Learning Time Perspective The Prussian Way

The way we filter information and disinformation is learnt from our schools and these plans are instigated by politicians who sit in Government. Governments create the institutions that instill time perspective.

In 1852 the Governor of our very own Massachusetts Edward Everett realized that children needed to be taught how to become more productive members of an industrializing society. He looked to a lawyer named Horace Mann (secretary of mass board of Education at the time) for a more effective system. Lucky of us, Mister Mann had traveled the world evaluating educational systems and he recommended the Prussian one. It consists of a compulsory 8 hour work day centering of academics and character. Academic lessons: reading, writing and arithmetic. Character lessons: discipline, morality and obedience.

Sound familiar?

Everett’s goal wasn’t to educate generations of free thinkers, but rather to prepare America’s masses for a lifetime of factory work. When they enter school, most children go from free0form day, where they can play and think as they wish, to having a teacher, class schedule and work. They learn that being late is bad, that they can only have fun some of the time, that lunch is only 30 mins long and they must go home the same time everyday from school.

I’m pretty sure Zimbardo is not lying to me, so it would seem the whole system was actually created to make us future oriented.

“Stay in your seat, don’t talk, don’t play, don’t act out, delay gratification, obey authority, and tolerate boredom. These are some of the main lesson ingrained by tradition schooling.” – zimbardo 288.

That is a pretty powerful couple of lines. He goes on to say that this works out find for most people and they come out to become productive members of society and he know as a teacher some alterations have been made. Also some schools are trying to break this down, but not really eroding at its core.

This really makes one think that a school is like a refinery and we are no more than raw material being flittered through and being spit out the other side to make the world go round.