"It is possible, of course, to keep educated people unfree in a state of civilization, but it’s much easier to keep ignorant people unfree in a state of civilization. And it is easiest of all if you can convince the ignorant that they are educated, for you can thus make them collaborators in your disposition of their liberty and property. That is the institutionally assigned task, for all that it may be invisible to those who perform it, of American public education."
-- Richard Mitchell, underground grammarian and author of The Graves of Academe
Since when, you ask? Oh, since about 1913 or thereabouts.
