Relating to Ancient Learning: As it influences the 21st century

By Gary W Wietgrefe

Hieroglyphs to Virtual Classrooms: Have We Really Progressed?
How are we learning? In recent decades, children have learned through many sources outside family, including daycare, schools, and after-school activities. Learning is in great contrast with centuries past where most things were taught by parents and family. Wha

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Wietgrefe
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780999224953

Gary W Wietgrefe

GARY W. WIETGREFE (pronounced wit'grif) For the past five years without a car or home, Gary and his wife, Patricia, traveled the world with a backpack and observed: Some places have bookstores and family-owned "mom and pop shops"; others do not. Some brick and mortar retailers thrive in places while others strive to stay alive. Why? In many locations, education is intermittent with children helping families survive. Elsewhere, too many children forced schools to operate two shifts. Often in the developed world, children try to skip school. He investigated why there were differences. As an inventor, researcher, military intelligence veteran, economist, agriculturalist, systems developer, societal explorer, and author, Gary has observed and documented his findings from his many travels and experiences. What does ancient mean? Could the difference between modern and ancient be the same reason grandparents buy books and newspapers and younger generations read electronic books, blogs, and engage social media on devices? His books Relating to Ancient Culture and Relating to Ancient Learning help answer those profound questions.

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Relating to Ancient

Learning

As it influences the 21st century

Gary W. Wietgrefe

GWW Books Sioux Falls, SD

Copyright © 2018 by Gary W. Wietgrefe

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

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www.relatingtoancients.com

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Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact BCH Fulfillment & Distribution, 33 Oakland Avenue, Harrison, NY 10528; Orders: 1 [phone],Email: [e-mail]; Tel: [phone]; Fax [phone]; Website: www.bookch.com.

Production management: Michael Bass Associates, www.bass-books.com

Cover Design: Julie Gallagher at Michael Bass Associates with Tecoxquine Aztec petroglyphs of Alta Vista, Nayarit, Mexico by author; silhouette image © iStock sezer66.

Names: Wietgrefe, Gary W., 1953— author.

Title: Relating to Ancient Learning as it influences the 21st century/Gary W Wietgrefe, Sioux Falls, South Dakota: GWW Books, 2018.

Identifiers: Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916590 / ISBN 9780999224939 - hardcover; ISBN 9780999224946 - paperback; ISBN 9780999224953 - e-book.

Subjects: Non-fiction: Social Science—Learning

Classification: BISAC Codes: 1. SOC 022000 Social Science/Popular Culture; 2. HIS 037080 History/Modern/21st Century; 3. FAM 039000 Family & Relationships/Life Stages/School Age; 4. EDU 034000 Education/Educational Policy & Reform/General; 5. EDU 016000 Education/History; 6. BUS 085000 Business & Economics/Organizational Behavior.

First Edition Printed in the United States of America

This is dedicated to my loving wife, Patricia, our children, grandchildren, and future generations that seek the best learning system.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Clouds Disappear

Before Zero

Spy Debt

Monopolies Go Bust

Sputnik Preschool

School a Goal?

Passed Past

Inefficiency

Hibernation

In loco parentis

Technophobia

Side-step

Busiphobia

Social Lending

Who’s Working?

Old Tools

Overhead

Free Throw

PhD3

Eco-apostacy

Memory

Good for Nothing

Synthetic Minds

Age Group

Individual Success

Calculator vs. Calculation

Ag vs. Ed

Snippets

Freedom to Learn

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Getting books proofread, edited, produced, printed, and marketed is a pleasing effort when working with talented professionals. First, my dear wife, Patricia, I cannot thank enough for all the years she has endured my reading, notetaking, and day and night writing. It is with heartfelt thanks that I pass on my gratitude to Michael Bass Associates who took both books, Relating to Ancient Culture and Relating to Ancient Learning, through the many facets of the book production process. Lori Cavanaugh worked tirelessly editing and proofreading, again and again and again. A design wonder, Julie Gallagher was responsible for cover and text design and the production of the two books. Linda Hallinger did an amazing job indexing. Eli Wietgrefe and Chad Phillips I thank dearly for their imagination in photo production and manipulation. Scott Jordan, using his years of experience in book publishing, did a fantastic job developing my website www.relatingtoancients.com. Last, but certainly not least, I thank Becky Phillips for the many years I have worked with her in marketing, coordinating too many loose ends, and scheduling.

Thank you all so much . . .  Gary

Introduction

With provocative insight, Wietgrefe explores societies’ underlying truths of learning. The school system is a recent phenomenon and thereby could not have been the basis for societal development.

Education in his grandfather’s eighty-six years, spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, made common products out of dreams of brilliant minds like Aristotle, da Vinci, Galileo, and Franklin thanks to contemporaries like Edison, Einstein, and others.

What changed?

While some are amazed at gadgets, Wietgrefe explores family, social, and school systems’ impact on today’s youth. They learn differently; as such, progress has slowed. Insomuch that today’s society is consuming based on past inventiveness without sustainability.

Blending originality, historical examples, and subtle humor, readers find his audacious exploits into learning highly controversial. Academia will be unnerved. Systems will change. Find out why.

Learning can be a mundane topic until Wietgrefe turns it into a venturous journey. Every page of Relating to Ancient Learning makes you think.

1

Clouds Disappear

A generation is coming of age that thinks all previous knowledge is accessible on the Internet; it’s sad, but true. Only a minute fraction in the history of man has been written. Of what has been written, little survived into the twenty-first century. Of what has survived, most is hidden in closets, basements, desks, personal home libraries, antique shops, newspaper and magazine offices, research facilities, churches, courthouses, schools, government buildings, and garbage dumps.

Stone, clay tablets, metal plates, and coins contain some of the most ancient written records. Much has not been transcribed into today’s readable languages. Some remain at archeological sites around the world or in private or public collections. Much has not been unearthed and may never be found.

Mere shreds remain of transcribed perishable ancient writing materials. Like homonyms we do not understand, more has been lost than found of waxed wood, bamboo books, bark, cloth, leather, vellum, palm leaves, papyrus, parchment, and paper. What has been found reminds me of an old melody replayed in my mind without having the ability to either source it, write the musical notes, or identify the instrument; worst of all, I cannot complete the tune.

Are we in tune with the current generation, or is it past? Past usefulness?

Contrary to Internet gurus, our current database of written records is being destroyed more quickly than were ancient libraries. What is not currently contained on the Internet is being lost to history . . . lost to our youth. Books will be antiques rotting in the basement of the past.

Electronic drives crash. Information is lost. As a cloud forms and disappears, so goes knowledge when not committed to memory and passed on.

Human genesis will continue. What knowledge are parents and grandparents passing on? Has it changed? Why?

Yes, a small fraction of the written record not destroyed by war, water, fire, fungi, insects, rot, and rodents is in public and institutional libraries around the world but little is accessible to the public. Can you walk into Rome’s Vatican, or Nalanda Buddhist monastery in India’s ancient kingdom of Magadha, and be granted free access to all their written records? No.

The Vatican houses private religious and secular writings and requires scholarly documentation for admission. A select few have spent extensive time reviewing hundreds of years of ancient records. Opposing religious fanatics about eight hundred years ago destroyed Nalanda’s vast library. Before being destroyed around 1200 A.D., scholars from Korea, China, Tibet, and other distant regions traveled to Nalanda’s University—a center for learning for more than 700 years.

Most stores of historic knowledge are inaccessible. Private and public collections are vaults. Some are sealed whereas others leap barriers to be accessible. Countries block access of their secrets; some become public for the world to learn.

During World War II, Germans developed radio, antenna, aviation, and other concepts of engineering and physics that were latently shared by Russia and the United States. Each used 1930s’ and 1940s’ German technology against each other in the Cold War (1947–1991). Atomic energy is an example. Less known were Hitler’s plans for sourcing and intercepting electronic signals. The incomplete designs were so interesting that Russia and the United States developed their own antennas a mile in circumference and placed them around the world. The next 60 years they listened, sourced, and tried to interpret the other’s communications. I used several of those antennas. A few pieces of paper in an enemy’s filing cabinet became an international communications revolution—a land-based global positioning system.

What disappears is not usable. Learning is reversed.

Wouldn’t it be nice to read and understand the engineering plans and discussions that led to the earliest pyramids (actually, ziggurats) of Mesopotamians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Elamites, or the more modern pyramids of Egyptians, Mayans, Teotihuacans, or those in Peru, Sudan, Nigeria, Canary Islands, China, India, and Indonesia, or the Monks Mounds at Cahokia in present-day Illinois?

Why were pyramids left to decay? Were they built as a tome for the wealthy, a religion that faded into obscurity, relics of a defeated military, an ancient tourist attraction, or a symbol of resources exploited and depleted? Communication was certainly involved in their organization, construction, and maintenance. Why don’t we have written plans of pyramid construction rather than obscure references of them?

Materials and electronics have replaced memory as a learned skill.

It is not unusual for the power-hungry to destroy or move historic libraries. Two hundred years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte moved the whole Vatican Library to Paris in 1809, although after his defeat it was moved back to Rome in 1817.

Catholics are not lily white in their preservation of ancient text. About 250 years before Napoleon’s heist of the Vatican Library, Spanish Conquistadors and their surrogates, Catholic bishops and priests, destroyed nearly all ancient Mayan Codex in the sixteenth century. In July 1562 the Yucatan’s leading cleric, Catholic Bishop Diego de Landa, wrote, . . . We burned them all. . . .¹ Fortunately, at least four Mayan coded volumes survived. Likewise, cyberists know clouds can vanish without guns.

¹ Mayan Codex destroyed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices (Sourced November 27, 2015)

Like many resources of ancient knowledge, the Library of Celsus in Ephesus (Turkey), Egypt’s grand library in Alexandria, the Neo-Assyrian Royal Library of Ashurbanipal (Iraq), Constantius II’s Byzantine Imperial Library of Constantinople (Turkey), University of Taxila (Pakistan), and Nalanda’s University (India) were destroyed along with perhaps a couple thousand years of Mayan Codex spread throughout the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico). Evidence of ancient knowledge at archeological sites indicates only the resource, not the result.

All people ate, drank, were sheltered, and built. They carried and passed on knowledge through time. Some can be observed several thousand years later. Will our generation leave substantial evidence? Have we trained our generation to maintain a successful path? Is the current learning system sustainable? Is it functional for developing future societies?

We can look at the past and observe progress up until now. It quickened at times and slowed. Sometimes it died. In fact, all past cultures have died—every one of them! What makes anybody think ours is unique? It is not. The more curious may want to read my book, Relating to Ancient Culture and the mysterious agent changing it.

Does the outlook for the future provide the same confidence? If there have been changes in learning, can faults be identified? If so, name them. I have tried to identify some. For cultural posterity, how can they be corrected?

Knowledge is only knowledge if it is available for present and future generations. It is not knowledge if it is not available, not understood, not conceptualized, and not acted upon. Like destroyers of ancient libraries, systems can vanish not just by destruction, but also by changed learning systems.

What are youth learning? Few question the system. Who is teaching? Has it changed? When?

The U.S.’s largest industry is the school system. It’s a monopoly. Many participate. Few observe. However, like any industry, the owners must regularly evaluate if the system is adequate. Is it generating expected results?

Observe young adults to see what knowledge has been passed on. Their modus operandi reflects destiny or fate. Compare results and usefulness from a historical perspective.

The school system is like fresh water; it works its way through land and life. When in the right place and timed correctly, the land prospers; otherwise it stagnates and lacks sustainability. Young adults to those in mid-life have always provided useful knowledge from a fresh stream of eager workers.

A 2600-year-old ancient Chinese quandary is revealing: If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.²

² A statement credited to Laozi (a.k.a. Lao Tzu), a Chinese philosopher during the Zhou Dynasty approximately fourth to sixth century B.C.

Relating to Ancient Learning is personalized generational evidence seen in youth and young adults. It provides background for evaluation. Knowledge is not a book, building, location, or organization—those are always being destroyed and replaced. Youth are our generation’s codex.

2

Before Zero

I did not attend kindergarten—our country schools in the late 1950s did not have kindergarten. School started with first graders. Grade one was memorable.

For thousands of years, children were taught they were one-year-old after a year of life—meaning they were born at zero. However, Medieval Europe did not get zero into their math system until about 1200 A.D. and it was not commonly used until the sixteenth century. One was their first number. Anything with zero was called Arabic numbers. Over a thousand years before Europeans, Sumerians, Babylonians, and Mayans developed the concept of zero.

Europeans did not believe it. If there was a zero, zero was nothing. Since it is nothing, why call it a number? That was the thinking of European educators during the Dark Ages (400–1500 A.D.). This serves as an early example of educators misleading students. (More can be found in my book Relating to Ancient Culture.³) Highly educated leadership can be so ignorant that it will not accept facts—especially those exposed by the Ancients. Imminent future discoveries are often opposed by academia. Once an enigma is exposed, the ignorant, especially those who consider themselves highly educated, will lead the effort to prove facts wrong.

³ Wietgrefe, Gary, Relating to Ancient Culture and the mysterious agent changing it, GWW Books, 2018, p. 149.

It reminds me of a quote from Katherine Paterson’s book Bridge to Terabithia: It’s like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.

Son of a university professor, a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scottish engineer, physicist, and mathematician, Lord William Thomson Kelvin (1824–1907) began attending Glasgow University at age ten and was a highly respected researcher while at Cambridge University. He was so accepted by academia that absolute temperatures are still stated in units of kelvin. However, as heavier-than-air engineering was taking off, in 1896 he refused membership in the Aeronautical Society. In 1902, a year before the Wright brothers’ first flight, Lord Kelvin, by then a world-renowned physicist stated, No balloon and no aeroplane will ever be practically successful.

Those with limited education accept challenges and become commercial successes despite ideas being assumed impossible.

Without a formal education nor help from them, Christopher Columbus learned a trade, sailing. Even though the concept of zero was established at least 4000 years ago, it was not used by European educators 300 years before Columbus set out for India and happened upon the continent of North America and even then (1492), zero was not a component in his charting and computations. Why?

European seafarers in the Columbus era could not accurately compute longitude and latitude on a map (although it had been used on maps as early as 300 B.C. by Eratosthenes and 200 A.D. by Hipparchus). Without longitude and latitude readings, north was a direction but could not be computed when north is zero on a 360-degree scale. A 360-degree scale had been used by Babylonians (2350–529 B.C.) and Persians (550 B.C.–651 A.D.) followed by Greek astronomers measuring degrees of a circle, approximate days in a year, and on maps with north at the top.

Societies advanced and stagnated, advanced and stagnated, not always taking advantage of what was learned in the past. Neither businesses nor society’s generals like Columbus wait on academics to move forward. Academics follow society not lead it.

A disease develops; the educated try to control it and researchers study it. People have teeth problems and smart people study dentistry. After having trouble seeing, those who studied optometry and ophthalmology are consulted. Doctors, dentists, and eye doctors would not go to a couple of decades of school if society did not have problems they thought they could help heal. Problems occurred before academics.

Now consider the uneducated, but multilingual thirty-four-year-old sailor, Cristoforo Colombo (Italian), showing up at the Spanish Queen Isabella’s castle door with a plan to sail to India as a new means of getting imports from the East. In 1486 Isabella’s well-educated council blew him off, likely because he made some logistical mistakes. Negotiations continued until January of 1492 when Isabella gave her last rejection. King Ferdinand, who apparently was at the first meeting years earlier and questioned the results of Isabella’s council, started a series of negotiations with Cristobal Colon (Spanish).

In 1469, Ferdinand II of Aragon married his cousin Isabella I of Castile to unite kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula (now Spain). After defeating the Muslims in southern Spain in early 1492 (who had ruled most of what is now Spain, Portugal, and part of France for seven hundred years), an urgent need developed to get goods from the Far East (India). Muslim traders who brought goods from the East overland for centuries were no longer reliable nor inexpensive.

Ignoring the educated, Ferdinand and Isabella contracted Christopher Columbus (Latin) as Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Oceanus Occidentalis—ocean west of the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic) granting him a tenth of the land and an eighth of all business he could bring to their kingdoms.

Columbus must have had a convincing demeanor. Not only did he get a fleet of ships, potential land, and business commissions, he also hung at the coastal bars to recruit experienced seamen to operate his venture. Good ships and sailors were in demand as commercial fishermen, hauling cargo between ports, and especially in 1492 hauling Jews out of the country.

Just like mothers know when a toddler has a fake cry, seamen, lacking scholarship, have a keen ear for blowhards. With friends lost at sea or shipwrecked by storm, Columbus’s story must have been compelling. Really, You want us to head out into Occidentalis [where only a few islands were known to exist (i.e., Canary)], drop off the edge (at the time, an academic putdown of Columbus), and be back in less than a year when it took Marco Polo (two centuries earlier) 24 years to return. You have to be kidding! Most rational sailors would have said, You’re nuts if you think I’m going. Only fools would join you! Próxima cerveza, por favor!"⁴

⁴ Próxima cerveza, por favor is Spanish for next beer, please.

Columbus knew he had to be extremely efficient using nature as much as possible. Assuming sun, stars, and poles were constant, ship draft, supplies carried, and optimizing winds would be crucial on a successful journey for his group of ships.

Conserving mass for efficiency, we now know bubbles naturally share walls when grouped; likewise, the speed of light is considered constant (but likely isn’t) as are magnetic north and south poles that do move. Sailing is complex. Even with today’s instruments, very few sailors would risk the high seas to sail into the unknown on wooden ships.

Likely, Columbus knew Atlantic trade winds (based on his initial departure and return trip) and had far more practical experience than Isabella and Ferdinand’s educated court, which obviously presented better estimates of distances to India and back.

Proof of success: For over 500 years American Natives have been called Indians and those in India are called Indians. By 1493 more than a few Europeans believed Columbus had reached the Far East. Consequently, if left up to King Ferdinand and Isabella’s educated councilors, Columbus would not have made the trip to claim the new lands for Spain. Forever thereafter, American Natives were referred to as Indians.

As another example, educators in Europe at the time of Columbus considered zero an uncharitable number. That is like college-educated television weather reporters today saying, the winds are calm. What a stupid statement. There is no wind if it is calm. Since your local television weather reporter is likely more ignorant than the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, ask for the direction of calm winds. (Note: Calm wind has no direction or speed.)

Self-taught, Columbus used the resources of kingdoms, experience, and maps of others, and sailed.

It is interesting that no detailed accounts exist of what happened to Isabella and Ferdinand’s educated council when Columbus returned in seven months. Perhaps he was blowing tobacco smoke at his academic detractors who had never seen the substance before.

Throughout the centuries, academia has always conflicted with commerce; the first moves too slow and is too inefficient for the second.

3

Spy Debt

As the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840) was losing steam and mothers were beginning to enter the paid workforce, a German, Friedrich Froebel (1782–1852), developed the concept of kindergarten in 1837 as garden playtime by recruiting orphan children and youngsters from wives of his friends. He began his eventual career by caring for his brother’s children and later as a nobleman’s live-in teacher.⁵ As a military veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and a youth teacher, one might term Froebel an early intelligence agent. As typical with spies, they try to recruit early, before full opposing indoctrination. Kindergarten originated as an intelligence gathering system for the very young with mothers as trainers. Many educators beginning in the nineteenth century, including Froebel, feared parents were educating their children inappropriately at home.

⁵ Muelle, Christina More, The History of Kindergarten: From Germany to the United States, Fourth Annual College of Education Research Conference (2005), Florida International University, Miami Beach, FL, http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1110&context=sferc (Sourced October 10, 2017), p. 87

In German kinder means child, and garten translates to garden. A century later, in 1873, Maria Kraus-Boelté, a German kindergarten teacher, was brought to Saint Louis, Missouri, to start the first kindergarten training school in the United States with Susan Blow as the first student teacher of kindergarten—too late for my great grandfather, Henry L. Wietgrefe, who was already twelve.

Since the origin of man parents thought they were doing just fine raising their youngsters: four-, five-, and six-year-olds. Even the originator of kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel, thought mothers were the best instructors of preschoolers. Consequently, he hired mothers to teach in his schools. In a maturing Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), it offered mothers employment outside their home.⁶ That changed with the advent of the late nineteenth-century socializing structure known as kindergarten.

⁶ Because he recognized that education begins in infancy, Froebel saw mothers as the ideal first teachers of humanity. Women, he believed, were best suited to nurture children and became the Kindergartners (teachers) for his schools. As such, the Froebel Kindergarten offered the first significant careers for women outside the home. The Role of Women in the Kindergarten, Brief History of Kindergarten, Froebel Gifts, http://www.froebelgifts.com/history.htm (Sourced October 13, 2017)

Step aside parents. Enter government. Citizens were told state and local schools were not providing enough education. Twelve years into the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Russians launched Sputnik (October 4, 1957), the federal government sidestepped the U.S. Constitution and stepped into what had always been a state, local, and parental responsibility—education.

President Dwight Eisenhower publicly removed educational responsibilities from parents and moved that duty to state and local government, but he went on to make local and state education dependent on the federal government. In a January 28, 1957, address to Congress, he stated:

Federal aid must not infringe upon the American precept that responsibility for control of education rests with the States and communities. There are, however, certain underlying problems where States and communities acting independently cannot solve the full problem or solve it rapidly enough, and where Federal assistance is needed. But the Federal role should be merely to facilitate—never to control—education.⁷

⁷ Eisenhower, Dwight D., Special Message to Congress on Federal Aid to Education, January 28, 1957, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10900 (Sourced October 12, 2017)

It is not unusual for governments to invalidate constitutions or historic practices when a crisis seems eminent. U.S. federal government interfering with youth development and education is a recent example. Like outcast immigrants today, about 1300 B.C. Egyptian Pharaohs feared the growing Hebrew population of servants in their land. To gruesomely diminish the Israelite population and crossbreed Egyptian men with Israelite women, the king of Egypt ordered midwives to kill Hebrew baby boys and let girls live.⁸

⁸ Exodus 1:15–16, Thomas Nelson, Inc., The Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994, p. 79.

One such boy was secretly allowed to live with his mother for three months. As fear developed that the baby would be found, the mother made a basket of reeds and placed it near the bathing area of Pharaoh’s daughter. Hearing the baby crying, the bathing beauty had compassion on the child. Since she was nonlactating, a search ensued to find a Hebrew mother to nurse the child, which happened to be the child’s mother who was allowed to raise the child as an adopted Egyptian.⁹

⁹ Exodus 2:1–11, NKJV, p. 80

Governments encourage businesses and its citizens to become dependent on publicly supplied wants rather than needs. Public investment the past century in the developed world has made it unthinkable to walk, rather than drive or take public transportation, to work at a government job that has minimum education requirements.

Dependency develops. Now, many businesses require a college degree before they interview a candidate. Parents become dependent on schools to care for their children which is not a lot different from social problems like tobacco is to smokers, fermented spirits to alcoholics, and cell phones and the Internet are to teenagers.

Eventually, government intervention in the natural order is rectified. Gadgets, addictions, and servants come and go. In the case above, the surviving baby boy, Moses, eventually led over two million Israelites and other nationalities out of Egypt. Although a painful transition, Egypt survived without those servants, just as alcoholics, drug addicts, and teenagers can survive without crutch stimulants.

It reminds me of a circa 1970s poem of unknown origin. It was modified by my uncle, my father’s half-brother, Ernest Habeck (1916–1985), dealing with government social changes. One section states:

5000 years ago Moses said, Park your camel, pickup your shovel, mount your ass, and I shall lead you to the Promised Land.

5000 years later, (President) Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovel, sit on your ass, light up a Camel®,¹⁰ this is the promised land."

¹⁰ Camel cigarettes are a registered trademark of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Today, (President Richard M.) Nixon will tax your shovel, sell your camel, kick your ass and tell you there is no promised land.

After spending eight years gathering military intelligence, it often becomes obvious how public and private systems become addicted to expected services. Like the poem above, social concerns are often succinctly expressed in family or small-group settings, and viewed as cultural changes.

In hindsight lack of education in the 1950s’ generation was totally false and misleading. Politicians convinced the public they were uneducated. From the late 1800s to 1957 the world had gone through more technological change than any time in world history before or since, which will be made more apparent as this book progresses.

A federal education bill, National Defense Education Act, was quickly drafted, passed by Congress, and signed into law by Republican president Dwight Eisenhower in September 1958. It was the first time the federal government entered the student loan business through state matching grants primarily focused on science, math, and foreign languages.

Eisenhower’s National Defense Education Act for the first time allowed students, with no income, to go into debt under the National Defense Student Loan program. That Act developed the youth mindset that debt was an opportunity, not a liability as presented by the U.S. Department of Education: Federal student loans are an investment in your future.¹¹ They remain a curse on students and many young credit-card holders six decades later.

¹¹ Why should I take out federal student loans? Federal Student Aid, U.S. Department of Education, https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans (Sourced October 13, 2017)

What were immediate changes? Many! Universities had more funds; unions had more teachers; more students became educationally indoctrinated and started their life of debt; and professors could express and promote their radical views and ideas protected by tenure. All that convolution was perpetuated by government-generated student loans.

However, at the time the damage being done could not be seen by those seeking advanced education. The program sounded logical: Federal dollars were provided for the citizens to obtain post-secondary education. Teacher’s organizations (American Council on Education, National Education Association, and American Association of University Professors) screamed at what they considered an ethical and unconstitutional snag giving a clue to skews in classes and textbooks. Protests, expanding loans, classroom freedom, tenure, and blocking eligibility of certain educational institutions, as described below, are examples.

Was the goal of high-minded educators to get the federal government out of a U.S. constitutional dilemma—a violation of the Tenth Amendment?

Amendment X States’ rights: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Constitution specifically laid out federal and state responsibilities in Article I, specifically Sections 8, 9, and 10. Education, especially a national university, was debated but prohibited as a federal responsibility for more than one hundred seventy years. Certainly, history professors and constitutional lawyers knew it.

If not a constitutional issue, was the goal of educators to advance Americans’ perceived technological weaknesses? No.

Unbelievably, professors through their unions protested the National Defense Student Loan program because the new educational finance program prohibited loans to students who supported organizations with policies to violently overthrow the United States.

Remember the United States was coming out of McCarthyism (the Communist scare or as some have termed it the Second Red Scare). U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957) led an effort to alert Americans to communist sympathizers in the film industry, higher education, the military, and clandestine foreign spies working in the U.S. government.

Interestingly, McCarthy died as a sitting U.S. senator at age forty-eight in the Bethesda Maryland Naval Hospital, supposedly of hepatitis—a disease that is 99 percent curable. Treated by one of the best medical facilities in the world, McCarthy passed physically and politically. His departure was welcomed by Eisenhower, Republicans, Democrats, educators, Hollywood, and all domestic and foreign communist organizations. Known for drinking, he would not have been the first to pass from sipping a spiked Mickey. (A method named for Mickey Finn, the notorious Chicago bar owner, who spiked drinks incapacitating customers before robbing them between 1896 and 1903.)

Only two U.S. senators have died that young since McCarthy. (Senator Richard L. Neuberger, age forty-seven, died in 1960 of a cerebral hemorrhage. At age forty-two Senator Robert Bobby Kennedy was assassinated while running for president in 1968—killed by Sirhan Sirhan, a non-U.S. Jordanian of Palestinian descent.)

A year after Senator McCarthy passed, so did President Eisenhower’s National Defense Education Act. McCarthy, like many farm children of his generation, had to quit school at fourteen and returned at nineteen to complete high school in one year at age twenty. Eventually he went on to get a law degree. Many opposed McCarthyism, but his efforts exposed foreign spies and U.S. accomplices.

After World War II many wondered how the Soviets so quickly mastered nuclear technology. One of the reasons is that they relied on British and U.S. (Manhattan Project) research supplied by Klaus Fuchs (1911–1988), who worked on Allies’ nuclear programs and secretly supplied information to the Soviets and eventually admitted to being a Soviet spy in 1950.

The same year, Alger Hiss (1904–1996) was convicted of lying under oath related to Soviet espionage when he was with the U.S. State Department and one of the officials who developed the framework of the United Nations. The statute of limitations had expired on espionage charges collaborated by a former Communist Party member; therefore, Hiss died a convicted spy, after serving prison time.

Meanwhile a year later Donald Maclean (1913–1983), a Soviet spy, worked as a British diplomat who served in Washington, D.C., from 1944 to 1948. After passing U.S., British, and Canadian nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, he quickly departed for Moscow in 1951 when it became likely he would be captured and convicted of spying. During the Cold War, Maclean advised the Soviets on NATO strategy.

Within two years of Maclean fleeing the country, convicted Soviet spies Julius (1915–1953) and Ethel (1915–1953) Rosenberg were executed by the United States on June 19, 1953, four months after I was born. McCarthy may have been crass, but he exposed foreign espionage.

Why would educators be so vocal about what the public thought was a patriotic response to prevent Russian space dominance? Yanek Miechzkowski, in his book Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and World Prestige,¹² explained that unions, like the American Association of University Professors, found the new law violated the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

¹² Mieczkowski, Yanek, Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and World Prestige, Cornell University Press, 2013, p. 161, http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100327770 (Sourced October 6, 2015)

For the last seven decades Americans, Canadians, and Europeans should not assume all teachers and college professors are patriotic and looking out for your national interests. Research sometimes takes precedence over national security. With that in mind, it is extremely easy now to pass national research secrets via electronic transfer under the guise of collaborative, even published, research.

Ensuring freedom to research, international collaboration, visas for foreigners to research, classification of documents, and cyber security are main concerns of any country. During President Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. State Department set up the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues in February 2011.¹³ One particular Public Notice in the Federal Register, No. 9565, on May 17, 2016, drew international attention when Reuters published an article stating:

¹³ Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, U.S. State Department, https://www.state.gov/s/cyberissues/index.htm (Sourced October 13, 2017)

In an attempt to safeguard U.S. secrets . . . the proposal would require foreign students to get special licenses if they want to work on sensitive research projects. . . . Universities are opposed, arguing the rule would limit their access to the world’s brightest.¹⁴

¹⁴ Hackett, Paul, State Dept. proposes foreign researcher restrictions over spy fear, May 20, 2016, Reuters, https://www.rt.com/usa/343827-restrictions-researchers-spying-obama/ (Sourced October 13, 2017)

Top U.S. educators, who push their professorship rights over student freedom of speech and religion, have used their union to censure more than fifty private institutions of higher learning (most religious based) since 1963. Any organization that does not subscribe to tenure and academic freedom policies of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is blackballed.¹⁵

¹⁵ Censure List, American Association of University Professors, https://www.aaup.org/our-programs/academic-freedom/censure-list, (Source October 13, 2017)

Teachers’ unions want to determine what is taught on all campuses around the United States. Elementary and secondary education (a.k.a. grade and high school) have been effectively monopolized by unions. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states: Among occupational groups, the highest unionization rates in 2016 were in education. . . .¹⁶ Preschool and kindergarten is the unions’ step to monopolizing U.S. education to age eighteen where unions often have the exclusive right to negotiate teacher salaries with the local school boards.

¹⁶ Union Members Survey, Economic News Release, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, January 26, 2017, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm (Sourced October 13, 2017)

For older students, unions push to bar loans to students attending private post-secondary institutions not meeting AAUP standards. Public universities want free public education as long as institutions remain in good standing with the Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

In the twenty-first century, as Baby Boomers age, and fewer couples are having children, a demographic dilemma developed. Given the expected decrease in university-bound students into the 2020s, teachers’ unions are working with state boards of regents to adopt university graduate goals. In my state, South Dakota, the goal is 65 percent of those ages twenty-five to sixty-four to have degree certificates by the year 2025. In Indiana, the goal is 60 percent by 2025.¹⁷ In 2012, 70 percent of Minnesotans aged twenty-five to sixty-four had some college education and led the United States in education level of its citizens. State universities want those former students back.

¹⁷ Return and Complete Guidance for Indiana’s Public Colleges and Universities, published by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, pursuant to House Enrolled Act 1001-2015, August 1, 2015, p. 2 http://www.in.gov/che/files/Institutional_Guidance_for_Return_and_Complete_8.1.2 015.pdf (Sourced August 21, 2016)

Minnesota, however, has the same problem as other states. Tuition is too high. Online courses are more economical and flexible for working adults. Many high school graduates start college and drop out. Income after graduation is too low to cover student loan repayment and living expenses, and it is likely to get worse,¹⁸ so graduates move back in with their parents.

¹⁸ Caroline Fairchild, Student Loan Debt Will Exceed Median Annual Income For College Grads By 2023: Analysis, July 10, 2013, Huffpost, http://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/entry/student-loan-debt-median-income_n_3573683 (Sourced October 13, 2017)

With an illogical quirk of me-tooism, currently, seniors are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population¹⁹ which also makes their demographic the fastest as cannabis users, social media, and government students. Why? New careers and stress? No! Free time. Yes. Extra money? Not really.

¹⁹ 2010 Census Shows 65 and Older Population Growing Faster Than Total U.S. Population, U.S. Census Bureau, November 30, 2011, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb11-cn192.html (Sourced October 13, 2017)

By getting a federal government-backed student loan, for example, seniors can sign up for college courses, may attend, and get additional money for rent and food. Some, with no intention of using their newfound education to get a job, are planning to attend college until they die. Why? Six months after they quit school or graduate, they must start payback on their college loans. What is the ultimate result? Default by death.

Educated from the radical 1960s on, American Baby Boomers borrowed, bought, and bought more. Many borrowed to attend college; they advised their children to do the same thing. They spent each weekly and monthly paycheck on wants, rather than saving for retirement, when they could not work. They did not heed Jesus’ 2000-year-old advice: I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.²⁰

²⁰ John 9:4, NKJV, p. 1526.

Unwilling or unable to work, and unable to live off Social Security (which was never intended as a full retirement program), many seniors now seek outside income—not the traditional way, through work to support their household. They are independent and fall back to their learned habit of borrowing.

The largest senior organization in the United States is the American Association of Retired People (AARP). Why is the organization so large and influential? It informs seniors how to live off others, especially government programs.

Senior education is one of their advised farcical support mechanisms. . . . Because there’s plenty of financial aid for college but no financial aid for retirement,²¹ seniors are advised to return to college rather than work. Interestingly, that is exactly the same advice high school councilors give high school graduates.

²¹ Chatzky, Jean, Headed back to school? There’s plenty of financial help out there if you know where to look. AARP The Magazine, August/September 2014, American Association of Retired People, 601 E. Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20049, http://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2014/headed-back-to-school.html (Sourced March 31, 2017)

Currently, besides student loans, senior citizens are eligible for annual $2500 tax credits, a $2000 lifetime tax credit, and if your income is low enough student loan interest is tax deductible. Those benefits do not include other federal, state, local, and business scholarships, grants, and other educational training benefits.

College students, whether retired seniors or not, can get student loans for traditional costs like tuition, registration fees, and books. Former parent costs in primary and secondary school traditionally became adult education costs after high school graduation. That began to end in 1958. As they developed self-centeredness, many Baby Boomers were born during the Eisenhower administration and have been living off the government since.

With social benefits borne into American culture since Eisen­hower’s 1950s’ student loan program, students since have not been expected to work. No income? No problem. Student loans allow for: Room and Board: An allowance for the cost of housing and food while attending college or career school.²²

²² Federal Student Aid, United States Department of Education, https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/glossary#Room_and_Board (Sourced March 31, 2017)

Colleges are businesses. Their source of income is dwindling. Note: Income is the key word. To secure income, colleges recruit volunteer income sources. Seniors are one of the latest demographics to volunteer.

Since foreign students (an increasing segment of many campuses) pay the highest tuition, a developing economic threat to college administrators is state-to-state competition (discounted tuition) for foreign students. Family size is shrinking, so there are fewer students to recruit. And finally, minorities (not women) are an increasing segment of the population, which is a problem since minorities generally have more children with the same access to student loans and grants but find less value in post-secondary education. As a type of enslavement, a 2015 summary by the Saint Louis Federal Reserve reported lack of income response from higher education for minorities.²³

²³ William R. Emmons, Bryan J. Noeth, Why Didn’t Higher Education Protect Hispanic and Black Wealth? Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, Issue 12, 2015, https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in-the-balance/issue12-2015/why-didnt-higher-education-protect-hispanic-and-black-wealth (Sourced October 13, 2015)

Based on two decades of detailed wealth data, we conclude that education does not, however, protect the wealth of all racial and ethnic groups equally. Hispanic and black families headed by someone with a four-year college degree typically fared significantly worse than Hispanic and black families without college degrees. Job-market difficulties . . . (and) financial decision-making appears even more important in explaining large wealth declines among Hispanic and black college-educated families.

A learning transition is occurring not only with minorities. Technology wins. Digital communication and data access is dramatically increasing. Online enrollment’s market share is decreasing on-campus attendance. Universities are facing a conundrum. Public university goals historically have been to educate and do independent research. Meanwhile, expenditures for social