Protocol No. XVI
For the purpose of destroying all collective forces except our own, we will nullify the universities, the first stage of collectivism, by reconstructing them along new lines. Their directors and professors will be trained for their work through detailed secret programs of action, from which they will not be able to deviate in the least with impunity. They will be appointed with special care and will be so placed as to be completely dependent upon the government.
We will exclude from the curriculum civic law, as well as all that touches upon political questions. These subjects will be taught only to a few dozen selected for their striking ability from among the initiated. The universities must not allow the callow youths to graduate who concoct plans of constitutions as they do comedies or tragedies, or who meddle with political matters which even their fathers do not understand.
Poorly directed study of political questions by a great number of people creates Utopians and poor citizens, as you can judge by the universal education as conducted by the Goys along those lines. It was necessary for us to infiltrate into their educational system such principles as have successfully broken down their social order. When we are in power, we will eliminate all disturbing subjects from educational systems and will make young people obedient children of their superiors, loving the sovereign as their assurance of hope, peace, and quiet.
For the study of the classics and ancient history, which contain more bad than good examples, we will substitute a program dealing with the future. We will obliterate from the memory of the people all those facts pertaining to former centuries which are not to our advantage, leaving only those which emphasize the mistakes of the Goy governments. The study of practical life, of obligatory social order, of the inter-relationship of human beings, the avoidance of evil, egotistical examples that plant the seed of evil, and other questions of a pedagogical nature, will head the educational program. This program will differ for each caste, never allowing education to be of a uniform character. Such a system is of special importance.
Each caste must be educated with strict limitations, according to its particular occupation and the nature of the work. Accidental genius has always been able and always will be able to rise to a higher caste; but, for the sake of this rare exception, to open the door to the inefficient, and to admit them to higher castes or ranks, enabling them to occupy positions of others born and trained to fill them—is absolute insanity. You, yourself, know what happened to the Goys when they yielded to this nonsense.
In order to implant the sovereign firmly in the minds and hearts of his subjects, it is necessary to acquaint the people, during his term of office, both in schools and in public places, with the importance of his activity and the benevolence of his enterprises.
We will abolish all unlicensed teaching. Students will have the right to gather, with their relatives, in their colleges as if in clubs. During these gatherings, on holidays, the teachers will read supposedly unbiased lectures on problems of human relationship, on the law of imitation, on the cruelty of unrestricted competition, and finally, on new philosophical theories which have not yet been disclosed to the world.
We will promote these theories into dogmatic beliefs, using them as stepping-stones to our faith. After having presented our program of action for the present and for the future, I will read to you the principles of these theories.
In short, knowing from the experience of many centuries that men live and are guided by ideas, that these ideas are imbued only by means of education given to persons of all ages, of course by different methods but meeting with equal success, we will absorb and appropriate to our own advantage the last traces of independent thought, which for a long time have been directed to the goal and to the ideas necessary to us. The system of enslaving thought is already in action through so-called visual education.
This system tends to turn the Goys into thoughtless, obedient animals, expecting to see in order to understand. In France one of our best agents, Bourgeois, has already announced a new program of visual education.