cannot deliver a product at prices that sufficiently please consumers, were laid to rest half a century ago in John S. McGee’s study for the Journal of Law and Economics. (John S. McGee, "Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N.J.) Case," Journal of Law and Economics 1 [October 1958]: 137–69.)

We might also mention James J. Hill, who grew up in poverty but whose entrepreneurial skill helped make the Great Northern Railroad, which extended from St. Paul to Seattle, a major success without any government subsidies at all. In 1893, when the government-subsidized railroads went bankrupt, Hill’s line was able both to cut rates and turn a substantial profit.

Still another of the alleged robber barons was Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1798 the government of New York had granted Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton a monopoly on steamboat traffic for thirty years. Vanderbilt was hired to run a steamboat between New Jersey and Manhattan in defiance of that monopoly. Vanderbilt evaded capture while at the same time charging only one-quarter of the monopolists’ fare.

After Gibbons vs. Ogden (1824) overturned New York’s steamboat monopoly, the fare for a trip from New York City to Albany dropped from seven dollars to three. The trip from New York to Philadelphia, which had been three dollars, fell to one dollar. Travelers going from New Brunswick to Manhattan now paid only six cents, and ate for free. When he moved his steamboat operation to the Hudson River, Vanderbilt charged a fare of ten cents, as opposed to the previous three dollars. Later he dropped the fare entirely, running his operation on the proceeds from concessions aboard the ship.

Even when his competitors had unfair advantages, Vanderbilt came out on top. Edward Collins received a government subsidy for his steamship business to provide mail delivery across the Atlantic – to the tune of $858,000 a year by the 1850s. When Vanderbilt entered the field in 1855, he outperformed Collins in passenger travel and mail delivery with no subsidy at all. Congress did away with Collins’ subsidy in 1858, and before long he went bankrupt.

Meanwhile, Vanderbilt was also outperforming two subsidized steamship lines that brought passengers and mail to California. They charged $600 per passenger per trip. The unsubsidized Vanderbilt charged $150 per passenger, and nothing to deliver the mail.

Forgive me, but I am supposed to fear and despise these benefactors of mankind why, exactly?

These men were able to acquire such substantial portions of their industries because they consistently produced goods at low prices. When they stopped innovating, they lost market share. The cartoon version of events notwithstanding, competition was vigorous. It was only after voluntary efforts – pools, secret agreements, mergers, and the like – failed to stabilize this highly competitive environment that some firms began to look to the federal government and its regulatory apparatus as a way to reduce competition coercively. "Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians," writes Gabriel Kolko, "it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it."

Speaking of the situation that faced Standard Oil, Kolko writes:

In 1899 there were sixty-seven petroleum refiners in the United States, only one of whom was of any consequence. Over the next decade the number increased steadily to 147 refiners. Until 1900 the only significant competitor to Standard was the Pure Oil Company, formed in 1895 by Pennsylvania producers with $10 million capital…. By 1906 it was challenging Standard’s control over pipelines by constructing its own. And in 1901 Associated Oil of California was formed with $40 million capital stock, in 1902 the Texas Company was formed with $30 million capital, and in 1907 Gulf Oil was established with $60 million capital. In 1911 the total investment of the Texas Company, Gulf Oil, Tide Water-Associated Oil, Union Oil of California, and Pure Oil was $221 million. From 1911 to 1926 the investment of the Texas Company grew 572 percent, Gulf Oil 1,022 percent, Tide Water-Associated 205 percent, Union Oil 159 percent and Pure Oil 1,534 percent.

Standard Oil’s decline preceded the antitrust ruling against it in 1911, and was "primarily of its own doing – the responsibility of its conservative management and lack of initiative."

As a matter of fact, it was very difficult for top firms to maintain their positions in a great many industries in the United States in the late nineteenth century. This was true of industries as diverse as oil, steel, iron, automobiles, agricultural machinery, copper, meat packing, and telephone services. Competition was extremely vigorous.

Whenever business leaders criticize the free market, be assured that they are hoping to replace it with an arrangement that is more likely to guarantee their profits. Any rhetoric we might hear from them about the evils of alleged cutthroat competition, or of the need to put private concerns aside for the sake of the common good, is window dressing intended to distract the dupes – who sing the praises of these firms’ "social responsibility" – from what they are really up to.

It became especially fashionable in the 1920s to suggest that laissez faire was a thing of the past, a foolish, discredited system that needed to give way to rules of "fair competition" to be established in each industry. One businessman, for instance, complained that "our profits are absolutely unprotected." Poor baby. A trade association executive condemned any private actor who operated his business "in entire disregard of the effects on his competitor and the rest of the industry." The American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages declared: "My desire shall not be to undersell my fellow bottlers, but to contend with them for first place in the quality of my products and the service I render my patrons." Appeals like this were all over the business magazines.

During the initial years of the New Deal these conspiracies against the public were given the force of law in the form of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which administrator Hugh Johnson called "the greatest social advance since the days of Jesus Christ." Butler Shaffer’s important study In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, provides all the details.

The reason that business firms have so often been eager to employ government power on their behalf is that coercion solidifies their positions far more effectively than does the free market, the system through which consumers keep them on their toes every single day. On the free market, these firms must serve the consumer effectively or close their doors, period. Even the mightiest corporations have learned this lesson.

It is government, with its subsidies, special privileges, and restrictions on competition, not to mention the looting of the public and rewarding of privileged interests that go on within the military-industrial complex, that promote monopoly properly understood and grant truly unfair advantages to some at the expense of everyone else. (On this subject in general see this article; on the military-industrial complex see this soon-to-be-published paper [.pdf].)

What a different country this would be if the drone factories that imprison the minds of American children permitted them to hear the non-Orwellian version of American history.

June 25, 2009

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. [visit his website; send him mail] is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of nine books, including two New York Times bestsellers: Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. Read Congressman Ron Paul's foreword to Meltdown.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Adam,

Love ya, man....but lose the long, extensive posts.  Say what ya want to say and then post a link for folks to go to.  Otherwise, it's just copying and pasting something you want folks to read that may have absolutely no interest in it....in other words, a waste of space.

Thanks.

10-4!