The Best Slave

The following is an excerpt from the graduation speech by Erica Goldson, valedictorian of Coxsacki-Athens high school student, age 18. (full text here)

I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave.

...

For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it.

And, the last paragraph...

I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!

As someone who endured public school and also observed the development of academic assessment software, this speech gave me chills. Although her youthful exuberance paints this dismal and serious situation with vibrant colors, there is an eerie feeling of dread that her words do not fall on deaf ears, but those whose indoctrination efforts obviously require improvement.

American academia, the assembly of interconnected public institutions dedicated to the systematic removal of humanity and individuality from children in order to produce docile, obedient, subservient slaves for efficient labor in the future Corporate/Government Industrial Complex, seems to have failed here. With this particular student, years of influence, generations of indoctrinated teachers, and an arsenal of carefully crafted textbooks couldn't sufficiently do the job. The overwhelming facade of legitimacy in buildings, auditoriums, classrooms, desks, whiteboards, and computers was still not enough to break this one student of common sense. Somehow, the efforts of all the forces working together to advance the cohesive lie over the most impressionable years of childhood were exposed and smashed to pieces in one brutal speech.

What does this speech say to me? It is just a sad reminder that much of what the world calls "humanity" pursues death as a matter of course. In so doing, through ignorance or spite or carelessness, they groom the same pursuit deep into the psyche of the next generation. Academia is very effective at this, and is the hive of the wasp colony that eventually becomes our government bureaucracy. The old and wrong linger and die while a few bright sparks like Erica expose the embarrassing and obvious truth before being stifled, threatened, appeased, or somehow cornered into silence by one or more pincers of popular society. She has bitten off a large chunk, but did it at the right time, as there is still some refreshing and non-threatening naivete acting as her shield. More importantly, there is an empty but persistent vestige of general respect for the sanctity of young people's minds that will vanish a little bit with every astute valedictorian speech.

Mediocrity is forgiven more easily than talent. The plain truth isn't forgiven at all.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Traditional, liberal education

is the most persistent threat to our global empire. Disciplined, targeted instruction by competent educators tends to produce pesky, inquisitive children, curious adolescents, and dangerously mindful adults. We can all agree that literate, critical-thinking populations are almost impossible to control, and participate in activities corrosive to our goals. Through methods of research, analysis, discussion, and logic, these individuals tend to do things like:

• Defame and scrutinize our foreign economic policies
• Unearth and disclose our hidden agendas
  
• Reveal popular logical fallacies upon which we depend
  

For example, only a relatively disciplined, educated person has the intellectual resources needed to explain how our foreign policy actually threatens our national security. Worse, when they follow up, they tend to look right through our cover of well-intentioned ignorance, and discover our actual motives, which sound, well, a bit contrived without all the details. They begin to understand some basics about how our organization functions, and this is also unnerving. We are not especially concerned with the few folks that see it for what it actually is. We fear the few who can actually communicate these unbelievable facts to normal, publicly educated, brainwashed populace. Such a thing sounds incomprehensible, as we have handily veiled our actions in tactics that no "sane" person could possibly take seriously...much less one drugged and assimilated by the intricate propaganda network so painstakingly crafted by our specialists. Those children who slip through the cracks of our system threaten everything, and must be stopped as they are the only force that could possibly hinder our global conquest for human enslavement.

Children must be raised as servants of the corporate political complex. First, they must be bored, as bored people seek direction and purpose. We must give them purpose, or they might find one of their own. Second, they must remain childish and retain their infantile sense of entitlement, as such individuals are easy to convince with promises of wealth and notoriety they always believed they deserved anyway. Having access to most of our planet's resources, a little can go a very long way. Third, they must be reformed to meet the pressing needs of our corporate partners. After all, these are the human resources we need to run the national machine of industry.

We all know that people are predictable by mathematical formula and are easily manipulated according to certain specifications. We can justify our actions for reasons of national security. We must ensure they specialize in a narrow field of study, so they have no chance at comprehending the department of the system upon which they depend...much less the goals of the system itself. We know that incomplete people make the best corporate employees, but we prefer to call them "specialists." The indoctrination process must begin as early in life as possible, preferably immediately after birth. Universal preschool to support our ends must be mandatory.

Of special importance are the citizens we choose for procreation. We will focus on encouraging low-class single mothers to have many children, as these vulnerable youngsters happen to be prime subjects for complete assimilation into a more efficient global system.

A proper, national education is the key to our prosperity and to global empire. We must be courageous in this endeavor because, after all, the children are our future.