"We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone.
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone.
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall 

Education as Propaganda

Ummar Ziauddin 'The Nation'



Education, specifically formal education received at schools in controlled and regimented settings, is a tool of propaganda. Education received at schools does not only inflate phobias as Bacon believed through tales; but it also modifies human behaviour, influences thought patterns and shapes the entire world view of our children, impacting, among other things, their responses to social order. Nation-states, often rationalise and even at times define their nationalism, have used the system of education to romanticise the past and to manufacture consensus on fabrications, thus merging myth and reality.

We have rolled out generations of pupils, corrupting their impressionable minds, who remain averse to scientific principles; who continue to harbour misplaced ideas about “Pakistaniat”; who remain confused on the role of religion in one’s life and in the affairs of the state; who believe heroism is but what is instructed in crafted tales of battles and wars that we never won; who argue all non-Muslims (and its definition these days seems to incorporate other sects also) are enemies; and who believe the world continues to conspire against our country. Do we not have any shame for what we have done to our children?

At the minimum, the role of education in schools is to better equip pupils for specialised instructions in chosen fields of higher studies and obtain gainful employment. Education, at maxima, should develop in children, the critical thinking, without assigning value on knowledge, disciplines or languages nor seeking to carve out identity on the basis of excluding others. It should usher our young scholars towards enlightenment; insusceptible to boundaries and directions. As Kant believed the motto of enlightenment was (and continues to be): Courage to know!   (click here for full article)

Education is the State's Greatest Tool for Propaganda 

Brittany Hunter 'fee.org'



In a society where totalitarianism reigns, truth is found not in objective principles, but in a government’s desired ends. Once these ends have been established, all other forms of information are tailored to reinforce that “truth.” Reason is henceforth thrown out the window and the state’s version of truth is beyond contestation.

In Nazi Germany educational doctrine specifically denied that such a thing as “the truth” exists. ... The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past.

If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened”—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five.

No matter how intelligent an individual may be, almost every person is susceptible to propaganda. This is because, in many instances, most are unaware that they are falling prey to it. It seeps into our lives through all forms of entertainment but most especially through state-sponsored education.

But this deliberate molding of minds does not only occur in young students. In fact, once these children’s minds have been sufficiently indoctrinated, they are passed off to institutions of higher education where a belief in intellectual elitism is then instilled.

Trained to learn by rote methods rather than critical thinking, young adults, eager to assert their independence, were thrown into colleges and universities and told that they are now part of the intellectual elite. But from this comes the dangerous tendency to stop questioning the information that is presented to you. After all, your professors are highly regarded for their intellect. Why would they steer you in the wrong direction?

But when these professors begin to present state opinion as unquestioned truth, this is where the real problems arise.  (click here for full article)

 “In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church,
and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.”

John Taylor Gatto