A Standard Quote From Mencken On Education

“The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else… Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.”

H. L. Mencken
Raconteur & 20th Century Libertarian Man Of Letters

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

5 thoughts on “A Standard Quote From Mencken On Education”

  1. We will just retrain them in a christian worldview when they come home. How can our children be salt and light to the world if they are kept home for their schooling?

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  2. Jared,

    If a parent actually took the time to deprogram their children who are government schooled and reprogram their children with a Christian worldview that could conceivably work though I think it would wear the poor child out. However, if the child could stand up underneath all that programing and deprogramming that child would be an apologist extraordinaire. Most parents I know however don’t greet their government schooled children with the words, “Well, what did we learn today that is a lie,” and most parents that I know aren’t prepared themselves to deprogram their children.

    Children need to be trained to be salt and light but when we send them to government schools we are training them to be flat salt and dark light. When we send them to government schools we are putting them under pagan authority and then asking them to gainsay that authority by being salt and light. I would turn the question and ask, “How can our children be salt and light to the world if we send them to government schools that indoctrinate in a false religion.?”

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  3. A command to parents with a promise

    Ps 78:4-7

    We will not conceal them from their children, But tell to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.

    For He established a testimony in Jacob And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers That they should teach them to their children,

    That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, That they may arise and tell them to their children,

    That they should put their confidence in God And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments

    These verses state that a child’s education is to include:

    1) Teaching them to praise the LORD, Whose name is not even allowed to be mentioned in a public school.

    2) Teaching them about His great strength and wonderful works that He has done.
        A) The creation of all things out of nothing
        B) That the universe is an orderly universe (not chaotic or evolving) “upheld” at every moment “by the word of His power.”

    3) Teaching them His law
        A) The murder of innocents is evil
        B) Homosexuality is not normal but a sin

    Education is about more than just the “3R’s”. It is conditioning. Send children to public school and they will be taught that the Lord is not the Creator but that He is lord over nothing, that His word is perverse, that 2+2=4, and in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and that Jesus Christ is relevant to nothing.

    Ps 78:4-7 comes with promises

    Teach them to praise the LORD, Teach them about His great power and of His wonderful works and His law and He says that they will put their confidence in Him and not forget His works but keep His commandments. By His grace of course.

    Teach them that His law is perverse, and that He is not Creator and Lord over all, and that Jesus Christ is relevant to nothing and only by His grace will they not forget the Lord and keep His commandments

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  5. Bret,

    Thanks

    All is well. Just been very busy with a new job.

    I forgot to add that sons are arrows, weapons. But they aren’t born that, they are raised into that. When they are children they aren’t ready to “give a reason for the hope that is in them.” Sending an untrained soldier to war could result in physical death. Young children aren’t warriors, yet. Sending an untrained child to war, as salt and light in a public school, could very well result in spiritual death. We don’t want them being arrows in a pomo quiver.

    Thanks for the great job you are doing

    I’ve met Pastor Wilson several times and I look forward to meeting you. The wife and I may make the 4 hour road trip for the Christmas Eve service some time

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