Molon Labe! (68 page)

No problem! PLAYBOY interviews are known for free-form digressions.

Yes, well I'll try not to abuse the privilege. So,
what
were we talking about? (laughs)

Anyway, the New England educators of the 19th century studied Prussian education and imported it to America. Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance law in 1852. Parents who resisted had their children taken from them by the state militia. Barnstable on Cape Cod held out until the 1880s. By 1900 compulsory attendance laws were universal. It is vital to understand that none of this was necessary, as basic literacy was 98%
before
government schools, after which it never exceeded 91%. Just as in Prussia, reading was discouraged. After all, illiteracy is the first and the most effective form of censorship.

Basic literacy had to be maintained until the advent of auditory mass propaganda, the common household radio of the 1930s. After the 1950s, TV did all the speaking, and literacy was thereafter shot to hell.

Anyway, the school year grew longer and longer, from 12 weeks to 10 months. When I was a child, we weren't in school after Memorial Day or before Labor Day. We'll probably see it grow to 11 months if the current bill in Congress passes. As if 10 months of crappy schooling isn't enough! The State has increasingly asserted that your child belongs to them, not to you. This is undiluted Communist and Nazi doctrine.

Tell us something about your own education. Did you go to public or private schools?

I went to both about 50/50. By law the Prussian model still serves as the basis for our schools today, including most of the private ones if they want to receive government money.

Even though my private education was engineered on Prussian lines, it was nonetheless at least twice the quality as the government schools I attended. I give credit to several particular teachers and professors of mine who conscientiously taught me how to think. Fortunately, they appeared in a rather relay form, and I was not long without my next mentor.

So, whatever auspicious mental faculty I am accused to possess (laughs), I owe to these dedicated men and women, most of whom I encountered in private schools. And, because of the perception and finances of my parents, I was not only allowed to, but encouraged to attend private school.

If your private education was nonetheless structured along the Prussian model, and you survived, then how can the same structure really be so detrimental for public school children? I mean, you don't seem visibly harmed by your education.

(laughs) Well, I survived in
spite
of the system, not because of it. Actually, my mother had homeschooled me before
Kindergarten
and I already knew how to read at a second grade level. Both of my parents were avid readers, which sort of rubbed off on me. (laughs) My
Kindergarten
teacher in private school, by the way, was superb — almost Montessorian. I now see what a difference she made. Had I gone exclusively to government schools, I might not have made it. Too many children don't.

What do you mean "too many children don't"?

Think about it, Tom: You march off to school with your chronological peers, with whom you'll graduate 12 years later. "Class of 2018" is merely Orwellian NewSpeak for "Herd of 2018." If you fail to keep up to the statistical mean, you get sent to "remedial" or "special-Ed" classes. You open your books when you're told, you eat when you're told, you pee when you're told, you go home when you're told.

You do everything as a group, and nothing as an individual. You even
shower
together, which is calculated to strip away a child's sense of self and dignity. Even in 7th Grade I thought it was weird. I mean, where else is one forced to bathe in
public
?

Well, in the military, of course.

Right, that
other
bastion of individualism. (laughs) So, are you seeing the bigger picture here, Tom? Government schools are kiddie boot camps designed by one of the most militaristic races in modern history. The parallels are profound. Can you imagine army basic training without the preconditioning of grade school? Wouldn't work. Draftees would be too independent. So, you've got to "sand 'em down" while they're schoolchildren.

You go through metal detectors at the door, and suffer obtrusive searches by the dog-handling drug cops. You're encouraged to snitch on your fellow students, as well as on your own family. Doodle a third grade picture of a rifle-toting soldier or fighter plane with missiles, and you'll get expelled for "violent tendencies." Same thing if you defend yourself against the schoolyard bully. Fail to intimately describe your dreams, your fears, your aspirations, and they'll call in the school shrink. Become bored or fidgety in class — and who
wouldn't —
and you're sent to Nurse Ritalin or Doctor Prozac.

So, what have you learned after 12 years? That there is no such thing as personal privacy, and that the Bill of Rights died long ago. That private property is whatever the authorities allow. You've learned to "go with the flow" and "not rock the boat" and that you "can't fight City Hall." You've learned that "the needs of the many take precedence over the needs of the few, or the one." You've learned to shut up and do what you're
told.
And if you encounter somebody who
hasn't
learned these things, you turn him in for "suspicious" or "antisocial" behavior.

In short, you have learned to be a slave within a Police State.

Oh, come on now..."slave within a Police State"? Isn't that tilting at hyperbole?

I'll let
you
answer that yourself.

So you believe that we
do
have personal privacy? That the Bill of Rights
is
in effect? That your private property
is
off limits to bureaucrats? That you have a
right
to the fruits of your own labor, and take home 100% of your paycheck? That your individual opinion is heard and respected by the high-thinking throng? That you actually have a
say
in national government? That you can speak your mind without fear of retribution? That nobody will shun you as an "extremist" or turn you in as a "terrorist"? That you're a free man in a free country?

Do you actually believe
any
of that? And if you don't, then how can I be "tilting at hyperbole"?

Hmmm. You touch on many issues inherent to the eternal balancing of public and private concerns.

It sounds like you attended government schools! (laughs) Did you?

Well...yes, I did.

It shows. I don't say that to insult you, but since my suspicion was correct, it rather proves my point, doesn't it?

How so?

Because your natural response to my challenge was to defend governmental intrusiveness.

I did not defend governmental intrusiveness.

You did, in two ways. First, by not attacking it, and second by implying that it should exist in counterbalance to private interests.

You did not unreservedly defend an individual's right to his or her own life, which tells me one of two things: Either you don't believe in such a right, or if you do, you feel that you have too much to risk by freely admitting it. So, which is it?

I do not believe that those issues are as clear-cut as you describe. There are many shades of gray.

Gray is more deadly than black or white. Extremism has never killed as well as moderateness.

Please explain.

Black or white opinions are emphatic, and demand an emphatic response. Gray opinions do not, which in turn allows bad gray opinions to flourish when they should be challenged. Sometimes, moderation is called for, but generally it's just chickenshit.

Do you have children, Tom?

Yes, two daughters, 7 and 10.

Where do they go to school?

Uh, at a private school.

Oh, and you placed them there because you believe in
government
schools, right?

Well, ah, the gov — , uh, public schools in our district are not great.

I'm not surprised. They're not really great
anywhere.
They were not designed to educate, but to
indoctrinate.
You can't reform a system which was designed to wither the human mind and spirit. The government schools are doing exactly what they're
supposed
to do.

But you and your wife feel so strongly about quality education for your little girls that you choose to pay
twice
for it since you pay school taxes that you don't use?

I guess that's true.

Gee, Tom, you could move to Wyoming and pay just
once
, not twice.

Do you actually believe that the United States is ready, much less eager, for the kind of sweeping educational reform you propose?

I can't speak for the U.S. Nobody can. We're too large of a country for one opinion on the matter, or on
any
matter for that fact. That is precisely why the 50 States must be allowed to once again run their own affairs. I have never declared that what we have chosen in Wyoming should be
de rigueur
for Massachusetts. But, unfortunately, Massachusetts believes their system to be
de rigueur
for all of us. And, we got it. We have a Prussian Massachusetts system of government schools which mandates conformity at the expense of thinking. That's over with in Wyoming, and we'll put our literacy rates and SAT scores up against any slave school in the nation. Especially those in Massachusetts. (laughs)

I still have difficulty believing public schools to be as poor as you suggest.

If one judges the tree by its fruit, then public education collapsed about 30 years ago. Clerks cannot count change without the register doing it for them, a third of people today do not know who won World War Two, and
nobody
can properly diagram a sentence. Why, the average
Ph.D.
cannot pass a college entrance exam from 1906! How much more evidence do you need?

Still, aren't you being too harsh on the public schools? They do the best they can with the student material they're given. It's not their fault we have drugs and gang violence.

Bullshit, Tom. It is
precisely
their fault! The socialist government schools don't
reflect
the problems of the outside world — they are
causing
these problems. Why are children into drugs, gangs, and self-mutilation? Why are children exhibiting the social pathologies of prison inmates? Because they
are
prison inmates! There's more freedom at a low-security federal work camp than there is at the local government high school. Children get kidnapped at the age of 5 and sentenced to 12 years of excruciatingly dull and damaging programming. It's a sham, and kids know it. And we're shocked when they
rebel
? Compare Columbine to Attica, and the murderous rampage of Harris and Klebold becomes more understandable.

After 12 years of indoctrination at the obscene expense of awakened minds, most kids have no job prospects beyond McDonalds. Who else can afford to pay a totally unskilled and unthinking employee the current minimum wage of $12.65 an hour? While they're pushing a colorful icon of french fries on the register — because they can't do the math —their
gangsta
pals are laughing at them for even working at all. Running drugs can make more money in a single day than a month of flipping burgers.

The entire socialist agenda has created an unnatural America where children cannot work, and do not want to if they could. And who pays for it? Mom, with her two jobs. She works just to pay the family's
tax
bill, much of it for the local government youth propaganda camp. That's assuming she works. Often she's a ward of the State on food stamps, AFDC, public housing, etc. If the father actually tries to support her and his children, she loses her welfare checks. All this has transformed and ruined our society.

So, don't defend the government schools as being blameless. They're not, not by a long shot. If they had actually
educated
children, we'd today have grown adults with real minds and real futures. If you had taken the children of 1890s parents and put them in today's schools and society, they'd have been horrified and livid with the result.

Even the liberals are finally getting concerned.

How so?

Well, I have a comic actor friend in Hollywood who is quite well known through his stand-up and movie career. Although we vastly differ on political and religious matters, he once commented that it was absolutely criminal that public schools were such cesspools of gang violence, drugs, and apathy. He said that the issue totally transcended any political sensitivities, and that our schools were not tranquil havens for real learning was a national outrage. I was quite stunned by Rick's intense opinion, and wholeheartedly agreed with him.

We are currently digging the grave of government education in Wyoming. Within two years we will have achieved separation of school and state. Education will at last revert to being a family matter, not a government one.

The government teachers, however, are howling like scalded banshees. You never heard such caterwauling! I ask them why they are worried about private sector competition if their government schools are so good? They've no answer for that. They're like Yugo salesmen squealing about the new VW dealership going in across the street. Yugo salesmen who secretly drive VWs.

What do you mean?

That many government teachers send
their
children to private schools. In Chicago 40% do, and in D.C. 90% do. It's just like Congress having exempted themselves from their own Social Security creature and enjoying a fully-funded private scheme. Government employees should be required to live under their
own
programs.