Liberty Round Table Essay Contest

14-16 First Place Winner

My Generation, by Justyn Jones

My generation has been deprived of the knowledge of how to think! This has happened at the hands of the intellectuals and bureaucrats who control the state run school system; those who wish to depreciate our thought processes to the point at which we are no longer capable of thinking effectively for ourselves. Instead they would have us rely on what they wish to instil in us as our only source of knowledge.

Some may think that this is not at all the purpose of the school system; that their goal is to educate us, to make us better people ­ but those who believe this are sorely misled. Schooling is supposed to provide instruction in three areas: training, indoctrination and education. The schools do a good job of indoctrinating us ­ mostly with the fascist doctrine of Plato; they do a poorer job of training; and they don't do any real education at all.

Education, from the Latin word "educere" means to lead out from within. Education would assist us by teaching us how to use our minds to think about problems so we can solve them; how to look at truths and facts and come to our own conclusions. But, do those who rule us really wants us to become more skilled in these areas? No! They do not educate us; they indoctrinate us to their own ends.

To indoctrinate is to instil in one an approved system of beliefs. That is their goal: to condition us through a system which teaches us to think only along certain lines.

Through this process too many within my generation have lost all desire to know anything for themselves; they are content to sit back apathetically and look to their teachers for the "correct answers" ­ those answers which have been considered "appropriate" by the government agencies who release information only when they think it will further their cause.

For instance, who is ever taught in school that Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Sam Adams, among others were not on the side of Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay? We have simply grown accustomed to grouping Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and those "other men" all together as our "Founding Fathers". Why are we not taught that Jefferson's last letter to John Adams was written to caution against the dictatorship he foretold would come despite the "balance of power" that the Constitution was supposed to provide. Why are we not taught that the dictatorship did indeed become a reality under Abraham Lincoln? Some fact just seem to be left out of our history books; others are distorted. As a result, whose memorial is most revered today, Jefferson's or Lincoln's? Why, that of the "Great Emancipator", of course!

Even our literature is watered down and, for the most part, trivial. Why are we not given intellectually challenging authors such as Ayn Rand or George Orwell? Isn't it about time to move on in our literary capacity? But then, of course, they do not want that; they would rather dull our abilities to comprehend ideas than to encourage their growth.

Do you see how the truth has been hidden from us? How those poderamanic intellectuals have manipulated history to suit their purposes? Yet, the victims of this tyranny have been so conditioned that they do not realize what is happening to them.

Johann Fichte, who helped fashion the Prussian school system after which our modern system is modelled, wrote: "The state's schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot tell otherwise than what you wish him to tell."

This is what is happening in the schools today! Students have become dumbed down to the point that they lose all individuality of thought and simply become part of the great mass of complacent people who "go with the flow". But I object. I refuse! I will not continue down this path of bland, apathetic indifference. I will not sit back and watch it happen. I will remove myself from this system of indoctrination and seek to awaken others. For the future of my nation lies in the hands of my generation.

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