General Education Board
 General Education Board  (NGO)   | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1902 |
| Founder | • John D. Rockefeller Sr. • Frederick Taylor Gates |
| Extinction | 1964 |
| Rockefeller money buying control over the US education system | |
The General Education Board was a philanthropic non-governmental organization created in 1902 by John D. Rockefeller at the ultimate cost of $180 million. The GEB provided major funding for schools across the nation and was very influential in shaping the current school system.
Official narrative
The organization was used primarily to support higher education and medical schools in the United States, and to help rural white and black schools in the South, as well as modernize farming practices in the South. It helped eradicate hookworm and created the county agent system in American agriculture, linking research as state agricultural experiment stations with actual practices in the field.
Prominent member Frederick Taylor Gates envisioned "The Country School of To-Morrow," wherein "young and old will be taught in practicable ways how to make rural life beautiful, intelligent, fruitful, re-creative, healthful, and joyous."[1] By 1934 the Board was making grants of $5.5 million a year. It spent nearly all its money by 1950 and closed in 1964.
A nation of workers
As Rockefeller put it, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” The General Education Board was not interested in encouraging critical thinking. Rather, its focus was on organizing children and creating reliable, predictable, obedient citizens. Historian John Taylor Gatto said, “school was looked upon from the first part of the 20th Century as a branch of industry and a tool of governance.”
The Rockefellers, along with other financial elite and their philanthropic organizations (such as the Gates, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts) have been able to mold society by funding and pushing compulsory state schooling for the masses.[2]
Related Quotation
| Page | Quote | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Frederick Taylor Gates | “In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding bands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply.
. The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm.” | Frederick Taylor Gates |
References
- ↑ Frederick T. Gates. "The Country School Of To-Morrow," Occasional Papers, No. 1 (1913) online
- ↑ http://www.thrivemovement.com/follow-money-education
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