According to Wikipedia, “Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past.” The mainstream historical method is, unsurprisingly, rubbish. Consider the following example.

>HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE US

>Preparing people for democratic citizenship was a major reason for the creation of public schools.

>The Founding Fathers maintained that the success of the fragile American democracy would depend on the competency of its citizens. They believed strongly that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues and would participate in civic life, vote wisely, protect their rights and freedoms, and resist tyrants and demagogues. Character and virtue were also considered essential to good citizenship, and education was seen as a means to provide moral instruction and build character. While voters were limited to white males, many leaders of the early nation also supported educating girls on the grounds that mothers were responsible for educating their own children, were partners on family farms, and set a tone for the virtues of the nation.

>The nations’ founders recognized that educating people for citizenship would be difficult to accomplish without a more systematic approach to schooling. Soon after the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and other early leaders proposed the creation of a more formal and unified system of publicly funded schools. While some Northeastern communities had already established publicly funded or free schools by the late 1780s, the concept of free public education did not begin to take hold on a wider scale until the 1830s.

>The “common school” movement encouraged the creation of public schools for multiple purposes.

>In the 1830s, Horace Mann, a Massachusetts legislator and secretary of that state’s board of education, began to advocate for the creation of public schools that would be universally available to all children, free of charge, and funded by the state. Mann and other proponents of “common schools” emphasized that a public investment in education would benefit the whole nation by transforming children into literate, moral, and productive citizens.

>Common schools were also proposed as a way to promote cohesion across social classes and improve social outcomes.

>Reformers argued that common schools would not truly serve as a unifying force if private schools drew off substantial numbers of students, resources, and parental support from the most advantaged groups. In order to succeed, a system of common schooling would have to enroll sufficient numbers of children from all social classes, including the most affluent and well-educated families. This idea met with resistance from many Americans who did not want to pay to educate other people’s children. And some passionate advocates of common schools did not interpret a “universal” system of public education as being equally available to children of all races and ethnicities.

>Advocates saw universal education as a means to eliminate poverty, crime, and other social problems. Some early leaders argued that the costs of properly educating children in public schools would be far less than the expenses of punishing and jailing criminals and coping with problems stemming from poverty.

> The path toward providing universal access to free education was gradual and uneven.

>Throughout the 19th century, public schools took hold at a faster pace in some communities than in others. Public schools were more common in cities than in rural areas, and in the Northeast than in other parts of the country. As explained below, it also took longer for children of color, girls, and children with special needs to gain access to free public education.

>Gradually, more states accepted responsibility for providing universal public education and embedded this principle in their state constitutions. Not until the latter part of the 19th century, however, did public elementary schools become available to all children in nearly all parts of the country. In 1830, about 55% of children aged 5 to 14 were enrolled in public schools; by 1870, this figure had risen to about 78%

>High school attendance did not become commonplace until the 20th century. In 1910, just 14% of Americans aged 25 and older had completed high school. As recently as 1970, the high school completion rate was only 55%. In 2017, 90% of Americans aged 25 and older had a high school degree

>The process of establishing local public schools was itself an exercise in community building.

>The actions of local people coming together “to run their schools, to build schoolhouses, to hire teachers, and to collect taxes” helped forge a sense of community and made people invested in their schools. Once established, public schools often became community centers where people of all ages came together for meetings, exhibitions, entertainment, and other social activities. In some small and rural communities, schools were the only public building suitable for these purposes.

The most attentive and intuitive readers will understand that something is wrong here. Perhaps they will notice that we are given no names for any time after 1830. How can there be a history without names? Who are “reformers?” Why did they want “unity?” Who are these stupid advocates who seriously thought that throwing more money at teachers would solve “poverty, crime, and other social problems?” Maybe no such advocates actually existed.

The method here, if there even is one, is to obscure as much as possible the actual people behind the events given. The Rockefeller Foundation becomes “states” and “reformers.” Public slogans are taken at face value when superior, more hidden statements found in the writings of the men responsible are better suited to the task of explaining motivation. Sometimes no analysis is given whatsoever. High school magically becomes commonplace; states “gradually accepted responsibility” because, apparently, the moral arc of the universe bends long but towards justice or whatever.  A law of history has been violated:

(1)   Thou shalt not write a history without names.

How could it be otherwise? What is a state but a set of people? Imagine trying to understand WWII without Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt.

It’s not only liberal histories which violate the law. Consider the libertarians, supreme haters of the public school:

THE ORIGINS OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

>Hardly anyone disputes the contention that the modern public school is seriously flawed.

>As historian Michael Katz writes, “The crusade for educational reform led by Horace Mann . . . was not the simple, unambiguous good it had long been taken to be; the central aim of the movement was to establish more efficient mechanisms of social control, and its chief legacy was the principle that ‘education was something the better part of the community did to the others to make them orderly, moral, and tractable.’ ”

>Before the 1830s, education was largely an “informal, local affair,” in which Catholic, Protestant, and other schools competed for pupils.

>What were the causes of that shift from private to public education? It is impossible to review the period in question and fail to conclude that the drive for public education was largely a response to the huge influx of poor, non-Protestant immigrants. Between 1821 and 1850 just under 2.5 million Europeans emigrated to the United States, over one million of whom were Irish Catholics. Nativist and “Know-Nothing” backlashes occurred, which included the burning of Catholic buildings and other forms of bigotry.

…

>Thus Henry Barnard, second only to Horace Mann in championing state education, commented, “No one at all familiar with the deficient household arrangements and deranged machinery of domestic life, of the extreme poor, and ignorant, to say nothing of the intemperate—of the examples of rude manners, impure and profane language, and all the vicious habits of low bred idleness—can doubt, that it is better for children to be removed as early and as long as possible from such scenes and examples.”

>Such an attitude inevitably led to the consideration of children as wards, nay, as property, of the state. Mann wrote, “Our common schools . . . reach, with more or less directness and intensity, all the children belonging to the State,—children who are soon to be the State.”

>This diminution of individualism made possible ever greater encroachment of government in all spheres of life.

The libertarian has just violated a law of history, one which he violates frequently. That law is:

(2.1)        Events do not explain events or ideas.

(2.2)        Ideas do not explain events or ideas.

(2.3)        Only people explain events or ideas.

Obviously only people are historical actors; behavior is a phenotype, and history is nothing but a record of behavior. Ideas and events may influence people, but only people make history. In regressing to Hegelian babble, the libertarian has spoken nonsense. Who is individualism, and how does he make things possible? We are not told. Like “state” and “reformer,” “individualism” is merely another obscurative label meant to hide the names of the people responsible for the event in question.

Violations of these laws are widespread. Consider Sam Blumenfeld, a prolific libertarian writer on the history of the public school. Here he is violating Law 2.1:

HOW HARVARD BECAME LIBERAL

>By the 1690s, liberal, anti-Calvinist influences began to infiltrate the governing body of the college. And by 1701, Harvard's liberal tendencies had become so pronounced that a new orthodox college was founded at New Haven, Connecticut, which became Yale University. All the founders of Yale were Harvard graduates in the Connecticut Valley or on Long Island Sound.

>On October 28, 1707, John Leverett became President of Harvard. This was the first time that a layman and a liberal was elected to an office hitherto held by an orthodox Puritan minister. Although Leverett instituted no changes in the curriculum, his liberal policies began to be reflected in student behavior. He wrote in his own diary in 1717 that the Faculty was having trouble with "profane swearing," "riotous Actions" and "bringing Cards into the College." Many college clubs were founded by students, which encouraged questionable behavior.

>By 1800, the liberal seed, first sown by Leverett, became the full-blown fruit of Unitarianism, which rejected the Trinity, rejected the divinity of Christ, and rejected all the tenets of Calvinism. The final battle that ended the ongoing war between the orthodox and Unitarians took place in 1805 when Reverend Henry Ware, a Unitarian minister, was elected Hollis Professor of Divinity. Morrison writes (p. 189): "Thus the theological department of New England's oldest university went Unitarian....Orthodox Calvinists of the true puritan tradition now became open enemies to Harvard."

The trick here is how he smuggles in some event as a given and then asserts that subsequent events are implied by the first one. In this case, anti-Calvinist infiltration is given. This is taken to fully explain Leverett’s presidency and the ascension of Unitarianism. What we have here looks like analysis, but is actually just an assertion of an apparently single event (because everything is implied by the first “seed”). This is fallacious pseudo-analysis.

In another essay, Blumenfeld does a Moldbug:

THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

>Most Americans assume that we’ve always had public schools, that they came with the Constitution and are an indispensable part of our democratic system. But nothing could be farther from the truth as I discovered when I wrote my book, Is Public Education Necessary?, published in 1981. In writing that book I wanted to find out why the American people put education in the hands of government so early in their history. I was quite surprised to find that it had nothing to do with economics or the lack of literacy. It was the result of a philosophical change in the minds of the academic elite.

>imported from Europe was the idea of Hegelian statism [this is the John Birch Society fallacy], the idea that the state was God on earth. It was this idea that emboldened educators to believe that it was the state’s duty to mold its children—its “most precious natural resource”—into obedient servants of the state.

He never explains why the people he mentions changed their minds. In this way, he is violating Law 2.2; the reference to the academic elite is extremely superficial. The Ideal of “Hegelian statism” is asserted to be the cause of the rise of public education. No names are given whatsoever, and no evidence is given that the academic elite were responsible for establishing public schools.

Through three histories on the rise of American public school we have “learned” the following: Horace Mann and a friend wanted to set up common schools in the 1830s because they were really good people. They were also statists. Then, over the course of the next century, states accepted responsibility and make school take over a decade for everyone.

With a proper method, more can be learned with fewer words. What shall that method be? First, it must be guided by the Basic Law of History, the one on which the others are built:

(0)   Thou shalt root thy analysis in terminal explanations.

This is what the other laws have in common: they all deal with dodging “terminal explanations” in one way or another. Terminal explanations are true givens, like genetics, the ideal economic structure, and cultural inertia. They are, in other words, the basic components of phenotype, whereas the violations of the law deal with obscuring phenotype or explaining it with itself.

This is Problematic when our aim is to explain and predict, as opposed to fooling the unrefined and farming them for currency with easy writing and bad scholarship. How does one lay the seed of anti-Calvinism, or import Hegelian statism? How does one make states “accept responsibility?” Can I just go outside and become a “reformer?” Doubtful.

If history were a mushroom, these “historians” would say “they are a fungus found in forests” when asked what a mushroom is and “they come from the intercourse of a male and a female mushroom” when asked where a mushroom comes from. They do not go beyond pseudo-tautology based on the misuse of common knowledge. We, on the other hand, seek to give a rigorous account of the mushroom, “a mushroom is made of cells, its cells are made of chemicals, it evolved due to these pressures…” etc.

This rigorous treatment starts with behavior genetics. For any individual:

P = G + E

Where P is phenotype, G is genotype, and E is environment. This works because E is treated as everything that is not genotype by definition (for more on this equation, see my writing “The Mathematics of Man Part 1”).

The intuition that history is a collection of phenotypes can be formalized by recognizing that history consists of changes in culture. Culture is defined here as:

C = E[P] = E[G] + E[E]

Where E[P] is the expected value of all the history-relevant phenotypes (see “Centralization and Coordination”). Since history is change in culture,

dC = dE[P] = dE[G] + dE[E]

Change in culture is defined as change in elite phenotype which is change in the elite gene pool or the elite environment. This equation makes it clear that analyzing any event means analyzing dC, which means rooting dC in dE[G] and dE[E].

It should now be clear that the core problem with the previously quoted histories is that they each merely present a chain of dCs, with no reference to the underlying change in dE[G] or dE[E]. Reformers emerged, but there is no hint as to whether or not this is genetics or environment; their names are not even given. People adopt “Hegelian statism” for no reason in particular. Etc. dC > 0, but nothing else is revealed. Perhaps it is fair to say that, insofar as these are histories, they are not historical analyses.

What does a historical analysis look then? Is it really so revealing? What better way to answer these questions and support the conceptualizations presented here than to actually analyze the rise of the American public school? 

Historical analysis involves three broad steps: 1) identify the chain of events to be analyzed; 2) identify the sovereign groups responsible; 3) analyze their dE[G] and dE[E]. Step one is relatively easy and can be completed using mainstream secondary and tertiary sources. The following table, from An Empirical Introduction to Youth, summarizes the chain of events concerning US public schools:

These events are, more specifically, the passages of state laws regarding public education. With step one complete, we must now attack step two by identifying those responsible for the passage of these laws.

The best procedure for identifying those responsible for some event may still be unknown. Bronski traced wealth, and I tend to agree with this intuition. Instead of dealing with an unmanageable horde of civil servants and politicians, as if they are any more sovereign than neoserfs, tracing wealth unsurprisingly tends to allow researchers to pin events on a small number of super-rich individuals.

If one is responsible for an event, then said event would not have happened without that person. Scratch that – what if the removal of any individual simply results in a group regenerating him? An oligarchy may be the basic unit responsible for an event. There may even be multiple co-responsible oligarchies, certain combinations of individuals whose removals would prevent certain events.

The rich are at least one necessary oligarchy wherever an event is expensive. This is a major redpill on revolution hiding in plain sight – is it cheap to wage a war? No. Yet for some reason they don’t talk about the payments made to the American rebels, without which they threatened to abandon (https://allthingsliberty.com/2015/10/furloughs-discharges-and-the-end-of-the-continental-army/#_edn3). The Revolution wasn’t really a popular movement; nothing is, and men don’t wage war for free.

The second major oligarchy is the memeticians, those who, without which, the theory of some event would not exist. Previously I have spoken on the Marx vs. Moldbug divide in historical analysis; this is yet another statement of that schism. The rich versus their hired brains … who is more powerful? Are there others? Perhaps the data will reveal them if so. But for now these are the necessary oligarchies that are known. One consists of those who distribute the material, the other consists of those who distribute the computationally significant thought. The task of the historical analyst as it stands is to weigh the sovereignty of these two groups and to watch out for others.  In general the rich is superior to the brains if only because most of the events of the last 200 years have been built on superficial “theory” that is mainly used as propaganda by those who wield material.

It is theoretically possible, not knowing anything of elite vs. neoserf phenotype, that any oligarchy, if removed, could regenerate from the masses. In this case, an event would be truly popular. Without knowledge of class differences in genotype, class differences in phenotype for a given event can be estimated by analyzing how controversial some event was. If an event is not controversial, that means some environmental factor had a uniform change on the gene pool, or else the whole gene pool shifted (evolution, as opposed to the gene pool of the elite changing due to recirculation and immigration). Elite theory tells us, however, that the masses are malleable, and so an event being popular is irrelevant so long as there are some who disagree with it. No matter the popularity, if those who disagree with it take power, the neoserfs will obey (it will, however, be harder to take and maintain power, in the face of a monolithic existing elite and a middle that constantly veers towards the reversed event as the elite recruits it).

 Bronski considers all of these factors. First he shows that in state after state the rise of the public school was controversial, both among the political class and the masses, indicating that the cause was probably not as broad or as straight-forward as some technological shift. Then he elaborates on what he terms the “dialectic” between the rich capitalist class and the professional managerial class that they hired. He demonstrates that, because change towards the establishment of public schools was everywhere driven by this wealthy class, they are indeed the sovereign oligarchy behind the rise of public school. If the wealthy class had not consented to the change, it would not have happened. Because it was not a popular change, their consent was not a function of the pressure of outside opinion. We are now left with step three.

Elite testimonials, interpreted correctly, are the current golden standard of evidence with regards to step three. Bronski provides two; one from Horace Mann, and another from John D. Rockefeller’s main advisor.

Horace Mann:

>It [public school] does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility towards the rich; it prevents being poor....The spread of education, by enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a wider area over which the social feelings will expand; and, if this education should be universal and complete, it would do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in society.

>The main idea set forth in the creeds of some political reformers, or revolutionizers, is, that some people are poor because others are rich. This idea supposes a fixed amount of property in the community, which, by fraud or force, or arbitrary law, is unequally divided among men; and the problem presented for solution is, how to transfer a portion of this property from those who are supposed to have too much, to those who feel and know that they have too little. At this point, both their theory and their expectation is of reform stop. But the beneficent power of education would not be exhausted, even though it should peaceably abolish all the miseries that spring from the coexistence, side by side, enormous wealth and squalid want. It has a higher function. Beyond the power of diffusing old wealth, it has the prerogative of creating new. It is a thousand times more lucrative than fraud; and adds a thousand fold more to a nation's resources than the most successful conquests. Knaves and robbers can obtain only what was before possessed by others. But education creates or develops new treasures,--treasures not before possessed or dreamed of by any one.

>For the creation of wealth, then,--for the existence of a wealthy people and a wealthy nation,--intelligence is the grand condition.

Rockefeller’s advisor:

>In our dream, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational 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 into a little community 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.

We see here raw Orwellian motivation (maintain and increase our own power) combined with good sounding statements about helping the victims out (as Bronski extensively shows, school was always a scam). Was this Orwellian impulse new? Doubtful. If it is not new, then dG is low relative to dE. It seems more likely that a trillion dollar education system that is at least 80% hollow signaling was simply unaffordable before industrialization. As industrialization progressed, the parasites latched onto its fruits and enhanced their enslavement of mankind by demanding the incarceration of their victims for the first two decades of their lives.

We can be more specific. Let E = T + M + O, where T is technology, M is computationally significant ideas, and O is whatever falls outside these two things. Our hypothesis, then, is that in the case of the rise of public school, dT > dG + dM + dO. In other words, the toxic elite was already in place by the start of industrialization. As technological development advanced, and child-slavery to the State became more affordable, this elite naturally drifted in that direction and established public schools.

Rigorous methods for distinguishing the magnitudes of the d’s are yet to be developed. In general, we can only say for now, that, roughly speaking, where we see an influx of new actors with genetic similarities all pushing for a change, dG is high. Where we see non-trivial, apparently proven ideas take hold, dM is high. And where we see technologies manifesting as they become more affordable, dT is high. Finding good estimation methods for these variables in diverse historical periods is an open field of study in powerology.

Let’s finish off with our summary of the rise of public school, and see if it makes more sense than the standard histories.

By the start of the 19th century, the elite wealthy class was looking for ways to solidify their power. For various reasons, forcing worker-children to attend public schools was considered a good way to accomplish this goal. As “school” became more affordable, the elite arranged to make the period of “study” longer and longer, lasting until the victim was of prime working age. Key individuals representing this elite include Horace Mann & co., the Rockefellers and their foundation, the Carnegies and their foundation, and other central bankers.

Doesn’t this make way more sense than the standard histories?

Sources:

1.     Center on Education Policy (2020). History and Evolution of Public Education in the US. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606970.pdf

2.     Murphy, Robert P. (1998). The Origins of the Public School. https://fee.org/articles/the-origins-of-the-public-school/

3.     Blumenfeld, S. (2004). How Harvard Became Liberal. https://www.home-school.com/Articles/how-harvard-became-liberal.php

4.     Blumenfeld, S. (1999). The History of Public Education. https://www.home-school.com/Articles/the-history-of-public-education.php

5.     Bronski, J. (2021). An Empirical Introduction to Youth. https://www.amazon.com/Empirical-Introduction-Youth-Joseph-Bronski/dp/B095TDQ5FC