State Education - or How The West Was Lost

Why are the ideas of Liberty so scarce among "educated" westerners today? Why did that young German I met the other day sing praises of a "social market"? One clear answer does emerge in the following extract from Ludwig von Mises' The Anti-Capitalist Mentality (pdf here: go to Chapter 4, pages 55-56).

In dealing with the liberal social philosophy there is a disposition to overlook the power of an important factor that worked in favor of the idea of liberty, viz., the eminent role assigned to the literature of ancient Greece in the education of the elite. There were among the Greek authors also champions of government omnipotence such as Plato. But the essential tenor of Greek ideology was the pursuit of liberty. Judged by the standards of modern institutions, the Greek city states must be called oligarchies. The liberty which the Greek statesmen, philosophers and historians glorified as the most precious good of man was a privilege reserved to a minority. In denying it to metics and slaves they virtually advocated the despotic rule of a hereditary caste of oligarchs. Yet it would be a grave error to dismiss their hymns to liberty as mendacious. They were no less sincere in their praise and quest of freedom than were, two thousand years later, the slaveholders among the signers of the American Declaration of Independence. It was the political literature of the ancient Greeks that begot the ideas of the Monarchomachs, the philosophy of the Whigs, the doctrines of Althusius, Grotius and John Locke and the ideology of the fathers of modern constitutions and bills of rights. It was the classical studies, the essential feature of a liberal education, that kept awake the spirit of freedom in the England of the Stuarts, in the France of the Bourbons, and in Italy subject to the despotism of a galaxy of princes. No less a man than Bismarck, among the nineteenth-century statesmen next to Metternich the foremost foe of liberty, bears witness to the fact that, even in the Prussia of Frederick William III, the Gymnasium, the education based on Greek and Roman literature, was a stronghold of republicanism. The passionate endeavors to eliminate the classical studies from the curriculum of the liberal education and thus virtually to destroy its very character were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.

It is a fact that a hundred years ago only a few people anticipated the overpowering momentum which the antilibertarian ideas were destined to acquire in a very short time. The ideal of liberty seemed to be so firmly rooted that everybody thought that no reactionary movement could ever succeed in eradicating it. It is true, it would have been a hopeless venture to attack freedom openly and to advocate unfeignedly a return to subjection and bondage. But antiliberalism got hold of peoples’ minds camouflaged as superliberalism, as the fulfillment and consummation of the very ideas of freedom and liberty. It came disguised as socialism, communism, planning.

As far as Britain is concerned, Labour Party politicians have always tried to ensure the removal of classical studies from the curriculum. Indeed, here is a very recent article by Boris Johnson, the Conservative party Mayor of London, lambasting one such Labour party secretary of state for education who called for the ending of classical studies. The subtitle is apt:

How can we understand our world unless we understand the ancient world first, asks Boris Johnson.

Yes, this has been their strategy - to blind the populace by "educating" them such that they know neither History nor Theory: they are completely confused, worse than the illiterate, who at least retain their innate "common sense."

Those who get educated, for them, instead of the wisdom of the past, they only imbibe "new" - and dangerously false - ideas, from socialism to Keynesianism. Students of Economics certainly do not study classical liberalism. They know nothing of the "history of ideas."

If politicians in the West have screwed up education deliberately - and this is reflected in Mises' academic career in the USSA - then what can be said about State Education in India? - where "history" means not much more than the "freedom struggle" from 1905 to 1947. British colonial history is not studied at all any more. And as for our The State's theories - you have "Indian Economics."

We form our ideas of the social world only through Theory, and through History. If both are false, the student's mind is killed.

No politician, no political party, and no State ought to be allowed to interfere in education. This is precisely how the West got lost.

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Recommended reading: Mises' Theory and History. I think students should read this book first, and then proceed to Human Action.