{"id":8984,"date":"2011-09-04T23:59:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T15:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=8984"},"modified":"2011-09-05T22:42:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-05T14:42:27","slug":"2421-yet-that-was-what-they-did-to-their-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=8984","title":{"rendered":"[2421] Yet that was what they did to their children"},"content":{"rendered":"

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kitten to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their\u00a0fledglings\u00a0to fly\u2014yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of \u00a0convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.<\/p>\n

From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. “Don’t ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!”\u2014\u201dWho are you to think? It’s so, because I say so!”\u2014\u201dDon\u2019t argue, obey!”\u2014\u201dDon’t try to understand, believe!”\u2014\u201dDon’t struggle, compromise!”\u2014\u201dYour heart is more important than your mind!”\u2014\u201dWho are you to know? Your parents know best!”\u2014\u201dWho are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!”\u2014\u201dWho are you to object? All values are relative!”\u2014\u201dWho are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s only a personal prejudice!”<\/p>\n

Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival\u2014yet that<\/em> was what they did to their children.\u00a0[Atlas Shrugged<\/em>. Part 3. Chapter VI: The Concerto of Deliverance. Ayn Rand. 1957]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kitten to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their\u00a0fledglings\u00a0to fly\u2014yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,111,27],"tags":[1286,207],"class_list":["post-8984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-printed-materials","category-education","category-fiction","tag-atlas-shrugged","tag-ayn-rand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8984"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8995,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions\/8995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}