What follows is entirely exploratory, nothing constructional ....

To make genuine progress with education in the modern environment, we have to treat people according to their genuine needs, their personal temperament, capacities and destiny. In order to do this, there must be burst a cherished bubble of American political philosophy, namely, the concept that 'all men are created equal.'

This concept is not true, not in any way, at any time. In the United States, it was promoted by an individual who could not manage his own affairs, or those of the nation, and whose grasp of the requirements of society was neither thorough nor stable. His affairs were chaotic at his death and included penury as well as debt.

There is no 'vanilla' humanity so there should be no 'vanilla' education. The differences among people have to be recognized, fostered and enhanced. The welfare of society depends on these differences. We need the widest variety of talent, interest, capacity, impulse and more. The organism requires an efflorescence of characteristics. The system of education has to enhance these differences. The psycho-social gene pool must be richly variegated in order for there to be prosperity in the race.

The concept that all men are created equal must be disallowed for judicial, legislative and administrative activity. The reason is, this concept impels the policy of putting everyone through the same general educational program, a policy which impedes the highly capable, bores the ordinary and embarrasses the disabled.

The nub of the problem is to extirpate the concept that 'all men are created equal.' What we have to aim at is separating out those who can learn different things from those who can't so that those who can learn, who have an adequate background and ability to learn, are not held back or threatened, and so that those who can't learn different things are not embarrassed and made to feel inadequate by those who can.

It goes both ways. It's not just that the talented get held back but also that the untalented get their self-esteem dashed being around the talented, whom they take for being superior. The capable should not be held back and the incapable -- of certain things -- should not be prejudiced or embarrassed by their capacities.

The culprit in this situation is the concept that 'all men {meaning, humanity} are created equal' and this is what has to be eliminated. The idea that all people are created equal leads to the assumption and policy that everybody has to go through the same program. Everybody does not have to go through the same program because they are not all created equal.

Implementation of the concept that all men are created equal and putting everyone through the same program, in pursuance of that concept, have not got us where we want to be or should be.

The premise is wrong. People are not equal. There are genuine, substantial, necessary, felicitous and desirable differences among people, differences of ability, temperament, impulse, desire, destiny and more. These differences are society's endowment. Lose them and society dis-integrates.

Integration is of variety, not of similarity. Similarity requires no integration. It is unproductive. The differences are the thing that is truly valuable because they are what produce. The program of education cannot be 'all for one' or 'one for all' because the little nippers are not all one. They are many and different and their differences are important and needed.

The idea that all children should go through the same general program is totalitarian, which means, inherently stupid.

It is very hard to make a system of education which fosters the differences and leads out the nature and destiny of each person so that they become as happy and as useful to themselves and to society as they can be. It is hard and it is expensive to do this.

This is what we have to do.

When people are doing what it is their nature to do, their nature being, essentially, what is good to do, then they are happy. All that needs doing is to help each person do what it is their nature to do that is good, that is Dharmic. This itself is Dharma and Dharmic living is happy, prosperous living.

In the present context, there is the issue of safety. In some schools now, it is only a matter of time before parents start filing class action suits against the schools for not protecting the civil rights of their children, that is, providing a safe environment in which they can live.

The fundamental disharmony here is caused by a law on the one hand and a policy and attitude on the other. The law is that stipulating compulsory attendance. The policy and attitude is that making the schools not responsible for what the child does, not academically or in any other way. Compulsory attendance statues employ the principle of in loco parentis. But when the children are at school, in answer to these statutes, the policy and attitude of the school is that the children themselves or their parents are responsible for the children. In other words, in loco parentis does not operate de facto, only de jure.

This situation is known in logic and in the fields of organizational development and behavioral psychology as a double bind. Double binds are ineluctable cyclical absurdities which are irremediable on their own terms. They are a tactic of tyrants. When maintained on a significant mass of a population, double binds cause Jacobin rebellions.

The schools are out of compliance with the compulsory attendance statutes.

We need to develop profiles of teachers for the electronic environment we are heading into. Also, we need descriptions of hardware such teachers would use. For example, large screens with large, high resolution letters, to relieve eye strain. Proper furniture.

We need software which will enable a teacher to monitor the work of students from a distance and communicate with them about their work. And this has to be done in such a way that the tax support of the teacher/school is maintained. Children schooling via modem should be counted as schooling.

Teachers who have a strong motherly, sathwic (calm), nurturing character, who do not have problems with authority, who are able to be in authority and under authority, who do not feel they have to tyrannize to prove their own capacity -- this is part of a desirable profile. The person should understand how to operate out of a sense of authority and leave aside any propensity to assert themselves. Authority is used to lead out, not to force on or onto.

The decision to genuinely educate our citizens, to bring out and employ their differences, is the decision we have to make, as a society. Our doing this would be easier if we already had present the people who would come out of such a system of education. They would be happy and they would be productive in ways not imaginable but such as would make everyone feel the investment is worthwhile.

To some extent, such people already are emerging from our system of education. We can spot them and learn from their pedagogical histories. They come from various elements of the system: homeschool, public school, private school and rishi-kul. So we are not without case histories of success. We have a good idea of what needs to be done.

In order to make progress towards what we are aware needs to be done, we must remove from the field the concept that all men are created equal. This bubble has to be popped. It must be disallowed in judicial, legislative and administrative activity.

Goal: To remove the concept that all men are created equal as a basis for judicial, legislative and administrative activity.

Question: Would the Federal Supreme Court be needed to accomplish this goal?

Correlative Question: Does a distinction in law need to be made between, on the one hand, the principle of equal standing before the law and, on the other, recognition of inherent differences of capacity which entitle to impartial but different allocation of resource? The purpose of such a distinction, obviously, is to enable the affirmation that all should have equal protection of the law, equal access to impartial justice, but that all do not have equal capacities and, therefore, do not deserve equal allocation of resource, as in the education system?

The tendency here is to distinguish between the legal system and the education system. The distinction may be novel for us. Should we make a distinguish between treatment in the legal system and treatment in the education system? I think we should. The things being done in these systems are different, equally important but not of the same type.

Equal justice at the bar, unequal allocation of resource at the school and, at both places, impartial treatment driven by generous and accurate recognition of inherent capacity -- isn't this the ideal? The right to justice is equal in the society, but not the right to resource. This notion distinguishes between the legal and the education systems, rather as our law already distinguishes between the legal and the ecclesiastical systems. 1

So, again, does a distinction in law need to be made between, on the one hand, the principle of equal standing before the law and, on the other, recognition of inherent differences of capacity which entitle to impartial but different allocation of resource?

Correlative Question: On what aspect, or aspects, of human nature does the right to equal justice rest? On a supposed equality of birth? of ability? of need? of ... ? What is the element of human nature that makes the principle of equal justice commendable? Or does this principle rest merely on an accident of history, that it resides in a body of law used by a specific society but is not there by any necessity of nature and could as commendably not be there as be?

In other words, is law based on nature or on what's in the books ... or both?

More Thoughts

A teacher would have an OS2/Windows-type GUI on their screen. Their students would be represented by icons on this screen. Each icon/student would be an 'application.'

On their workplace, a teacher can have several groups, each containing icons which represent students. A group would correspond to a class or academic subject and would be named accordingly. The icons in that group would represent the students who are taking that class from that teacher.

An icon can be duplicated and placed in more than one group (class) to account for a student's taking more than one class from a teacher. This would serve as a nice reminder of the way education really works, especially homeschooling. It would mitigate the tendency towards compartmentalization both of persons and of fields of study.

The teacher clicks on the icon/student and up comes a workplace for communicating with the student, a menu bar giving access to all pertinent information about, work by and prior communications with the student and an automatic ring through from the teacher's modem to the student's workplace, which is shown on an inset in the teacher's screen.

The teacher is able to monitor the student's work via the inset of the student's workplace in the teacher's monitor. Teacher and student can use a chat mode and a messaging system. The student is alerted when a teacher is monitoring their workplace.

The teacher should have at least a 17 inch monitor and preferably a 20 incher, flat.

OS/2's vast multi-media superiority over Windows and NT suggests that it is a better platform for this Environment than Windows/NT is.

This system would lend itself to use in penal environments, where, also, alpha and beta testing could occur.

With respect to current bean counting, we need to establish that 'time on the modem is seat time.' Thus, getting the T-1 line and associated modems operational is a top priority.

Corollary Thoughts

Some children need to be separated from their parent(s). Many need to be separated from their peers. For quite a few children, even the horrors of orphanages and foster homes would be preferable to what in their lives pass for homes.

The state, following federal guidelines, should define basic food consumption requirements and define as criminally abused by their parent(s) children whose diet does not meet this standard.

The state, also, should define adulteration of the food supply and should then define purveying adulterated food as criminal behavior.

'Health reform' turns on the American diet being corrected by government (1) proscribing adulteration of the food supply and (2) mandating standards for feeding children and enforcing those standards through propaganda and prosecution. 2

In some cases, institution of a proper diet, while it would save the children, would comprise, also, a cultural revolution in their communities. On the other hand, much of the reason for the grinding life in which some populations are trapped is their diet. Junk and snack 'foods,' white bread, refined sugar, under-cooked flesh, lack of vitamin/mineral supplements ... these are ingredients for the perpetual devolution of society. There is no rising above improper diet. Education does not reach the malnourished.

Individuals who conceive and bear children while under the influence of controlled substances should be treated as criminally abusive parents. They should be separated from the children they bear, and they should be incarcerated or sterilized or both.

December 1993
David R. Graham
Maywood Homeschool Leadership Team

Footnotes

1- A customary elision of impartiality prevents us from grasping the very obvious fact that the education system and the ecclesiastical system are one and the same thing. Everywhere. Always have been. Always will be. World-wide. The words education and religion are synonyms. The words education, religion and life are synonyms.

We are not compelled, however, to make this identity an issue of public acceptance. The exploration and construction required of us do not demand that this identity be made patent. Nonetheless, it will not hurt us to be mindful that the both the United States Military Academy at West Point and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis were founded by military Chaplains. Education is religion. Religion is education. Return

2- Both of these actions were taken, incidentally, by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan in 1945. The effect was that in a little over five years pandemic disease was eradicated from Japan, including TB, infant morality became one of the least on the planet and the population increased in stature and bone straightness. Besides universal vaccinations, the main ingredient of this medical miracle was the enforced addition of milk to the diet of Japanese children. Milk and shots made modern Japan. Return