The primary message of this book, Fraud In The Shadows Of Our Society – What is unknown about educating is hurting us all, is simply stated: Opposing groups of our citizens have emerged in this country composed of the hand wringers who keep asking what happened and violent activists who have taken matters into their own hands. These groups have in common that they are dissatisfied with their personal lives. They do not understand that their behavior is driven by unrecognized unconscious motivation that results from their past experiences, many years of which were spent in public schooling, and these motivations will not change until individuals all achieve a level of self-understanding that will reveal the roots of their problems.
They have not acquired civil approaches to problem solving through their educational experiences, so they often demonstrate uncivil behavior that expresses their frustration in their inability to create a more satisfying life. This situation is directly related to the conventions of educating that have been maintained and controlled by ignorant or traditionally biased decision-makers within the conventional education system, those charged with responsibilities for early education and the remaining years of formal instruction.
Most families have passed through the activities of their public schools and perpetuate the troublesome results, beginning with parents along with their offspring who are conditioned to carry on the traditions of the conventional system. This will not change until self-knowledge and self-understanding becomes the focus of educational experiences, accepting the fact that everyone’s unconscious motivations will remain in place, warding off change, and believing life’s myriad tasks carry with them a sense of doom.
Support for this thesis draws upon the work of scholars who have focused their studies on the individual’s developmental patterns of growth, including the contributions of Psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie MD who wrote this seldom understood description of the problem: “Education will continue to perpetuate a fraud on culture until it accepts the full implications of the fact that the free creative velocity of our thinking apparatus is continually being braked and driven off source by the play of unconscious forces. Educational procedures which fail to recognize this end up by increasing the interference from latent and unrecognized neurotic forces.” These forces are typically based in acquired rigid orientations that are imposed on all experiences, past, present, and future. The roots of these orientations are connected to current structures and practices mandated by compulsory attendance in the public schools. The results of this attendance include limited competency and severely diminished mental health.
The work of numerous other scholars offers corroborating evidence with Kubies’s including such names as Jean Piaget, Viktor Lowenfeld, Lev Vygotski, Lawrence Kohlberg, Benjamin Bloom, Robert Gagne, Leland Bradford, Warren Bennis, Philip Phenix, and Bela Banathy, among others. Each contribution is presented in this book revealing explanations for what is happening or not happening in conventional schools, exposing root causes of today’s social unrest.
Through experimentations and demonstrations of the integrated statements of these scholars this author has formulated a newly designed assessment and evaluation system and offers numerous descriptions of experiences that are thought to convince the public of the critical need for systemic changes in the way we educate our youth.
According to psychiatrist Lawrence S. Kubie MD, "...we do not need to be taught to think; indeed, that is something that cannot be taught." Thinking processes actually are automatic, swift, and spontaneous when allowed to proceed undisturbed by other influences." We need to free these capabilities for thinking about this problem before it's too late.