Schoolteachers help me gain control of the minds of children not so much by what they teach the children as because of what they do not teach them. The entire public school system is so administered that it helps my cause by teaching children almost everything except how to use their own minds and think independently. I live in fear that someday some courageous person will reverse the present system of school teaching and deal my cause a death blow by allowing the students to become the instructors, using those who now serve as teachers only as guides to help the children establish ways and means of developing their own minds from within. When that time comes, the schoolteachers will no longer belong to my staff.
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[Helping children to think] may be the purpose of schooling, but the system in most of the schools of the world does not carry out the purpose. School children are taught not to develop and use their own minds, but to adopt and use the thoughts of others. This sort of schooling destroys the capacity for independent thought, except in a few rare cases where children rely so definitely upon their own will power that they refuse to allow others to do their thinking. Accurate thought is the business of my opposition, not mine!
Outwitting The Devil, Napoleon Hill, pgs 81-82
The above quotation is from Napoleon Hill’s Outwitting the Devil, which features what Hill believed to be an interview with the Devil — or that force and energy in the world which drives people into ruts of fear, anxiety, and desperation.
The primary ends towards which the Devil operates are those of fear and controlling the minds of his subjects. Whether one wants to imagine Hill actually speaking with the Devil or simply using the conversation as a metaphor, this important point about the power of thinking for oneself and not being motivated by 1) the fear of death, poverty, sickness, ill-repute, etc; and 2) the ideas and thoughts of others (who are themselves largely motivated by 1) ) is integral to any teaching of success and existential fulfillment.
There’s a key point here on schooling. Schools are largely structured as mechanisms by which established knowledge is fed into and internalized by students — mostly by schoolteachers. Opponents of standardized schooling regimes — many, at least — don’t oppose them because of the content of what is being taught, but because the idea of standardized schooling drives out and diminishes the individual’s ability to think for herself.
Consider again the quotation from the Devil:
I live in fear that someday some courageous person will reverse the present system of school teaching and deal my cause a death blow by allowing the students to become the instructors, using those who now serve as teachers only as guides to help the children establish ways and means of developing their own minds from within.
A system that allows students to not only choose the ends towards which their education is structured, but to actually engage in teaching other students this material is one which ultimately inculcates an ability for the individual to think and make judgements for herself. Out of our own fear that children won’t learn the right things, we reinforce a system that is ultimately the abdication of free and authoritative thought by individuals.
We can do better. And that starts with the freedom to quit.
Check out some of the ways we can think about schooling, Part I.