An Uneducated Populace is Easy to Control Thomas Jefferson

T.W. Burger

We have all heard the expression that knowledge is power.

Yes, it's true that those with the best educations tend to live better: Better jobs, more money, and effectively more rights.

If you are or have ever been poor, you understand that perfectly, as much as our society likes to deny it and claim that any of us can be elected president or achieve other high positions.

It looks good on paper. Sometimes it even comes true. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both came from very modest beginnings. They are more the exception than the rule, I think.

One of the things that has set us apart as a nation has been the wide availability of a free education.

Though later research has indicated that the statement was never actually written, at least, by him, Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, is credited with saying: "An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."

The monticello.org website states that the quote is probably a paraphrasing of what Jefferson actually said or wrote in about 1816.

In this case, the actual authorship is not as important as the message: Our democracy is based on a populace who are educated to have the ability to think critically.

In the newsrooms where I have worked over the years, the expression we used was "having a good BS detector."

Over the past half-century, we have systematically been shaving that skill out of our educational curriculum.

It's easy to assume a conspiracy, but I don't want to overreach. It's true that, in our popular culture, being smart in school is actively discouraged, not by the system but by lugheads who don't like other people to be smarter than they are.

That's nothing new. The smart kids have been hassled forever.

Here is an interesting note:

In the several decades before the American Civil War, the slave states passed laws making it illegal to teach any slave to read or write.

It is easy to read through that and not give it much thought.

Let's revisit that for a moment. In some states, the slave population made up to 80 percent of the population. The last things the masters wanted was to have their population of slaves start thinking for themselves and, worse, sharing their ideas from plantation to plantation.

It takes more than whips and nooses to control slaves. There must be control of their minds. Masters would want the slaves to think their condition was right and the way it had always been, would always be. The biggest threat would be having slaves who could THINK.

The statute below, passed by the state of North Carolina in 1830-1831, was fairly typical of the laws put into place. (emphasis mine):

"AN ACT TO PREVENT ALL PERSONS FROM TEACHING SLAVES TO READ OR WRITE, THE USE OF FIGURES EXCEPTED
Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dis-satisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion, to the manifest injury of the citizens of this State:
Therefore, Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within the State to read or write, the use of figures excepted … upon conviction, shall, at the discretion of the court, if a white man or woman, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than two hundred dollars, or imprisoned; and if a free person of color, shall be fined, imprisoned, or whipped, at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty nine lashes, nor less than twenty lashes ..."

Ancient history, some might say. Really?

What has happened to public school funding in the past half-century? How often do you read in the news about a state's schools not receiving even the funds they were promised?

I went to college through the 1970s. It took me more than a decade to get a four-year degree. Not, as some have suggested, that I am a slow reader, but because I had to pay my own way by doing any job I could find, from mortician's apprentice to truck driver. When I graduated, my student loan amount was somewhere under $10,000.

I would never be able to go to college today. Not with facing debts climbing into the hundreds of thousands.

Of course, the children of the wealthy have no problem. Those of us from more modest backgrounds ….

It makes me wonder if the same thing is happening to our blue-collar and middle class population that happened to the slaves in the mid-19th century, only in a more subtle fashion. Just look at some of the candidates in this year's presidential election: Do they seem like the choices of a thinking populace to you?

Just a thought.

T.W. Burger was born in western Pennsylvania but spent more than 30 years in Athens, Ga. He lives along Marsh Creek near Gettysburg with his partner, Sue, and a loose affiliation of cats.

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Source: https://www.publicopiniononline.com/story/opinion/2016/05/19/dangers---and-advantages---uneducated-citizenry/84584078/

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