Educating Sheep Versus Citizens: Part 1
This blog series will develop a conceptual framework to assess how effectively schools prepare graduates for their responsibilities as citizens in a free republic. This first part will look at an overall framework that compares educating sheep versus educating responsible citizens that are productive and responsible members of the commonwealth. At the heart of this discussion is why do we have an educational system? This part presents two potential poles: to create compliant sheep or to develop responsible citizens.
I recently read an interesting book on demagoguery and the political, academic and business elites. In one discussion, politicians and academics call the “masses” sheep to be manipulated. It discusses a cabal to use climate concerns to manipulate the sheep and make money for themselves. The cabal includes Republicans, as well as Democrats. It is a tale of greed and demagoguery.
Perhaps the goal of sheep education is to grow them to fleece them. That means growing a docile and compliant population that rarely thinks for itself. In this light, sheep are resources to exploit and fleece. Maybe that is why personnel departments are often called Human Resources.
Citizens are, or at least should be, the owner-operators of the Republic. An owner-operator needs to understand issues, assess options, and make informed decisions. The education system therefore needs to teach critical thinking, the purpose of the Republic’s Constitution and government, and analytical skills across multiple domains.
A citizen differs from a sheep. But, as the book author notes, many of our so-called elites want sheep that vote along pre-programmed lines. The elites want to make citizens sheep to control them.
The table below shows the differences between training sheep and educating citizens. The Tools and Concepts items are based on What Are 21st Century Skills? This list is similar to most sites that discuss 21st century skills.
| Dimension | Sheep | Citizen |
| Education Purpose | Control and resource management | Responsible electorate that can make informed decisions at the ballot box and in their personal lives. |
| Method | Operant Conditioning, behavior modification, indoctrination by memorization of approved concepts and memes. Family and community discouraged/prevented from seeing the curriculum. | Integrative education that teaches core concepts and then progressively applies them in serious games appropriate to the grade level to build critical thinking, analytical and collaboration skills across subject silos in a capstone event. Family and community encouraged to take part in education. |
| Merit | Standards lowered or dropped, students passed regardless of grades, low graduation rates, low student success post-graduation | Standards maintained and high, no pass unless it is earned, high graduation rates, high student success post-graduation |
| Values | Adherence to approved group norms, obedience to group leaders, compliance with group directives | Strong support for Constitutional values and the Preamble, self-responsibility, responsible citizenship |
| Civics | Little or no discussion of the founding of the Republic, little or no discussion of the Constitution and how the government works. | Constitution is a core part of all capstone activities, students understand citizen responsibilities and how the government works through integration of concepts in capstone activities, 8th grade civics course that analyzes the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and how government works from the local through the federal levels. |
| End State | Compliant workforce that does what they are told and creates few problems. Fascism.
Children loyal to the indoctrinators. |
Citizens that take responsibility for their own conduct and ensure the principles in the Preamble to the Constitution are sustained and govern public and private behavior. Liberty .
Children loyal to the family and the Constitution. |
| 21st Century Skills | ||
| AI/ML | Use AL/ML, but little or no discussion on how the tools were developed or work. “Trust the result”. | AI/ML is a tool that needs to be thoroughly understood and not blindly use. “Verify and validate results.” |
| Critical Thinking | Little or no emphasis. Instruct students on what to think. | Key element of the education. Teach students how to think. |
| Problem Solving | Little or no emphasis. Emphasis is on an unjust society and to accept the solutions the indoctrinators provide. | Problem solving and analysis are baked into the entire educational process. Teach students to ask critical questions and search for causes rather than symptoms. |
| Integrative Thinking | Training is restricted to silos, and there is little or no integration across silos. | Breakdown silos and use concepts across the academic and society spectrum together to holistically analyze issues. |
| Collaboration | Collaborate only with like-minded people from indoctrinated groups. Blindly trust the indoctrinators. | Seek people with differing ideas and backgrounds. Learn from them and incorporate deep diversity in groups. |
| Communication | Parrot approved concepts and memes. Do not engage in discourse and dialog with other groups. Promote destructive conflict. | Engage in discourse and dialog. Seek to understand why people believe and act as they do. Engage in constructive conflict. |
| Emotional Intelligence | “Our side is correct.” There is no need to understand other concepts because the groups that promote them are “anti-democratic”. Claim to incorporate emotional intelligence that gives non-traditional, discriminated groups a voice. | Seek to understand why people believe what they do. Challenge ideas respectfully and do not attack the person. |
| Social Skills | Get along with people in the same group. Challenging ideas within the group is socially unacceptable, but attacking people and ideas outside the group is socially acceptable. | Build effective teams that effective use discourse, dialog, and constructive conflict. Understand how social media can develop and sway people using memes. |
| Games & Simulations | Play fun games that reinforce approved concepts and memes. | Use serious games that incorporate the skills above to challenge students according to their grade level and cognitive development to stretch and grow. |
Note, the issues in the table are not necessarily liberal/Democratic or conservative/Republican. As Carstens noted in the book quoted above, both sides of the political divide can seek to train and fleece sheep. If the education institutions do not teach citizen skills, parents and concerned groups need to teach them outside of school.
Few schools and school districts are fully on either column. Yet there is evidence that several, if not many, are close to the sheep column. As I have discussed in the re-inventing history and other series, the Teachers’ unions seem invested in the Sheep Column.
The information in the table can be used to develop a scorecard to assess schools and districts to determine where they lie on a scale between the two columns.
The ideas and objectives in the Preamble to the Constitution are for all American, not just those of “acceptable” groups. Ideas that anti-thetical to the Constitution must be fully vetted, analyzed, and either accepted or rejected based on how they support the Preamble.
What I find troubling is that Battelle’s P21 initiative is no longer available. This initiative sought to develop key 21st century skills. Why did Battelle take it down?
Preamble to the US Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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