25A002 The Catchism Camps by Jim Davies, 1/14/2025 

These were mentioned recently in the ZGBlog that compared two religions - one of them being the religion of government. It's a religion because its whole basis is one of faith, not reason; government is completely irrational. Its entire structure openly violates human nature and people who trust it do so regardless of its multi-millennial record of bloodshed and tyranny.

The "catechism camps" are a good descriptive name for what the priesthood calls "public schools", and they reach a bit beyond those which condition kiddies directly by government employees; for even private schools must follow its prescribed curriculum; and even home-school parents must get permission from State "authorities." Orthodox indoctrination is very tightly controlled.

I recall a classroom where third-graders whose conditioning was beginning. All around the walls of the room about 7 feet above the floor were paintings and photos of US Presidents, prominently displayed. In due course their names and dates would be taught, and in more advanced classes, their "achievements" would be lauded. To be a President was the very best and highest accomplishment to which a student could aspire in life, that was the lesson; and of course in America, anyone can do it. Compare it to becoming a Saint.

The real heroes of American history like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Colt, Firestone, Deere, Vanderbilt, Bell, McCormick, Morse, Whitney and Wright, are given less prominence and sometimes even reviled; and those who strove to prevent its long slide into collectivism like Spooner, Thoreau, Tucker, Rand, Nozick and Rothbard are barely mentioned. Of course not; they are heretics.

The idea of force-feeding each rising generation with a diet of statism began in Prussia after Napoleon had made short work of its army, thereby greatly offending King Fred. He decreed that all children must be taught in State schools the virtues of citizenship and authority, to promote patriotic fervor and discipline, in order that such humiliation would never recur. Statists everywhere quickly took up the idea and by 1840, it had begun to poison the USA. Here, there were two other classes of people eager to support it: teachers, who looked forward to better job security and salaries guaranteed by the force of taxation, and Protestants who trusted that a proper curriculum would prevent Popery taking root along with the huge influx of Irish and other immigrants.

In addition, parents were fooled by the deceptive promises of "free education" that would surely give their children a better start in life. By 1870, the swindle was securely in place. Academic excellence has steadily declined ever since; for the camps don't educate and are very far from free.

These government schools were therefore alwyas intended to indoctrinate first and foremost; their purpose is to flavor everything taught with the taste of government and how essential it is. The day I wrote this I encountered an email deploring the awful news that a new New Jersey law had scrapped the requirement for teachers to be qualified in math; the shortage of staff was too acute to bother any longer with that obstacle. Of course not; their prime purpose was never to teach math, but respect for authority. Yet the email didn't make that point; it was just an anti-Democrat piece. True and desirable as far as it went, but it failed to mention that 184 years of a government school monopoly have passed by under both R and D control.

Education has always been the excuse for compulsory, tax-funded schooling, but is quite incidental to that real purpose, and is incidental to what happens in class. True education - learning - happens only when a student's question is answered, and questions, or curiosity, arise only when interest in the subject is aroused. That's hard enough to do for a single child; it's virtually impossible to do for 25 or 3o children simultaneously. Only teachers with unusual skill and dedication can come close. Only students with an unusually powerful natural thirst for knowledge will do well, and it's remarkable to me that so many do.

Classroom teaching is the norm even in Charter and private, for-fee schools. They do better than regular ones because parents either pay money or compete for places, and therefore press teachers for good results; but none of them can compete well with the non-classroom model, in which teacher and pupil interact one on one instead of one on thirty.

That can happen only in a home school, and when the state monopoly has collapsed for want of tax money to fund it and truant police to enforce it, that's what will predominate in its place.