Education: A Silent Killer of the Intellect - Assignment Example

Education: A Silent Killer of the Intellect Education: A Silent Killer of the Intellect The excerpt from Howard Zinns "A Peoples History of the United States", focuses on the way education system has been utilized by the state for centuries to mobilize the common mass in its favor and maintain law and order. Referring to the late eighteenth century Blackstones Commentaries, the author mentions how the education system in modern times has followed the same path set by its forefathers. Institutions like schools and churches along with popular literature play a major role in annihilating any kind of rebellion by people living in dingy cities, who have enough reasons to revolt against the state.

After the Civil War, institutions like schools and churches taught that being rich is a sign of superiority while being poor is a personal failure. Even popular bestselling authors advocated that all rich people are good and justly own the money while all poor people are poor because they deserve to be so. Many Billionaires donated or built schools and University across United States. These institutes not only thwarted any objection against the present system but also created professionals who acted as a defense shield at troubled times.

Similarly, in the mid 19th Century, mill owners tried to make the laborers literate for the formers own good. They believed that making the laborers literate will allow them to understand their good and keep away from the troublemakers. Education was thought to be a potent weapon which can be used on young minds to make them abide to laws and orders made by the state. Lessons on history were introduced for the same reason; to make young minds patriots before they can even question the history itself.

Howard Zinn presents a critical view towards the education system that has been followed for centuries by institutions. There is no denying the fact that the design of a curriculum followed by a school or university is not merely done keeping in mind the good of the students but also of the state. Students are enlightened and made aware of only those things that the state thinks to be of importance. Therefore, what the student is exposed to or learns is actually the world as seen by the state.

It is interesting to note the language used by Russell Conwell in his bestseller Acres of Diamonds, "let us remember there is not a poor person in the United Stated who was not made poor by his own shortcomings." Such a sentence undoubtedly shifts the burden of poverty from the states shoulder to that of individual citizens who are apparently paying for their "sins". A similar language is used by the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education back in 1859 to explain the desire of the mill owners to educate their laborers.

The term used for the rebels is, " demagogues" and their claims or ideas are discarded as " temporary and factious considerations". These suggest that while making a person learn how to read, write and calculate the state is only painting the innocent brains with colors of its choice. However, it is also true that a mans spirit can never be dominated. A free mind will always think and find its way to question the state because that it human. References Zinn, Howard. (1980). Robber Barons and Rebels.

In A Peoples History of The United States. Retrieved from http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinneduc.html