If nothing else, this book helps explain why reactions (and thus emotions) seem so much the substance of American national discourse at the moment, how people are so extraordinarily incapable (to appearance) of inhabiting and considering others’ viewpoints. They have, after all, barely begun to inhabit their own, trained as they are to live on its surface. They have the pattern of reaction-not-decision ingrained; even though the trainer’s reactions may not predominate, the pattern still rules, seizing on new reactions from new sources, usually unrecognized- instant fanaticism, at the worst. The decisions they appear to make never actually take place within them; they just borrow the input-output pattern of somebody else, of a base decision-maker (who may have been acting on ideology or impulse himself). In-depth thought is a foreign practice to the American trained by the American education system, and so when asked to perform it, he stumbles, like an invalid ten years abed when asked to sprint a marathon.

Yet Iserbyt’s book has some problems, problems this fourth article is dedicated to pointing out. They are not fatal, but they are significant.

Part One – Part Two – Part Three

Presentation

The smallest problem- meaning the one of style, not substance- comes first. While Iserbyt’s approach provides a lot of evidence for her claims, I have two worries about it. First, sometimes it is unclear how useful the evidence offered actually is, in a probative role. A very bad quote may not mean anything if the guy who said it was utterly inconsequential; even if it is accurate, I won’t be able to rely on it to build my understanding of reality except by verifying that accuracy, at which point the quote is irrelevant, providing color rather than proof. As such, the prominence and relevance of the people Iserbyt quotes is critical to her case. To some extent, this is unavoidable; you’re going to have to rely on Iserbyt’s own credibility in order to be sure the quote is accurate and her account of the person speaking is correct. Full assurance of a person’s importance in, say, the academia of educational R&D, is difficult to get without significant immersion in that area or a reliable proxy who has done the research.

On the whole, this first issue is relatively minor. Its greatest impact is the necessitating of some additional research before putting out certain bits of evidence she relies on, in order to be sure it can be upheld against critics who doubt its relevance or accuracy.

The second issue I am simultaneously more tentative on and more critical of Iserbyt in: clarity. I came to this book with what is almost certainly an unusually in-depth knowledge of Behaviorism and its philosophical underpinnings. I also came with some second-hand, third-hand, and (just a smidge) first-hand experience with modern government, with its chicanery, and a context for the use of structure and process-manipulation in determining an outcome. As such, managed democracy, manufactured consent, and their like were already ideas I had an inkling or more of. Iserbyt gave them connection to specifics and to the education system,¹ but she didn’t have to give me the base line.

I’m not sure that the book quite explains these and similar ideas in and of itself, at least to the extent desirable. Certainly much will have to be learned on-the-job, picked up from context rather than laid out in the open. Behaviorism’s ideas are given a rather cursory treatment in every instance, but they come up enough that the observant reader should form a tolerable understanding of its system and goals. Yet Iserbyt’s book is definitely benefitted by having prior knowledge of such factors. At minimum, I’d recommend getting a grip on the basics of Behaviorism. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis is a very good start, there, followed by a more direct analysis of its tenets, particularly as it shows up in B.F. Skinner.

Video Games

Iserbyt, as per xxvii and 320, worries about the effects of violent video games on children, as teaching them violence. As I laid out here, I’m not quite convinced of that. Now, assuredly parents should take care that their children aren’t partaking in ‘entertainment’ inappropriate for their age, not just in sexual content but in language, themes, and violence. Additionally, parents should steer their children away from entertainment which does not bring excellence- mere gore, slasher flicks, etc. The question of the psychological effect of video games in general, in the physical effects of screentime, also deserves consideration. But in all frankness, tying these legitimate concerns to a worry that video games are programming people to be school shooters is deleterious to those concerns, without having great virtue in themselves.

(Those wanting to counteract school shooters and similar phenomena as a trend should consider the following first, long before they consider the honestly unimportant effects of video games: SSRIs and other psychological drugs; the media’s proclivity for encouraging copycats (broadcasting and dwelling on these events triggers copycats, a fact the mass media knows); a lack of thorough-going Christianity, applied to all parts of life; public education in general; and all the rest of the stuff Iserbyt looks at in this book- Skinnerian educational psychology, for instance.)

Now, that’s not to say Iserbyt is wrong to connect ‘video games’ to what she’s talked about here. Video games used ‘Skinner box’ techniques as a matter of course, training people to spend time and money both. Parents should be careful that their kids don’t get sucked into the addictive side of gaming, particularly that part which is deliberately designed to create addiction al a gambling- loot boxes, gacha, etc. (as well as the pornographic and political parts of the industry).

As for the role of video games in normalizing violence in children, I’ll reference this article once more and then finish with a quote Iserbyt quotes: “If, on the other hand, a third-grade boy draws a picture of a ship exploding with bodies flying in all directions, punctuated by red ink blots, you [can] assume you’ve got a normal third-grader on your hands” (409).

Children know all about violence as a concept.

Apprenticeships and School-to-Work

Iserbyt presents a legitimate issue (which, if it were less connected to the topic of this section, would have its own place in the earlier articles): ‘school-to-work’ or ‘school-to-career’ pipeline programs. These programs are typically government-administrated career preparation or (probably more commonly) corporate-school partnerships to produce workers amenable to the corporations’ requirements. The incentive for all powerful agents here, note, is not to make the kids excel in general; the incentive is to mold the children into worker bees ready for the job assigned to them.

In sum, an elite ‘in the know’ decide what jobs need filling, then go and make sure the children are trained and funneled specifically into those jobs, preferably at the companies of said elite. These programs, at their worst (a.k.a. in the public school system), are applications of the principles of a ‘planned economy’, al a socialism, fascism, or liberalism,² to education. Indeed, StW programs reflect the same logic as the Soviet system: “In the communist ideology the function of universal education is clear, and easily understood. Universal education fits neatly into the authoritarian state. Education is tied directly to jobs—control of the job being the critical control point in an authoritarian state. Level of education, and consequently the level of employment, is determined first by level of achievement in school. They do not educate people for jobs that do not exist…” (Iserbyt 198).³

In essence, these programs work to control the labor supply of the economy by deciding what skills its participants have and locking them into a particular, institution-amenable path very early on.  Of the Soviet program, the observer stated, “No such controlled relationship between education and jobs exists in democratic countries” (198)”- but these programs work to change that, supported by educational luminaries such as Charles Schwab and McDonald’s US (343). As Cynthai Weatherly says, “As charter schools develop, the temptation will be for private industry to take a more direct role in funding and developing programs for these schools which will produce workers who can fill the corporations’ needs. These schools, then, have the potential of becoming “corporate academies” with a narrow focus and limited curriculum base” (305), a curriculum which in many cases need not even include literacy (307). It is thus worrying that we can find instances such as the 1994 assessemtnf o the Ohio educational system which was conducted by state governors (NC, MI, NV, and WO) alongside executives from corporations like IGM, Boeing, and Procter & Gamble (445).

With all this, why am I giving Iserbyt guff, given I agree with her?

I’m objecting because Iserbyt prefers education to be primarily and almost purely academic; she regards apprenticeship programs as nascent School-to-Work as a rule (414, 437). Now, some ‘apprenticeships’ will certainly be found to be career-molding corporate efforts. The apprenticeship model, however, is an old and tested method, even a Biblical method, of teaching skills. We should not hold back children from turning to apprenticeship to learn skills, moderated by parental wisdom, just as we should not decide what a kid does by referencing what job slots a big corporation wants filled with complacent wage-taker.

The fundamental difference is in intention (a difference which works out in implementation, if coherently followed). The intention of a legitimate apprenticeship is to prepare the apprentice to thrive in his chosen field; the intention of StW programs is to fill the cubicle at Procter & Gamble according to Procter & Gamble’s specifications. The implementation, assuming competence in the designer, will therefore differ as well. The apprenticeship will seek to provide its participants with technical skills, complemented by appropriate academics and on a basis of solid life-skills (Biblical wisdom, essentially). The StW program will make sure the student performs to specifications on technical skills, throw in some academics for garnish, and ignore the life skills which might make the student a problem in future by equipping him for independence or a new vocation.

Academics, bluntly, are joint second-string to life skills, alongside technical skills. A foundation of wisdom, of love for God, of healthy relationships- that’s the highest priority every parent should be considering.⁴ Academics and technical skills are means to that end. Basic literacy is the most important here: reading, writing, and communicating in general. These form the basis of relationship with other people and, through Scripture, with God. Beyond that basis, which also enables the student to become an effective student in other areas, academic and otherwise (as many self-taught masters of the past prove to us), what skills are prioritized are a matter of wisdom in circumstances.

Government Schooling

I have written a lot of articles against government schooling in principle, both here on Creational Story and elsewhere.

In light of this, you can perhaps see already my problem with Iserbyt’s easy acceptance of government-run schools. No matter how local-government the affair is kept, public schooling is a vile affair, and government-mandated education requirements are the same. Education should be a parental affair, not the concern of the civil government. Not the greatest government in the world could safely be trusted with it, for a simple reason: to give an institution a power it ought not to have introduces moral corruption to it, compromising its character so long as that power resides in it. In other words, a perfect civil government, given the power of educating the children, will inevitably become corrupt, quite probably starting with that area (for God does not bless wicked endeavors).

All the more dangerous is this idea of ‘government schooling’ because of the vast power which resides in educating the kids. “B.F. Skinner once mused that the functions of government in the future would be educational,” says Weatherly, “In the above scenario we see that the reverse of that prediction can be true as well—in the future the functions of education will be governmental” (Iserbyt 305). Education serves to decide who the kids are and thus who the people will be for decades to come.

Public education has inflicted a rotten, gangrenous wound upon the American people, a pustulent crevasse across our below, an opening to the intestines that lets them spill open on the muscles and the blood. It has been the soul-death of thousands, even millions; it has killed millions more (being in part responsible for the continuation of abortion); it has its hand in every wickedness America perpetrates or lets be perpetrated. No, it is not the root of all these evils, but its hand is evident in every one of them, materially and viciously. The best of intentions by many thousands of teachers and parents is not and has not been a remedy to this putrefaction.

An Addendum – by Dr. Eric Potter

While system approaches to life’s problems often succeed, sometimes a personalized approach not only makes the most sense, but also objectively wins out.  External childcare, meaning the care of young children outside the home and outside the family, falls into this latter category.   While Biblical instructions to parents directing them to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6) should seem sufficient for Christian parents, both Christians and non-Christians cannot ignore the adverse effects of such external childcare on the next generations.

As another example of how the Bible’s wisdom has been right long before the “new ideas of man” came along in the field of childcare, let’s consider the effects of pre-school childcare on children as they grow into adults.  Some of the benefits claimed by those pushing mom’s back into the workforce and putting babies or toddlers into the external childcare arena include socialization and academic advancement.

While parents generally want their children to get along with others or more scientifically, exhibit a high emotional IQ, external childcare does not produce healthy relationships from simply being around a lot of other children.  Studies quoted in the 1989 book, Who Will Rock the Cradle?,⁵ indicate that children in long term external care exhibit higher rates of attachment problems with their parents.  As they aged, other cited studies indicate that they experience more emotional conflict and struggle with tolerating frustration.  Of course, a quick assessment of the situation should convince anyone that children will attach better when they are with parents and handle conflict when raised in stable situations with consistent familial caregivers.

 Parents also hope their children will do well in academics, thus increasing their chances of financial and life success.  Systematizing education in the early years would seem to offer a headstart by putting them in Headstart. This program is described in Schlafly’s  book as being based on a study showing some improvements in children’s academic performance with a structured program.  Reading further, however, reveals that the program that government implemented does not match the one studied.  Common sense loses out this time when multiple studies indicate that at best a small percentage of children benefit in the long term from the program, and some even do worse than children raised at home for those early years.

Phylis Schlafly’s contributors emphasized these points and many more in this 1989 book, and yet, over 30 years later, we still careen towards a society with more and more children in external childcare despite repeatedly seeing these same adverse outcomes over and over.  The consistent outcome raises the parents’ hand high over their heads at the end of the head-to-head contest.  Separating young children from their parents interferes with attachment, future emotional maturity, and more without demonstrating any socialization or academic benefits except that they act just like all the other kids their age (sarcasm to the rescue).  Can we as a society do better by encouraging home childcare as much as we can?

Conclusion

Iserbyt’s book is well worth reading, if you’ve the slightest interest in education. No, the book does not provide a complete look at the problem. It’s got some definite errors of principle (see above) and fails to provide a sufficient, constructive answer (something it’s not aiming to do in the first place). Yet it offers a cross-section of the past century of education, 1910s to 2000, a cross section which begs us to wonder what wickedness has passed in the quarter century since it’s final update (my entire lifetime and a bit!). If we were facing this sort of problem in 2000, what does it look like in early 2026? The outrages that were the COVID lockdowns, the immigration situation, the systematic cultural degradation, all of these give us much reason to expect it’s gotten a lot worse, even if much of the issue is just the submerged sewage bobbing up into sight.

So read the book, then go do something about it, even if it’s just making somebody else aware that public schools are not trustworthy.

God bless.

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Footnotes

1. I’m home-schooled, thank God, so the American school system is somewhat foreign to me. ↩︎
2. ‘Liberal democracy,’ the totalitarian ideology currently in vogue in Europe and America among the government, the left wing, and the institution (including England’s Conservative party and America’s Republican party (old guard)). ↩︎
3. Soviet patriotism—fidelity to the Soviet land and to the ideas of communism—occupies a leading place in this educational conditioning, and in this sense gives the school a political character as well as a moral one. Employing primarily the conditioned reflex theory as elaborated by Pavlov (1849–1936), Soviet psychologists have worked out a system of didactics which are strict and fixed in their conception and application…” (Iserbyt 58). ↩︎
4. Educators, being trusted with elements rather than the whole, may find that their direct priority is an academic or technical one. Even this priority, however, must be filtered by the duty of teaching good character, of teaching the academics or technical skills in proper relationship to and with God. ↩︎
5. Schlafly, Phyllis. Who Will Rock the Cradle? 1989. Word Publishing – Dallas. ↩︎