Autocrats fear people who think
Editor, The Sun:
So, we’re losing the Department of Education. As a retired teacher, I was expecting this. Throughout history, autocrats (Mussolini, Hitler, Idi Amin, Czar Nicholas) have feared an educated populace; it makes it easier to control the populace and easier to spread misinformation or “truth,” as any autocrat would call their lies.
When I taught, schools would encourage intellectual exploration, introducing ideas that would challenge students to develop their own ideas and opinions. I would use the Bible, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and native American mythology to introduce ideas on the formation of earth and the characteristics of heroes. But now our government is imposing a much narrower idea of education, a bland or “vanilla” version.
A thinking populace is scary to autocrats and their minions.
Sincerely,
R. John Allcorn
Crawfordville