Organized Stupidities
'It is a strange form of organized stupidity,' writes Gina Cerminara§, 'that men call education. That many intelligent men and women have emerged successfully from its tentacles is a remarkable demonstration of the invincibility of the human spirit . . . The fundamental and colossal stupidity of education, as commonly practised, is that it places its attention on everything in the universe except man himself. Physiology and psychology, and all the arts and sciences of self-knowledge and self improvement, including ethics, religion, philosophy, psychic research, personality, development and the social graces, should be the primary concern of all educational institutions.'
To this, as to all the rest of the praiseworthy article from which it has been extracted, our Amen is by no means perfunctory; it sounds loud as a ram's horn, even tho there be few unstuffed ears to listen to it. Thru some superior nitwittedness this writer also wallowed in 'education' for a decade and a half, then spent the next twenty years trying to learn something really useful. Very few concepts, among those he now esteems valuable, came to him from lecture room or seminar. Culpa sua, perhaps, and maybe should not here be exposed to public gaze. But he is only one more horrible example among a multitude.
Our own critique of the educational process, while much duller than Dr. Cerminara's, would take a somewhat different form. The best definition of education (to our mind) describes it as the formation of habit and the evolution of power. This means in part that right thinking and right conduct become integrates with the personality, hence habitual; and in the degree that this is done, power over the self and over environment flow from it. The emphasis here is on the psychological problem, rather than on the choice of subject matter.
Next we would point out that before habit can be formed or power developed, one must possess and develop mental control, in the form of concentration and application. The normal mind can learn 'almost anything', provided the attention can be held upon it. And without the power of attention, nothing can be learned. But attention control as a subject per se is never taught. The pupil is given a task and told to master it - or else! By fear of penalties or luck of liking the subject, he manages somehow. But as to how to manage our own minds on academic subjects or anything else, every one of us, from primary to graduate school, is his own little Columbus on an uncharted sea. Here and there one hears of a 'course' or a book on "How to Study". For sheer ineptitude, milk toast diet, these are usually blue ribbon achievements.
How many tens of thousands of books and other writings exist on educational theory and practise, on the psychology of pedagogy? Where is there a single one dealing with the elementary principles of attention control? How long can the average university graduate 'really' [2] hold his mind on, say, a word, a symbol, an object, a phrase or proposition that does not interest him? We have heard super-optimists allege three minutes for this performance - but have never yet met the prodigy who could do it. (We grant, of course, that attention control is relative, and almost unobtainable in full degree).
What a brilliant discovery it was, when educators announced that the key to attention was interest! Children are interested in candy sticks, concentrate on them with no difficulty at all! Therefore, make every school subject into a candy stick too, turn all tasks into play - and presto, the educational problem is solved! Unfortunately, when Johnny-cum-laude goes job hunting, family rearing, maybe world-conquering, not a single candy stick does he find, but all sweets have turned sour. His preparation for this, however, is a rimless zero. Whoever taught him how to hold his mind on dull and disagreeable subjects, to think his way thru stone-wall difficulties by ruthless logic, right insight and sustained power?
Of course this one phrase we are expounding, attention control, spreads over every phase of life, encircles the earth like Midgard serpent. Anyone who can really manage his mind has no fears or sorrows, and no ills of body either - you simply don't have a pain if you're not aware of it, refuse to attend to it. You don't even have to stay 'inside' your body, once you have learned to put all of your attention outside, but can whisk off to Hindu Kush or wherever in a single eye-flicker. Aladdin's lamp, Solomon's ring, the elixir of life, the philosophers' stone, Alkahest, the secret of secrets - are so many symbols and word-embodyings of the power to control consciousness.
This power exists in some degree for everyone - else learning and purposeful effort would not exist. It can be trained and developed, or education would be impossible. It can be developed to an almost incredible extent and no one can set limits to its possibilities - as every student of occult matters is well aware. It is the Alpha and Omega of occult development, and the very essence of individuality and of power -- and also the one thing which our so-called educational processes never make any direct attempt to develop ...
We could go on and on about this, but what's the use? Why ruin Round Robin forever, just on account of a few editorial complexes?
§ Bulletin, Assoc. for Research & Enlightenment, Virginia Beach, Va., Gina Cerminara, Ph.D., Editor. May, 1946.
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ATO-BOMBS
AGAIN
Major de Seversky, in Readers Digest not long ago, freed his mind on the subject of "atomic frenzy .. near hysteria .. fantasy running wild", admitted he had made no mathematical calculations, but asserted the Hiroshima explosion was about equal to that of a ten-ton block-buster. But the 114 technicians of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Commission disagreed with the Major "Unanimously and often violently". General Groves, for instance, remarked that a similar bomb on the Pentagon building would destroy an area two miles in diameter": the forces released were equivalent (says Readers Digest) to 20,000 tons of TNT. And this, we add, is a small edition of the bombs which brass-topper wisdom proposes to explode near the level of the sea, in an unstable geological area - come August next. But maybe - just maybe the July altitude explosions will be enough to scare, not 'wits out of' but some sense and sanity into our bold experimenters. At any rate, here's hoping!