Free From Menticide - The Education We Need

We must form minds capable of liberty, hands capable of work, hearts capable of duty and souls capable of beauty.

Within the Halloween theme of scary things, I’ve been recently listening to the audiobook The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo, which examines brainwashing and thought control in totalitarian systems. Meerloo practiced psychiatry for more than forty years. In 1942, he fled the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In 1956, he published The Rape of the Mind, explaining how scientific coercion creates what he called menticide.

“Fear, and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis. The conscious part of the personality no longer takes part in the automatic confessions. The brainwashee lives in a trance, repeating the record grooved into him by somebody else.”

Meerloo warned that people in free societies must guard against creeping authoritarianism not only through institutions, but in their minds. Freedom, he argued, depends in part on education for mental freedom—helping human beings think for themselves, understand concepts rather than memorize slogans, and see the essence of a problem rather than perform for authority.

In a world of algorithmic distraction, polarized media, bureaucratic mandates and intellectual conformity masquerading as expertise, this warning feels urgent. We live in an era where propaganda is subtle, delivered not through a dictator’s speeches but through trending feeds, institutional messaging and social pressure to stay within approved lanes.

The goal is not to frighten. It is to say that mental freedom is not automatic. It must be taught, practiced and defended.

That brings us to education.

If we want free people capable of building a prosperous, democratic society, we cannot rely on systems that produce passive consumers, credentialed performers or obedient administrators. We need to form citizens—not subjects. Builders, not spectators. Thinkers, not algorithmic repeaters.

There is a tradition for this. Today, we must revive it with modern tools and a national sense of mission.

This essay will outline classical education rooted in the Trivium and Quadrivium, how America abandoned it and how we can restore it as the foundation for a confident, productive and self-governing republic.

Because the most frightening future is not one with monsters in costumes. It is a society that cannot think clearly, cannot build for itself and forfeits its freedom without firing a shot.

The Lost Art of Forming Free Minds

For more than two thousand years, free societies educated citizens through two harmonizing traditions:

The Trivium — The Arts of Language and Thought

This formed the mind’s structure.

Stage	Focus	Purpose	Modern Meaning
Grammar	Knowledge, language, facts	Mental images and clear categories	Reading, history, civic literacy, precision
Logic	Analytical reasoning	Discern truth, understand causation	Debate, logic, science, fallacy training
Rhetoric	Persuasion & moral speech	Communicate truth for the common good	Writing, public speaking, leadership

The core aim of the trivium is to perceive reality faithfully, reason soundly and express truth beautifully.

The Quadrivium — The Arts of Number, Harmony and Order

This trained students to discern pattern, proportion and harmonious design.

Discipline	Meaning	Civilizational Function
Arithmetic	Number itself	Mental discipline, finance, coding logic
Geometry	Number in space	Buildings, maps, land, engineering
Music	Number in time	Harmony, emotion, moral sense
Astronomy	Number in motion	Navigation, physics, humility before nature

The core aim of the quadrivium is to see order in creation, harmony in society and pattern in nature and history.

Taken together, these traditions trained young people to think rigorously, act morally, build responsibly and govern wisely. This education gave the ordinary person extraordinary power: the ability to think for oneself.

What This Education Creates

A classical education forms citizens who can:

• Exercise independent judgment

• Govern themselves before governing others

• Understand cause and consequence

• Pursue the good, the true and the beautiful

• Engage in democratic life promoting natural law

• Build productive power rather than outsource it

• Resist propaganda and manipulation

Civilization survives only when its people can think clearly, act with virtue and justice. The American System fused classical education with engineering and productive power. West Point married Euclid and warfighting. Land-grant colleges paired liberal arts with agriculture and industry. Civic duty, not career placement, guided schooling.

The Great Abandonment of the 20th Century

Beginning in the early 1900s, a technocratic movement reshaped American schooling:

• John Dewey prioritized social efficiency for industrial owners

• Education shifted from forming citizens to training workers

• Art, classical languages, rhetoric and civic philosophy faded

• Standardized testing replaced oral defense and demonstration

• Vocational learning was separated from civic responsibility

• Specialization replaced philosophical understanding and judgement

After World War II, the focus shifted to standardized testing and a consumer-entertainment culture accelerating technocracy, reducing civic thought, producing specialists without wisdom and coddling consumers and reducing the child’s potential as future builder.

Why It Matters Now

Today we face:

• A retirement wave in skilled labor, engineering and public service

• A civic literacy collapse

• A polarized information ecosystem

• Institutions that reward conformity, not courage

• A generation fluent in screens but uncertain in purpose

• Propaganda distraction and fragmentation not delivered by commissars but by push notifications

We are training young people to perform inside systems, not shape them. We need a generation who can build bridges and build arguments. Fix machines and fix institutions. Code, weld, debate, compose, reason and govern. A republic cannot survive on test-prep and outrage. It survives on mind, muscle, virtue and productive imagination.

How to Rebuild a Republic Through Education

1. Begin with Grammar (Ages 5–11)

Goal: Develop the mental structure and moral imagination

Tools:

• Timeless literature, fables, Scripture, myth, poetry

• Copywork, recitation, memorization

• Foundational civics, geography, history

• Nature study and field observation

• Music and drawing

Teach words, stories, maps, tools and memory—because a mind without structure becomes prey to slogans.

2. Develop Logic (Ages 12–15)

Goal: Discernment

Tools:

• Formal logic, debate, fallacy training

• Socratic method and the scientific method

• Experiments and hands-on inquiry

• Basic economics and political economy rooted in production, not ideology

• Coding as modern dialectic

Teach how to think, not what to repeat.

3. Master Rhetoric (Ages 15–18+)

Goal: moral persuasion and public service

Tools:

• Speech, debate and essay mastery

• Policy writing and civic internships

• Apprenticeships in engineering, trades, labs, public works

• Study of statesmanship biographies

• Arts and aesthetics connected to civic duty

Teach students to speak truth with humility and courage.

4. Integrate the Quadrivium Across All Ages

• Arithmetic - budgeting, mental math, coding logic

• Geometry - surveying, carpentry, architecture, agriculture, engineering, land use

• Music - instruments, choir, rhythm, moral sentiment and harmony

• Astronomy - physics, navigation, cosmic humility

Tie math and science to infrastructure, agriculture, navigation, manufacturing, space and energy. Math should excite the youth to build railroads and rockets, not lead to boredom.

5. Modern Apprenticeship Renaissance

Every student is exposed to all parts of the economy from water and sanitation to energy systems and agriculture while learning a craft and completing real work that includes:

• Water systems, energy systems, machine shops

• Nuclear, rail, ports, semiconductors, agriculture

• Media centers, local government, trades, engineering labs

Education becomes apprentice-citizen formation, not passive graduation. If education is to restore mental freedom and civic competence, it must move beyond simulations and worksheets into the living economy. 

A modern apprenticeship renaissance means every student encounters the full stack of civilization while learning a craft and completing real work. Students should rotate through water and sanitation, energy systems, agriculture and logistics, not as spectators on a tour but as junior contributors with tools in hand. 

They should see how a water treatment plant safeguards public health, how an electrical substation balances a grid, how a machine shop turns design into parts, how a farm marries biology and finance, how a port moves the nation’s lifeblood of goods.

In practice, that looks like semesters embedded in nuclear power plants; rail and port operations; modules in semiconductor clean rooms and precision machining; placements in media centers, city halls and engineering labs where communication, law and design converge. 

These experiences give shape to the abstract: mathematics expressed physically, civics becomes local governance, physics becomes power and motion, rhetoric becomes the ability to brief a foreman or a mayor. Education, in other words, becomes apprentice-citizen formation, not passive graduation.

A Republic, Not a Managed Population

A nation trained this way becomes technologically capable because young people learn to design, maintain and improve the systems that keep a civilization alive. 

It becomes morally grounded because apprenticeship requires reliability, honesty and respect for standards that cannot be faked. It becomes spiritually free and unified because shared work toward tangible goals builds solidarity across class and background, orienting people toward a horizon vision of universal prosperity. 

It becomes economically productive because learners enter adulthood with competence and confidence, references and a portfolio of completed projects. Mastery breeds dignity and dignity resists fashion. People become more resistant to propaganda because citizens who can measure, repair and argue from first principles are hard to manage by hype.

The aim is not to produce narrow specialists but whole citizens who understand machines and metaphysics, markets and morality. That is the education of a confident republic, not a managerial empire.

A New Generation of Citizen-Builders

Time is not on our side. More than 30 percent of America’s skilled workers and public-sector professionals will retire in the next decade. The trades gap alone could reach millions. 

Infrastructure renewal demands engineers, machinists, welders, architects, public works leaders and civic stewards who can replace and surpass a departing generation. If we fail to cultivate citizens who can build, we will import dependency, outsource sovereignty and lose the means of self-government. 

This is not only a cultural project. It is an economic and national-security imperative. Freedom demands competence and character. That requires a return to first principles: knowledge over information, reason over ideology, beauty over stimulation, production over consumption, citizenship over credentialism. 

Let us aim to raise Americans who read deeply and think clearly, who see beauty and demand excellence, who can build energy systems and railroads and keep them safe and on time, who can start businesses, write policy and steward land. 

Let us form people who can defend liberty and out-reason tyranny, who can govern themselves so they can help govern a free people. If we build such citizens, the nation will flourish. If we do not, no system can save us.

The Fight for the Future is the Fight for the Mind

This is not a partisan struggle. It is a civilizational one. If we do not educate free citizens, we will raise subjects.  If we do not cultivate virtue, we will inherit decay.  If we do not teach harmony, we will endure disorder.

The republic can be renewed. It begins in community classrooms, workshops, libraries, farms, laboratories and dinner tables. We must form minds capable of liberty, hands capable of work, hearts capable of duty and souls capable of beauty.

Let us build an American renaissance worthy of our founding promise found in preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…