Yesterday, I claimed that literacy in the U.S. has declined, despite a long-standing, expensive, enforced governmental school system. Understanding how that can be true is basic to understanding many of our nation's current problems.

In his book "The Underground History of American Education", John Taylor Gatto uses as a measure of earlier reading ability the fact that the novel "Last of the Mohicans", published in 1826, sold 5 million copies within a then-population of 20 million Americans. This was popular, casual reading for entertainment. I'm reproducing below the first paragraph of that book, so that you can judge for yourself whether we have progressed or declined in our reading ability since then.

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.

Consider carefully now... this was popular leisure reading for ordinary Americans. It had been just 50 years since the founding of our nation. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would die in 1826. The internal combustion engine was patented that year, and the first photograph was made. There were just 24 states, and no more would be added for another 10 years. Much of the nation was still "territory", and the vast majority of Americans were either farmers or what we would consider "blue-collar" workers.

No public schools, no compulsory education, yet Americans of 1826 were more literate than we are today. Not just some, but a huge percentage of Americans were literate. By 1826, these were not immigrants who received education elsewhere, but people who had been born and raised here, most under conditions we would now consider hardship... and they were building a nation in the process.

Learning to read, in 1826, was simply accepted as normal... as normal as learning to ride a horse, shoot a gun, and a hundred other skills needed for everyday life. It was simply expected and done. Parents helped, older children helped, and it just happened... to almost everyone. They weren't taught to read... they just learned.

How much literacy has declined isn't important. What is important to understand is that individuals learn... to read or do anything else... with or without formal schooling... if they think it is important.

The imposition of compulsory schooling was a serious turning point in our nation's development. The idea that we should all surrender our children to government schools for training was pushed for reasons that should make today's liberals as angry as it does those of the religious right, who object because those schools are secular. The primary movers behind public education were the industrialists liberals so love to hate. Those industrialists wanted to create a manageable, docile, trained workforce, so they pushed the Prussian model... efficient, lockstep, and controlled.

It would be easy to blame the "robber barons" for pushing public education, but it would not have been possible without governmental edicts to make it happen, and without tax money to make it possible. If we're to place blame, it must be with the lawmakers, for only they hold the power to "make it so".

Today, we're told that education is a national necessity... that we must spend ever-increasing amounts of money for our children's' sake... and we have. We're forced to place our children in school at an early age and keep them there for many years. Their teachers are now considered "professionals", trained specifically for their work, and the educational system is massive and carefully controlled, by local government, state government, and, increasingly, our national government. We have a system of well-paid "experts" and "professionals" continually experimenting with our children's education.

We "progressed" from virtually no educational system at all, with learning eagerly done because it was expected and desired, to a colossal, forced-feeding system... and the results don't come close to matching what we once had. Our educational system isn't, as we're told, failing a few. If we believe that "No Child Left Behind" is our goal, then we have to begin by accepting the judgment that we have failed ALL of our children. We have accepted the forcible imposition of a system that has literally destroyed most of our children's natural love of learning.

If I consider all of the aspects of our current state of affairs as a nation, I find many that are seriously disturbing, and taken together, those disturbing aspects lead me to conclude that our nation is aimed directly at massive failure. If we open our eyes and judge honestly, it isn't difficult to see the signs that we are following in the footsteps of many other dominant societies that have fallen.

When I ask myself the question "Where did America go wrong"? I can point to many tragic turns, but I repeatedly return to our educational system as being the primary factor in perverting a magnificent opportunity into a continuous decline. What that educational system has done that is unforgivable... to have avoided most knowledge of what made our people and our nation great, and replaced it with rhetoric designed to convince us that only government can solve problems.

That system has dulled our brains and turned us into compliant servants of a "planned" nation. It has taught us that we are mere resources in a grandiose planned nation, and for the most part, it has convinced us.