Imagine a door to complete freedom, abounding opportunity, and greater personal satisfaction. Public education is the lock on that door.
But there are plenty of keys.

A thought experiment: what if I tried to start a tutoring service using the same ‘business’ model as the public education system?

Are good intentions really the pavement on the road to hell? Or is it more like a mixture of violence, central planning, propaganda and sociopathy? Let’s investigate.

Are you a wolf that enjoys eating live chickens? Are you a chicken that hopes to be eaten alive by wolves? If the answer to either question is yes, then you’re gonna love democracy!

Organized crime with a flag.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

“In the 20th century, the importance of government-controlled education was understood and exploited to the greatest degree by the totalitarian states. Through the vehicles of mandatory attendance and monopoly control over curriculum, the totalitarian states saw public schools as the means to mold the population into a harmonious collective will obedient to the dictates of those possessing absolute political authority. It was not sufficient for the great dictators of our century to have their commands obeyed under the threat of force; their ultimate goal was to control the minds of the population, and, through that method, obtain voluntary obedience from the masses over whom they ruled. " -Sheldon Richman

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” — Woodrow Wilson

“Every day
in every way
it is our duty
to obey”

-Boston Public School Song Lyric
(for Character Education)

“The basis of my belief is that the ultimate violation of natural law and consequently of natural rights is to use force without a direct personal threat of physical violence being visibly enacted against your person, your property, or the person or property of another individual present with you. Generally known as the non-aggression axiom, this principle is the foundation of my morality, and it is because of this that I cannot but conclude that war is immoral.” -Daniel Lakemacher

“The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism – which foretells a coming change. As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.” — Stefan Molyneux

“Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.” -Jonathan Taylor Gatto, former public school teacher

At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of the freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. But then he gave up all he had won, and fell lower than his savage beginning. What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word “We.”
-Ayn Rand (Anthem)

“The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering…a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face.” -George Orwell, 1984

My interview on The Peter Mac Show from October 10th, 2009. I’ve added a quick introduction about the discussion and my “performance.”

A quick discussion about the growth and the future of School Sucks. Some goals for the show are discussed, and some people are thanked.

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.”
-Bodie Thoene

“Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream it. One day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself.” -Grace Llewellyn

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”
-Gandhi

Another loose and unorganized non-episode installment of School Sucks. Wes Bertrand and Daniel Lakemacher join me to discuss my recent travels.

“Whatever social reform you may envision, the version the government implements will be something completely different. However lofty your purpose, it will be debased by compromises in the legislature, in the administration of the program by thousands of government employees, and in the settling of the inevitable disputes. Not only that, the program is likely to grow far bigger and more complicated than what you wanted. And someday it will evolve into a force opposite to your intentions.” -Harry Browne

“School” is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends.
-Jonathan Taylor Gatto

“Exponential growth looks like nothing is happening, and then suddenly you get this explosion at the end.”
-Ray Kurzweil

Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.
-B. F. Skinner

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
-B. F. Skinner

I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is.
-B. F. Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
-B. F. Skinner

“To free curiosity; to permit individuals to go charging off in new directions dictated by their own interests; to unleash the sense of inquiry; to open everything to questioning and exploration; to recognize that everything is in process of change—here is an experience I can never forget.” -Carl Rogers

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
-H. L. Mencken

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” -H. L. Mencken

“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” -Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda

“There are races, more or less akin to our own, whom we may admit freely, and get nothing but advantage from the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races which we cannot assimilate without a lowering of our racial standard, which should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes.”
-Francis Bellamy, Racist, Socialist, Author of Pledge of Allegiance

“The Lincoln Memorial is a temple to the idea that government in America is not voluntary, and never will be as long as Lincoln is its primary symbol and as long as Lincoln mythology remains the state’s cornerstone ideology. Lincoln micromanaged the murder of some 350,000 fellow Americans, including more than 50,000 civilians, in order to “prove” his point that the central government is indeed not voluntary, the states were never sovereign (so he said), and that any group of citizens who contemplate leaving it will be killed en masse, their cities and towns burned to the ground, and their wealth and personal belongings confiscated by the U.S. Army."
-Thomas J. DiLorenzo

“Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.” -Franklin Roosevelt

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” -Karl Marx

“I received instructions through military channels to provide opium for the Chinese people by establishing an opium suppression board.” -Harada Kumakichi, Japanese Military Attache at Shanghai from 1937 to 1939

“I am convinced that we can do to guns what we’ve done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.” –George L. Roman

“The rest of us act by consent? Why can’t you?”
-Ian Freeman, to City of Keene property tax bureaucrat

Unlike BF Skinner’s “box”, used for the operant conditioning of rats, government school does have a way out.

“(Nationalism is) a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.”
-Howard Zinn, author

“Governor, why wouldn’t anyone want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, unless they detested their own country or were ignorant of its greatness?”
-Sean Hannity, idiot

A quick summary of my thoughts about the NH Liberty Forum, along with a clip of me on my favorite radio show. With Gard Goldsmith and Mark Edge.

March 19th, 2010.

“They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority.” -Gerald Masey

Yes, very difficult.

“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”
-Robert Lynd

“…History shows that … (people) can be deflected from their natural tendencies by artful propaganda, bogus crises, or other political trickery.”
-Robert Higgs, author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government

“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.”
-Abraham Lincoln, guy who apparently didn’t pay too much attention to the things that came out of his mouth

From Capitol Access Website: Denis and Lydia interview Brett Veinotte, host of the School Sucks Podcast and creator of SchoolSucksProject.com — a project concerning, in his words, “the END of public education”
Brett is a professional educator who has come to realize that the basic design of public school “sucks” the creative capacity out of children, and also “sucks” wealth away from more productive uses.

Picture: My estimate of the audience members’ average political position, based on the World’s Smallest Political Quiz.

On Wednesday April 14th, I was invited to speak to the UConn Students For Liberty at the University of Connecticut. I had prepared a thirty-minute speech, and planned to devote another 30 minutes to Q&A. However, the audience included several socialists, and the entire event wound up running three hours.

Picture: Guess why.

On Wednesday April 14th, I was invited to speak to the UConn Students For Liberty at the University of Connecticut. I had prepared a thirty-minute speech, and planned to devote another 30 minutes to Q&A. However, the audience included several socialists, and the entire event wound up running three hours.

Picture: Hey kids! The military wants you to know that if you eat right and exercise, a nice box like one of these could have your name on it one day.

Picture: Pragmatists love charts. Charts that illustrate effects. So here’s a chart showing how much government school sucks. It’s also pretty representative of all ‘services’ provided at gunpoint, in terms of cost verses quality.

“People invest in things that are tangible.” -Kate Richards

“So much political language is designed to obscure the simple reality of state violence that libertarianism sometimes has to sound like a broken record. We must, however, continue to peel back the euphemisms to reveal the socially-sanctioned brutality at the root of some of our most embedded social institutions.” -Stefan Molyneux

“The way to a better world must start with complete repudiation of a moral code that holds the sacrifice of individuals and their property as proper for the common good. By that inverted ethical standard, there can be no end to the sacrifices; soon, they consume an entire civilization, because each person who abides by this code has his or her own values to force on everyone else.” -Wes Bertrand

“In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” -Mark Twain

“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.” -Ayn Rand

NOTE: Mark Twain’s quote is not scientifically accurate, but you get the idea

“…education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.” – Maria Montessori

“The first idea the child must acquire is that of the difference between good and evil.” – Maria Montessori

“I’ve noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage your child is in, the parents who have older children always tell you the next stage is worse.” -Dave Barry

And the final stage is the most tragic.

“Your lands, your possessions, your very lives, will gladly be given in tribute to me. In return for your obedience you will enjoy my generous protection.” -General Zod (poorly conceived antagonist from the movie, Superman II)

“You shall give the firstborn of your sons to me. You shall do likewise with your cattle and with your sheep. Seven days it shall be with its mother, then on the eighth day you shall give it to me.” -Almighty God (poorly conceived character in the popular children’s book, The Bible)

“Repeatedly, we see that damaged and repressed humans create damaging and repressive societies. In contrast, people who are healthy and free inside create healthy and free societies. There is no reason to think it will ever be otherwise. If we want more freedom in the world, we must, among other things, reduce those factors which cause emotional damage, especially to the very young.” -Glen Allport

“Experiments performed in marine zoos may be interesting and instructive so long as we do not forget that the subjects used in these experiments have been conditioned and deformed, and that they bear little resemblance to dolphins living in the freedom of the seas. It is especially important to bear this in mind when dealing with the psychological aspects of beings as complex as marine mammals. It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misinterpretations and absurd generalizations.” -Jacques Cousteau, oceanographer

A Free State Project Edition of School Sucks Podcast

Thoreau may have also brooded over the reaction of Emerson, who criticized the imprisonment as pointless.

According to some accounts, Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?”

Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

Emerson was “out there” because he believed it was shortsighted to protest an isolated evil.

“Nobody wants to come to school just to learn.” -Joanne Cockrell, Principal of Jefferson High School

“Our views on teens are largely determined by the powerful messages our media sources and thought leaders feed us daily: teens are reckless, incompetent, and violent; young people need to be sheltered; childhood should be extended as long as possible. Our views can reasonably be conceived of as a kind of irrational prejudice programmed by our culture – almost precisely the kind that mainstream Americas bore towards women and blacks until very recent times.”
-Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult In Every Teen

“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.”

-Erica Goldson, Valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens High School Class of 2010

“Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them “care less” about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable." -Dr. Bruce E. Levine

emergence (noun):

1. coming out of, passage out
2. a beginning
3. coming into sight

“Self-trust is the essence of heroism.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!” -Albert Einstein

My September 2nd, 2010 Discussion With Gard