Towards Voluntaryism (Part 14)
2.10. Education: Revising the curriculum
Towards Voluntaryism (Part 14)
Revising the Curriculum
Increasingly, students are able to graduate with four-year college degrees that demonstrate little more than a basic understanding of the main subject, near zero competence in logical or critical thinking, close to zero understanding of the rule of law and its importance, almost zero comprehension of the monetary system and either zero or a completely propagandized knowledge of global and national history and current events.
The consequences of this state of affairs is becoming increasingly obvious. Colleges and universities are creating multiple generations that are completely indoctrinated by sociopolitical ideologies that make them easy to control, uninformed and intellectually incapable of protecting themselves from what has become a predatory plutocratic system of corporate debt slavery.
How has this happened? Curriculums have become so diverse (read: lax and vague) that "students almost inevitably graduate with an odd list of random, unconnected courses and, all too often, serious gaps in their basic skills and knowledge." From the same article, "... fewer than 18 percent of colleges and universities require a foundational course in U.S. government or history, and only about 3 percent of the institutions require students to take a basic economics class."
At some universities it is no longer required to read Chaucer or Shakespeare to get an English degree or to study United States History for a history degree, which, like it or not, is the greatest attempt at perpetual freedom the world has ever seen.
Watch this! PragerU "Who Killed the Liberal Arts?"
One must ask why traditional and cumulative forms of knowledge in the west which contributed to western civilization as we know it are being disparaged, with terminology ranging from 'non-inclusive' to 'discriminatory' as a slur, to 'exclusionary' to 'supremacist' and any number of other weaponized postmodernist terms that prey on the emotions. Considering history has been a cyclical bloodbath of coercive collectivism and man's attempt to free himself from it, it is astonishing how successful coercive collectivism is.
"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it" is only one part of the solution, John Adam's words “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people,” is the other. For those who wish to instate coercive collectivist models of society and governance, it is essential that history be rewritten and independent critical thought be eliminated. Only the forgetting of history enables the sociopaths to try again.
In seeking to overthrow or subvert the distinctly western values of self-determination, freedom and individual rights, the real danger exists that western cultural achievements will also be undone - the first signs of this are already manifesting as the attempts to restrict free speech and public displays of faith spread throughout the country.
What is conveniently dismissed by those perpetrating such attacks on Western norms and values (i.e. democracy, freedom of speech, Christian values) is that without them, women and minorities would in all likelihood still be subjugated, segregated, enslaved, controlled, voiceless and lacking basic human rights under a totalitarian form of governance, as they still are in many countries around the world today.
Unfortunately those perpetrating the attack have little to no understanding of the history of socialist and communist regimes, which have been the bloodiest and least free of any in history, rather they have a romanticized view that being forced to "go along to get along" under a totalitarian regime will make the world a better place.
Should it be possible to salvage the colleges and universities by restoring administrations and faculties that prefer reason and facts to feelings and subjective truths, it will be necessary to create a core interdisciplinary curriculum of empirical rationalism to serve as the foundation of all academic study.
Additionally, it would be highly beneficial - in keeping with the goal of incrementally instituting Voluntaryism as a sociopolitical paradigm - to construct a curriculum that instructs on the nature and history of different forms of government and various monetary systems so as to create adults that are consciously aware of how the world has been run for centuries, if not thousands of years, and empower them to change it.
Interestingly, the College of the Ozarks has already begun an experiment in this general vein by requiring all freshmen to attend a course entitled "Patriotic Education and Fitness" to "combat...rising anti-American, antipatriotic sentiments in American culture." Arizona State University has also instituted a new 'Freedom School' that focuses on the significance of Western culture, America's foundational principles and a free market economy. Resistance is growing and now is the time to capitalize on the momentum.
Though this example falls short of the emancipatory education necessary for Voluntaryism to supplant coercive and collectivist forms of government, it does show that it is possible to provide an education that is not oriented on Cultural Marxism whose objective it is to "criticize every pillar of Western culture—family, democracy, common law, freedom of speech, and others...(until)... these pillars...crumble under the pressure."
These suggestions are still premised on the existing structure of the educational system and thus capable of being instituted with relative ease. Unaddressed here is overall systemic structure of the educational establishment and the necessity of revamping it to meet the needs of the individual and society as whole. By doing so, it is hoped that the populace would recognize that smaller government and a critical citizenry is necessary to keep corruption, subjugation and persecution at bay.
Ultimately, together with the suggestions that will be provided in section 3 on governance, the goal is to create a population that is feared by the government, not in fear of the government. This is because I find John Basil Barnhill's aphorism "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty." eminently reasonable.
Once topics such as those suggested in the following begin being taught and studied at colleges and universities, funding for research into advancing individual rights and how best to limit the deleterious nature of coercive collectivism would likely increase (that's looking at freshly minted cryptozillionaires everywhere). This is turn, would be an incremental step to actually achieving a Voluntaryist society. Honestly, I have little faith the existing higher education system can be salvaged, but in this discussion we shall make do with what we have.
To such an end, I suggest a curriculum that incorporates the following subject matter as part of every undergraduate degree program, possibly as a cumulative series of lectures and seminars that are absolved concurrently with degree requirements over two to four years of time. Rather than speculating about the specific content of individual seminars, I will suggest a number of overarching thematic categories and their objectives.
Next: [Towards Voluntaryism (Part 15) - 2.11. Education: Curriculum Suggestions]
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