Essays in Idleness

Perhaps even more urgent and important than the destruction of our universities, is the destruction of each and every “faculty of education,” around the world. This was something that first occurred to me in high school, and led to the many benefits of dropping out.

We should begin by vacating the certification authority: that is how, not the majority, but every single teaching candidate receives an ideological bath, or drowning; although only most (perhaps 95 per cent) come out of this process mortally filled with water.

We should try to get the proportion of brain-dead teaching in our schools down, ideally, to less than half. But whether public or private, common or “elitist,” all have passed through the government-regulated teacher certification process. Until all these certifying institutions have been destroyed like Hezbollah, and the grounds that lay beneath them have been salted and scraped, no prospect of improvement is conceivable. The absolute elimination of governments from any contact, let alone influence upon the schools, should be a matter of law, and would present an opportunity to imprison administrators and politicians in considerable numbers. Let them teach the polar bears on Ellesmere Island, or replace the walrus as a source of protein.

I hope, from this, I have made my views on teacher-certification unambiguously clear. I wouldn’t want to waste time explaining them in detail. Anyone who has been to school in Canada, or the other countries, should know what I mean, unless they have themselves become the victims of these teachers.

But I consider myself a true friend of “learning,” and even of universities, “in principle,” as they say. Let the institutions that replace them hire whomever they want — let them even recruit from the land of muskoxen — as they wish. And may they grant whatever degrees they please, and flourish or decline on personal tuitions and endowments, but without the fondest scent of tax money.

The argument against this is that if “minimum” government standards were withdrawn, and schooling ceased to be mandatory, there would be a collapse of intellect in the general population. But let us look around: the collapse has already occurred.