FREEDOM OF... MULTIPLE CHOICE

Education As Life Or Death.
“On one occasion Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to the uneducated. As much, he said, as the living are superior to the dead.” Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers (Aristotle).
With this insightful epigraph, also inspiring the entry’s title, I start on the first component of any society’s social obligation to each of its members, which is good education.
Just as a tree can be judged by the fruit it brings forth, a society can be judged, and occasionally exposed, by the product of its public system of education, which judgment and which exposure can be substantially facilitated by a meaningful study of this system’s basic principles.
Better than anywhere else, it is the educational system, which illuminates the ultimate goal of a particular society in rearing its members, whether that goal is a happy Stepford-like anthill of obedient and satisfied workers who may not all look alike, but compensate for this discrepancy by dressing alike, thinking alike, and behaving alike, as a herd of multicolored cattle, driven by a single shepherd from the same shed to the same pasture and back. Or whether that goal is national greatness, which presupposes an enlightened goal for the society as a whole and a conscientious dedication to the specific objective of rearing and promoting exceptional individuals, admittedly, at a much higher social production cost than for the generic wholesale conveyor belt system, whose motto has always been “cheaper by the dozen.”
Good education implies not so much more money, as better educational principles, and, ironically, what is generally accepted as obvious in populist demagoguery becomes one of the most bitterly contested points in egalitarian reality.
Better education for all presupposes a higher demand for the students’ scholastic achievement. “Not fair!” scream the egalitarians. “You cannot expect the average and the underachievers to perform at comparable levels with the brightest and the smartest. And what about the important social category of the ‘aptitude-challenged,’--- aren’t they entitled to a level field?!”
As a result, rather than rewarding exceptional talent, the public school bar is lowered virtually to the level of the developmentally disabled. That’s egalitarianism to you!
I may be promptly contradicted with a panoply of general statements about gifted children’s programs and other numerous incentives for scholastic achievement, and I will be addressing all these gimmicks later on, but in this particular entry my concern is the basic failing of the educational system as a whole, and in this context, lowering the bar represents the system’s critical flaw. It may be true that an exceptional child will, hopefully, find a way to excel within or outside the public schooling system, but his eventual success has to be a triumph of exception over the rule, and at the expense of the rule, and, considering that society at large is the rule, there ought to be little satisfaction in the escape of a few from the morass sucking in everybody else, which is exactly what lowering the bar implies.
When Aristotle talks about the superiority of the living over the dead, he does not mean the superiority of a prodigy over the less gifted and/or the average. It is the question of general education for him, and in these terms we can talk about an educated society, an educated nation as a whole, versus an uneducated society, where the bar has been lowered to the level of the dumbest member, which sends the nation in question on a descending line towards degeneration and intellectual and spiritual death.
I’ll have a lot to say about many specific things, and particularly, about the horrific effect of the educational principle of multiple choice, dominating the American system of education, on the intellectual development of its victims. But the specific point of this present entry is to emphasize the crucial importance of educating the nation as a whole, that is, of educating the average citizen according to a set of higher standards, instead of bringing them all down to the least among them.
It is the average student who needs lifting up the most, and woe to the nation that fails him. What is being done in this case is effectively a return to the antiquated caste system of unequal educational opportunities, only without the benefits of the old system, in which each disadvantaged caste provided its members with a support system, such as vocational training, hereditary professional skills, etc., which no longer exists.
And lastly, good national education is impossible without a culture of good teachers. These also need to be properly educated, committed to their task, and well motivated Their three basic qualifications, therefore, must be competence, dedication, and motivation--- not just monetary, but in harmony with each teacher’s specific proclivity towards working with the average, the disadvantaged, or the specially gifted. But none of these can ever be instilled without a national educational program steeped in its solid self-awareness.

Education As Culture.
Among the several definitions of the word culture given by Webster’s Dictionary, the following two are of a particular interest to this discussion:
“The concepts, habits, skills, art, instruments, institutions of a given people in a given period; civilization.”
“Improvement, refinement, development by study and training. Training and refining of the mind, manners, emotions, taste.”
There is no accident, in this instance, in equating the concepts of civilization and education (implied in the second definition) via the single word culture, with its derivative cultivation.
Without culture there is no civilization. This has to be accepted as a key axiom. Yet, to counteract its force one may pose this innocent question: Who needs culture, and who needs civilization in our day and age of dollars and sense, when success seems to have nothing to do with tradition?
In order to understand the big picture here, we must necessarily refer to the history of education as-such. I would like to assume that such background knowledge exists in the reader’s memory, and no rehashing of this history will be required. In simple terms, what I am about to describe as the educational ideal for any historical time, is not some lowest-denominator mass-consumption fodder for the hoi polloi, but the elitist hoch-kultur model, presupposing a broad grasp and conscious appreciation of the greatest achievements of the human civilization (referring primarily to our great Western Civilization, which happens to be the most eclectic and appreciative of all existing civilizations in its recognition and assimilation of the best of what the rest of the world has to offer).
Back in the old days, this educational ideal was the privilege of a relatively small minority, and not without its own problems caused by a continuous, although, fortunately, inconsistent, rejection of the secular culture by the best-educated social group of those times, the clergy.
The Renaissance was in essence the ultimate recognition of the legitimacy and value of the secular culture by the Christian Church and the Christian State. Not without a difficulty, but successfully nevertheless, the educational ideal had gradually become accessible to the privileged classes, and subsequently had become the prime mover of the Enlightenment. In the meantime, the professional guilds had their own specialized educational models, and in a similar fashion all productive social groups, including the peasants, had their own distinctive methods of passing along the special skills, unconcerned with the higher matters, perhaps, yet always preserving the ascending ladder for the best and the brightest among them through the medium of the ecclesiastic education, from which no bright kid from the lowest walks of society was ever barred.
In the wake of the mighty social revolutions in Europe throughout the nineteenth century, undermining, if not totally abolishing, the caste system, a new social order was gradually coming into existence, stressing nationalism and the nation-state, as opposed to the transnational aristocratic solidarity that had existed as the order of the day whose sun was unstoppably setting. The new nationalistic order, forcefully recognized first by Hegel, in his doctrine of the nation-state, and then, by everybody else, required that the state, aside from consolidating power over its citizens, assumed certain responsibilities to them, and the responsibility to educate was one of the most significant new social obligations of the state. Hence the advent of what we have come to know as modern public education. Ironically, such unlikely nations as France and Germany would emerge much more open to the idea of state-sponsored public education than those most commonly recognized as “progressive,” such as, say, Great Britain, and especially the United States. Apparently, this paradox has a lot to do with some latent socialist predispositions of the former, and capitalist predilections of the latter.
Some historians of the European educational systems, also quite reasonably, attribute the great successes of the German system of public education (mandatory school attendance in Prussia, for instance, goes back to as early as 1717), to Martin Luther’s particularly appreciative opinion on the subject of general education, tremendously affecting subsequent social attitudes in Lutheran Germany, and immensely influential in the shaping of its future social policies.
By contrast, there was no compulsory public education even on the elementary level in England until 1880, when it first appeared, on a rudimentary level, and not until the Education Act of 1944(!!!) would it become compatible with our modern notion of education in a civilized nation. As for the United States, her special case will be properly discussed elsewhere, but in the meantime it will suffice to say that although this nation does have an “Education Secretary” (The United States Department of Education was established in 1979, and before then, Education was a part of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, established in 1953), it is to this day still lacking a cohesive national educational system, leaving the school programs to the care of the particular states, which implies only one explanation, of course, namely, that this nation does not seem to care to recognize education as an essential all-embracing national priority.
Returning to the question of education and culture, there is a basic philosophical incompatibility between two kind of approaches to public education: the liberal approach, if I may call it so, using the word liberal in the best of its senses, and the utilitarian approach. The first emphasizes liberal education, widening the public’s intellectual horizon, encouraging it to be more appreciative of the treasures of human civilization. The second, reduces all public education to job training and basic social skills, necessary to function in the workplace of the technological consumer society. All frills, such as culture and broad erudition, are thrown out of the school curriculum, as extravagant, decadent, and pragmatically unnecessary.
This false pragmatism in education has been seen as the most natural outcome of the implementation of the principle of equality of the educational opportunity. As if the cultivation of elitist mentality in the process of education had something to do with the selection process being biased along the class lines. Needless to say, there need be no such thing. Equal opportunity is by no means a search for the lowest common denominator but exactly the opposite of discrimination, which is absence of bias in the offering of the highest educational standards across the board regardless of the class origins of the students, and thus letting the best benefit the most, even if that means the pauper beating the prince and the billionaire. But in the end, it is the nation as a whole which ends up the winner, treated with respect and under the presumption of maximum capability by its educators.
Ironically, the liberal approach to education was generously practiced in Soviet schools during the lifetime of the Soviet Union, upheld, and passionately promoted by the traditions of the Russian Intelligentsia, that historically special and unique filler of the Russian society, which had a natural philosophical disposition, and fiercely opposed any form of utilitarianism, to the point of shaping an intelligentsia-friendly policy of the Soviet State, which, by Western conventional wisdom, had to be anything but liberal, in its ideological faith and practice. On the other hand, the British-American penchant for utilitarianism brought about the utilitarian anti-cultural blight into American public education, which is plaguing it to this day. There is no doubt here, which of the two approaches gets my personal endorsement. I have always maintained that the Soviet system of public education, despite its feeble attempts at “Communist” indoctrination, always rated among the best in the world, while I see its American counterpart all the way down at the rock bottom.
The lethal flaw of the Utilitarian, being the antipode of the Renaissance Man, is a narrow focus and a small angle of vision, depriving the job-oriented brute of an ability to utilize such indispensable qualities for any professional as imagination and intuition, developed mostly in a broad-minded individual, the opposite of the utilitarian mentality. Considering that narrow specialization, once believed to be the way of the future, and, consequently, giving a huge boost to the Utilitarian philosophy of the nineteenth century in particular, has been giving way to a growing interdependence of even the least likely to interact scientific fields, and that opening such new areas of interaction is an intellectual function of the liberally-trained mind, there is still a great demand for the cultured individual in all areas of social productive activity, wherever genuine creativity continues to be regarded as a man’s greatest asset.
And therefore, as long as modern American society is satisfied with its shabby function of a non-producing consumer with a predominantly service economy, outsourcing all healthy productive activities to other, less affluent. but better-educated nations, the steady slide toward social and national degeneration of this nation that used to have, and still possesses, the necessary qualities to make it the true city on a hill of her Manifest Destiny, can be neither effectively stopped, nor reversed.

In Defense Of Certain American Educators.
In my passionate repudiation of the American educational system, which gushes full blast throughout this section, I ought to take a pause to reassure the reader that I carry no bias with regard to the capacity of this nation to create a truly excellent educational system, along the lines of the most enlightened philosophical thinking, and second to none in its national output of outstandingly accomplished and literate citizenry.
Alas, however, that wonderful capacity which, to be fair, most nations possess, has been suppressed by the relentless pursuit of the pragmatic ideal, that false, demeaning, and even degrading philosophy of here and now, which may have an occasional merit of bringing one down from the rarified atmosphere of the outer heavens back to earth, but becomes a dead dragging-down weight, when adopted as a substitute for the ad astra ascending line of social development.
The dumbing-down utilitarian trend in American education has not ruled unopposed through this nation’s history, and several noteworthy and supremely commendable attempts have been made to put it on a right track. Among the Founding Fathers, it was Thomas Jefferson, who was not only an exceptional proponent of a national public education system in America, but was a firm believer that representative democracy, or what we call today Jeffersonian democracy, can be a boon only for a literate and enlightened nation. As if to foreshadow the things to come, his several attempts to establish a national system of public education in the United States were consistently voted down by the nation’s legislators. Jefferson’s best achievement in the field of education was the opening in 1825, just before his death in the following year, of the University of Virginia, the first secular university in America.
After Jefferson’s death, certain local successes were achieved in the New England states of Massachusetts, through the efforts of Horace Mann, and Connecticut and Rhode Island, by Henry Barnard. These two men may not have changed the overall attitude to education in America, but their work deserves our honorable mention nevertheless.
As if the wrong national attitude over who is responsible for what in American education was not enough, the whole concept of education suffered immensely from the application of “science,” namely, psychology to the practice of teaching. The famous American psycho-philosopher William James (whom I have actually praised on some different occasions, but for whom I have no praise in this instance), known as the father of American educational psychology, and, of course, John Dewey (who also has some interesting points in his theoretical philosophy, but who ought to have refrained from applying it to the American schools) were the two most influential education-wreckers, who (extremely recklessly, I must argue) introduced the so-called “functionalism” into the American educational philosophy and practice, focusing on experimentation with psychoanalysis, human biology and behavior, motivation and goal-seeking, etc.,--- all at the expense of the traditional educational concepts.
This monstrous intrusion took charge over the direction of American education in the twentieth century. It developed into an insidious philosophical dictatorship. Although by no means intellectually unopposed, its ill-fated triumph was reassured by the general national reluctance to allow a healthy debate over education in America as an important national issue, and besides, the nation’s misguided submission to the arrogant authority of the pseudo-scientific quackery, calling itself progressive education, had finally sealed the fate of the classic good old school, which itself never really had a chance to come to fruition.
Meanwhile, several still unmentioned American educators who fought against the tyranny of “progressive education,” deserve to be named here, even though they lost their honorable battles.
William Chandler Bagley was the leading proponent of the so-called essentialist education movement in the 1930’s. He saw the progressive phenomenon as a renunciation of high academic achievement, neglect of the essentials in education, and, generally, an irresponsible attempt at social engineering. His book Education and Emergent Man was published in 1934, in which he wrote: It is true that the world of today is a different world, but it does not mean that everything has changed. Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island still delight the youth; and the Sistine Madonna is just as beautiful as of yore.
As a result of his dedicated efforts, The Essentialist Committee for the Advancement of American Education was formed, demanding a return to the exact and exciting studies, to mental disciplines, particularly such as Latin, algebra, and geometry. As far as the method and curricular content were concerned, essentialism was trying to restore the supremacy of subjects over activities and the teacher’s initiative over the learner. Much of the essentialist philosophy may seem too pedantic and inflexibly rigid, unless it is seen in the context of its desperate defiance of the wacky, pseudo-scientific, and opportunistic zeal of the domineering school of progressivism.
In the efforts to cultivate humanistic (in the best sense of the word), or liberal (likewise!) education in the American classrooms, two major names ought to be mentioned here. Robert M. Hutchins, of the University of Chicago, accused American higher education of anti-intellectualism, urging a return to the cultivation of the mind through a meaningful academic curriculum. And Mortimer J. Adler, also of the same University of Chicago, demanded a restoration of the Aristotelian educational philosophy.
And then, of course, that perennial vestige of educational anti-pragmatism, the Catholic school, must get a nod of approval as well. Despite some inherent flaws, Catholic education in America has played a positive role, stressing healthy traditionalism, and fixing its gaze on the high-above heavens, rather than on the more accessible gutter.

Social Engineering In Education.
There is no desire on my part, at least at this time, to elaborate on the subject of History of Education in any comprehensive and consistent fashion, except to support certain theses of interest to me, which, necessarily, creates a web of no consistent pattern. Whether in the future, as I am rewriting this section as a whole, my interest in this subject will prod me into a lengthier and much deeper exploration, causing me to expand on this topic beyond its present relatively modest scale, now is not the time to make such a judgment, as there are many more subjects of my great interest along the way, on which I will wish to leave some considerable comments, and they may, perhaps, end up consuming most of my remaining time.
With this caveat, I shall now move to the rather surprising subject of social engineering in education, not in its grand dialectical historical perspective, but spotlighting now this now that, leaving aside many things that might be important to the subject as-such, yet awaiting their proper turn, in my future attention.
Having talked about the American system of education at some length, and intending to keep returning to it again and again, I am eager to make the seemingly paradoxical observation that the ideas of pragmatism and progressivism in education characterizing the American school, are closely related to the practice of social engineering, seemingly inimical to the “philosophy” of free society. My first-hand experience in comparing the Soviet and American educational philosophies and practices leaves no doubt in my mind as to which of these two systems imposes more on the psyche of the individual submitted to its care. While the ludicrously crude practices of indoctrination in the Soviet school could be successfully fought off by the sheer common sense, and adequately compensated by the healthy traditionalist educational curriculum, putting most of its premium on successful education, and demanding nothing more than lip service as the fruit of the program of indoctrination, a much more psychologically sophisticated and astoundingly invasive endeavor of social engineering in the American school succeeds by circumventing common sense, by justifying what is being done to the student by his or her own natural urge for… freedom. Paraphrasing Johnny Depp’s character in the movie Once Upon A Time In Mexico, “If you consider yourself free, then do what you are told!”
Remembering all those horror stories about the Communists removing Soviet children from their parents, to turn them into obedient tools of the Soviet System, told in the West, I wonder if those shocking details were taken directly from the fantasies of the American educators, or, even better, as a carbon copy of their Israeli counterparts’ practices in their extraordinarily democratic kibbutz education.
The most shocking feature of the so-called kibbutz education in Israel is the fact that the parents do indeed completely surrender their children to the kibbutz authorities at a very early age, in some places right after birth. This is done for both practical and ideological reasons, as they say. First of all, the mothers are thus released from the cares of child-rearing, and can join their husbands in the labor force. Furthermore, there are four compelling reasons for this type of education, as stated by the authorities themselves (ipse dixit!):
(1) The kibbutz way of life teaches complete equality of the sexes.
(2) Educating children in special children’s houses perpetuates the kibbutz way of life.
(3) Collective upbringing is more scientific than family upbringing, allowing the children to be raised not by their amateurish parents, but by trained professionals.
(4) Collective education is more democratic than traditional family education, and better suited to the spirit of collective living.
There are two big conclusions to be made from this. One concerns the obvious misplacement of the classic cold war red scare tactic, ascribing to the Soviet adversary exactly the same practice as has been in use by America’s most intimate ally. The intriguing question here is that, insofar as removing children from their parents is ostensibly seen as a totalitarian crime against humanity by the freedom-loving West, this double standard of tolerating the factual practice of the Israelis, while condemning the imaginary one, ascribed to the Communists, has been allowed to become a virtual reality in the minds of the American citizenry, thus offering a compelling testimony to the effectiveness of some American brainwashing techniques, agitation, and propaganda.
The other conclusion speaks to the exact meaning, or the entire absence thereof, of the term democracy in its different applications and apparently decided by these applications, rather than by its native denotation. If the democracy of the kibbutz education in Israel is being condoned by American linguistics, then isn’t it true that such heavily-loaded words as democracy and freedom have no other significance than keeping in step with one’s Washington masters, and doing what you are told?

Competition Of The Classrooms.
I have said it before, and I will say it again--- what determines good education, as opposed to bad education, is not the amount of money poured into the system, not even the money poured directly into the classroom, but the philosophy, underlying the educational system, the basic approach to the key question of what good education ought to be.
In the future world, the absolute wealth or the military power of the nations may not be the decisive factors in the global competition for national superiority. The brute force of the “smartest” weapons can be offset, asymmetrically, by smarter national thinking. No propaganda success abroad or successful brainwashing at home can ever offset the devastating effects of the social cancer, summarized in two words: bad education. Thus it is not any kind of superpower competition in hardware or software that matters the most, but there is only one real long-term contest that truly matters, which is the competition of the classrooms.
In my personal experience and weighed judgment, the American-Russian Match of the Giants in the field of public education has been won by the Russians by a no-contest decision.
I expect to be rudely contradicted now to the effect that once the cold war of the two superpowers has been won by the United States (and in that kind of contest the winner takes all), ergo it was won in the classroom too, and there is no other way of looking at it, rather than to play the sore loser. To which I shall respond by quoting Eliot Ness’s final words to Al Capone, in the movie The Untouchables: “Never stop fighting till the fight is done.” Just as Al Capone with a complacent arrogance reassures himself of having won his war with Ness in the movie, only to be utterly shocked by the unexpected reversal of his fortune, it was nothing short of vanity and sheer folly for the United States to unilaterally proclaim itself the cold war winner, well before the real fight was done. No, I do not think that cold war was won by this nation, or that there was an actual winner in that war. The worst loser of all, however, was to be determined in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, in the extent of how each competitor would understand and deal with the realities of a new, changing world, and adapt its vision to its demands and challenges. In that specific sense, the United States would fare the worst, declaring herself the sole remaining superpower, intent on converting the whole world into a capitulating enemy, crushed under the caterpillar treads of the new, improved Pax Americana. But just as Al Capone had the whole situation terribly misjudged, so has Washington’s policy of a “victory” that wasn’t, has misfired, turning this nation into a pariah among other nations and putting her economy and well-being at the mercy of rather unsympathetic strangers.
Returning to the comparison of the two classrooms, however, let us look at the situation subject by subject. Russian Language and Literature courses in the Soviet Union offered an excellent linguistic training: well beyond the basic reading and writing skills, with 100% national literacy as a mandatory objective. At the same time, the knowledge of the classics of Russian and Soviet literature was always in harmony with the demand for greater liberal-humanistic instruction, historically put forth by the Russian Intelligentsia, and, considering that the entire class of teachers in Russia was comprised of its proud members, no wonder that these ideas of the Intelligentsia had taken firm control of the Soviet classrooms. In comparison, the studies of English Language and Literature in the United States are customarily entrusted to a culturally-illiterate contingent of the NEA (Teachers Union) members, whose own professionalism, and even the ability to spell a common word correctly are never made an issue as long as they keep their membership and pay their dues on time. As a result, the United States ranks among the least literate, both linguistically and culturally, of the world nations and this dismal fact has never reached the status of a national disgrace on the list of priorities demanding urgent public attention.
A similar situation shows up, as we look at the other secondary school subjects, such as history, geography, math, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. A telling fact must be mentioned here, that while all science subjects were taught separately in the Soviet school, by separate teachers, each qualified in their particular field, they are all bundled into one subject science in the American high school curriculum, and the level of instruction here is miserable.
As for the social sciences, and, particularly, their being vehicles of ideological indoctrination in the Soviet school, I have already commented on this, and here is the bottom line. A better-educated person is far less susceptible to indoctrination than his illiterate counterpart, which holds true for the case in point as well.
Therefore, even though this might greatly shock and alienate even my most gracious and tolerant readers, I have to repeat it again and again that the levels of susceptibility to public indoctrination, in my observation, have been by far higher among the less-educated citizens of America, than they had ever been among their Soviet counterparts.

Public Education And Home Schooling.
In his Thoughts, Marcus Aurelius gently reminisces: “From my great-grandfather (I learned) not to have frequented public schools and to have had good teachers at home, and also to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.” (Thoughts Book I). In view of so many niceties I have had to say on the evils of public education in America, here is an excellent occasion for me to use this quote, to highlight my own views on education, by putting them in the context of Public Education versus Home Schooling.
Home schooling seems to be such a nice alternative to the defective public schooling, for all those who can afford it, both literally, through the dollar capacity of their purse, and figuratively, through the strength of their personal commitment and an array of several other factors. In our life in America, my wife and I had the luxury of home-schooling our daughters, with both of us serving as their tutors on most school subjects, plus a few private activities, such as violin and voice lessons, where our expertise was not up to par.
It was unfortunate, however, that the American public school system, showing us its shabby inadequacy at the very first and subsequent scrutinies, did not present a viable option to us, and as a result, our daughters were deprived of some key educational components, such as systematic instruction and socialization.
The must of all education, private and public, is always an abundance of quality books in the home. In my childhood, my motivation to indulge in reading was stimulated by a particular quotation from Cicero, which used to be right there, in front of my eyes, whenever I would sit down and open my old mahogany bureau in my study room to do my homework or engage in other exciting activities, which to me most often amounted to the same thing. “A house without a book is like a body without a soul,” were the words of Cicero, which I had grown up to take for granted.
My own upbringing combined public education in one of the best specialized schools in Moscow, and very robust home-schooling, with some of the greatest names of Soviet Academia being my inspired tutors. The bottom line of what I am trying to say here is that, certainly knowing what I am talking about, I can affirm that the best type of education is a healthy combination of public and home schooling.
Returning to Marcus Aurelius, there is little point in arguing that his repudiation of public schooling carries limited value in our modern age, except to reiterate the paradoxically priceless truism that good education is better than bad education, as well as to remind us that home schooling must not be discounted, and that the parents must not play the pre-Christmas Scrooge with their children’s education.
But even more important must be the understanding that money ought not to be wasted either, when it does not advance the goal of better education. In fact, the money is not the real issue here when the method is at fault. My healthy educational experience in Russia ought to be understood in the context of the productive and beneficial European educational method, as opposed to the appalling American educational method of multiple choice.
Now, finally, here is my closing thought, also serving as a link to the next entry. At the root of America’s school fiasco lies its overall-defective educational philosophy, but, putting it in more specific and practical terms, it is the self-defeating principle of the multiple choice, to which I am now turning my attention.

Freedom Of… Multiple Choice.
One of my particularly prized apte dictums asserts the following: Come to think of it, all scientific discovery is made utterly impossible by the logic of multiple choice. Even worse, the cultivation of a multiple choice mindset develops slave mentality.
This is a horrible indictment of the whole American educational system, considering that it is based on the principle of multiple choice, but there can be no attenuating circumstances to challenge such a verdict. The truth of the matter is that the practice of the multiple choice method, from a very early age on, is harmful to the development and future functioning of the student’s brain, depriving him of all personal initiative, and turning him into an obedient servant of established authority.
Let us take a closer look at the endemic harm produced by the method of multiple choice.
First of all, here is our good Webster’s Dictionary with its definition--- as always, taken for reference, rather than for its authority:
"Multiple choice test. In education, an examination, in which the person tested must select the correct one of a number of proposed answers for each question."
The right question to ask here is, “correct according to whom?” Woe to the student who does not ask such a question, and does not question the authority, which has made such a ruling. This student will never become a new-path seeker and finder, a pioneer discoverer, a revolutionary visionary, and a creator of new thinking, but will forever remain a follower of authority, a slave of the correct one, a consumer, a functionary, never an inventor.
The fact that there are still a few native creators in America (alas, the diminishing breed) speaks not for, as much as in spite of, the multiple choice mentality, referring to those who have been capable of beating it, as opposed to the growing number of those who have succumbed to it.
The generally recognized father of the modern scientific method, Rene Descartes, states, as the first law of the scientific method, “never to take anything as true that I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, to comprise nothing more in judgment than was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.” (Method, Book II)
The cornerstone of Descartes’ scientific method is doubt. Doubt as a principle, doubt as a state of mind. In the multiple choice method, there is no room for doubt. Doubt loses precious time, doubt lowers the score. One has to choose between scientific inquisitiveness and mechanical reassurance in correct memorization. Only the latter promises scholastic success.
Had Copernicus been educated by the multiple choice method, the earth would still have been the center of the Universe. Had Lobachevsky accepted the correctness of Euclid’s flat-earth geometry, his geometry was never to have materialized. Had the multiple choice principle ruled our world, Pluto would still have been a planet…
"I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity," Goethe writes to Schiller. And indeed, the purpose of instruction is not to indoctrinate, not to force knowledge on the student-victim of such scholarly aggression, but to inspire the student to think for himself, to facilitate his natural scientific curiosity, to let him become the explorer of an exciting terra incognita, rather than a follower in other people’s footsteps.
The biting irony of this entry’s title, Freedom of Multiple Choice, must now become clear, beyond its pun on the philosophical term freedom of choice. There are few things in life as inimical to human freedom as the “freedom to choose” your options from the degrading authoritarian menu of the “multiple choice.”