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Rowland Walter Jepson, M.A.—M.A. was an honorary award by Oxbridge, issued automatically a year after a B.A.; other British universities offer only a B.A.!—I think—1888-1954. Formerly Headmaster, The Mercers' School, Holborn, London. Before the vast growth in universities, many text-books were written by schoolmasters. And many were very good: H S Hall & S R Knight's Elementary Algebra (1st edition 1885) and E J Holmyard's Inorganic Chemistry (1st edition 1922?) illustrate the type. A modern utterly worthless type is Blair Unbound by Anthony Seldon, apparently a headmaster with 25 titles more-or-less by his team.
Clear Thinking was first published Feb 1936; the author being about 50. The introduction says it was the result of an experiment with Lower Sixth Form boys. The title was partly borrowed: 'Training for Citizenship.' The fifth edition, 1954, was published a few months posthumously. It included a new chapter on Propaganda 'and an additional Appendix ... on "Reading the Newspaper"'. Perhaps luckily, it pre-dated television; I wonder what Jepson would have made of TV. I don't think radio is mentioned; the book is unindexed, and seems written-language based, largely of course modern English.
Clear Thinking is saturated with the values of English public schools of the time. For example, it includes Greek and Latin; it has an interest in citizenship as activity, not just passive absorption of handed-down memes; topics are always expanded formally; its introduction lists influences and sources; there are topics for further discussion, problems, examination questions. The rather pompous appearance must have limited its sales; I'd guess Jepson's slightly later book Teach Yourself to Think of 1938 was cut down and simplified by the firm editorial hand of The English Universities Press Ltd.
Jepson may have had Jewish connections; I haven't made much attempt to check, but the Avotaynu surname index lists JEPPESEN. For people ignorant of Jews, this is important when anything about Jews is considered. Jewish-written books are dangerously partisan. People without interest in Jews need to 'wise up'; they are vastly important, and hugely damaging. Just as one tint example: David Dimbleby 'worked' his whole life at the BBC, only being revealed, more or less accidentally, as a Jew late in life. He was the principal face of the TV Question Time programme. For much of this time the was no public method to even record these broadcasts. Here's my own chronology of Jews if you need an introduction.
I recommend that thoughtful critics try to cast their minds back to 1936. What subjects cried out for clear thought from citizens who wanted to learn? Here's a list of eight, taken at random:
• (1) Should the 'Great War' (First World War) be investigated, to try to work out what effects it had?
• (2) Looking at the Church of England, how big a landowner was it, and did it use its wealth usefully?
• (3) Were atrocity stories in the so-called 'Soviet Union' true?
• (4) What happened in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Polish Corridor, and other geographical oddities?
• (5) What exactly is money?
• (6) Who owns newspapers, and the BBC, and how much influence do owners have? Can they publish what they want?
• (7) Can you say anything about the costs of war and the results of war?
• (8) How useful is party politics in carrying out people's wishes?
Just my list; by all means make your own. We'll leave that for the moment, and browse through Jepson.
The book has 9 chapters, plus 5 miscellaneous sections. There are three chapters on psychology—thoughts, memory, words. Two chapters on errors and bias. Three chapters on (roughly) philosophy—observation, memory, induction, deduction. And a chapter on fallacies.
It's not easy to pin down and expose thinking. The layout involves something like (his capitals):
INDUCTION and GENERALISATION [investigation may be needed; his examples include eventual success of clever or dunce children; whether red-haired people are short tempered; cause and effect, simplification, coincidence, analogies. Mostly English examples.
DEDUCTION [Venn diagrams, syllogisms, 'drawing the line', False dilemma, 'false logic']
COMMON FALLACIES [Composition and division, parts and whole; fallacies of accident, where changes in circumstance are ignored (or of course unknown...); question begging, circular arguments; complex questions and answers - forms of question begging; vicious circle; ignoring the point, e.g. Macaulay on 15 years of Charles 1st's reign and his apologists]
EDUCATIONAL IDEAS ['Transfer of learning' idea from, say, Latin: p 121: "There is no evidence for it, though primary and secondary education established for 2 and 1 generation". FAINT SUGGESTION that people wanted scientists, or rather technologists, not classics. "Politicians praised 'glorious incapacity.'" APPROVAL FOR severe training, strenuous exercise, strict discipline, plain fare—though without clearly stating what was meant.
Most of the longish passages are (I'd guess) part of Jepson's teaching of history.
He has pages on the meanings of words: 'democracy' from Greeks, French Revolution, 19th Century England, World War 1, and the present day, all in completely conventional style. Pages 48-52 look at meanings of law, justice, liberty, equality. Jepson looks at non-English wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Franco-Prussian war, cartoons of Germans as tiny, with huge helmets or big and bearded singing Lutheran carols around Christmas trees. And the myth of Russian soldiers landing in Scotland in World War (he doesn't mention the 'Angel of Mons')—perhaps a PsyOp in modern parlance.
Jepson on the Constitution of the U.S.A. (page 150): ‘A mistaken analogy led to the present from of the Constitution of the U.S.A. Those responsible for framing it set out to imitate certain characteristics of the English Constitution. But in their estimate of it they overrated the influence of the Crown in the person of George III—an influence due to transitory causes only—and they paid more attention to the theory of the Constitution, as explained by the lawyer Blackstone, than to its working in practice. Hence they created a strong executive (representing the Crown in England) and carefully separated the three departments of government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicature; but they neglected the fact that in actual practice in England those holding the highest executive posts sit in Parliament and are responsible to it for the conduct of their official duties.’
Jepson on some historic parallels: ‘.. world civilization.. a series of ... stages.. rugged strength, graceful beauty, and excessive ornamental elaboration. .. Doric, Ionic and Corinthian.. Norman, Early English, and Decorated.. bourgeois or middle-class revolt, a "reign of terror", and .. military dictatorship.. war, boom, depression evident in the first half of the nineteenth century, appeared to be repeated in the years 1914-1934...
Suggestive stuff, though of course difficult. And many omissions suggest, at least to me, Jewish evasion—what about black slavery by Jews, Opium Wars by Jews, British Empire's ships being Jewish, Jews used to extort money?
The chapter PREJUDICE includes this section: ‘... we should experience some difficulty [on reading recent history] in, shall we say, tracing the causes of war; for, according to them, all wars are due to international financiers, Jews, armament firms, imperialism, oil trusts, Jesuits, democracy, dictators, communists, individualists, foreigners, the English, the Press, education, boosting the birth rate, Catholicism, Freemasons, lawyers, or drink. Such people shrink from the special effort required to take account of negative evidence; ...’
I had a lot of sympathy for this book, but this emotion is probably very misplaced. At that time of depression, poverty, the results of family deaths and loss of family businesses to the state. It seems to resemble the outlook in post-1945 Jew-controlled countries, of new horizons denied to the benighted parental generation who were thought of as uneducated. Certainly it did nothing much to advance thought.
I'll list a very few of his examples of confusions of thought; amusing, but perhaps unhelpful:–
A bogus Biblical quotation, made up by someone in Ireland: "'The land belongeth to the tenant, and not to the landlord', saith the Lord."
The British Empire has been built up, brick by brick and stone by stone, cemented by the blood and sweat of successive generations of our countrymen. Remove one of these stones or bricks, and the whole edifice will collapse."
"Cupping" or blood-letting is a recognised method of curing some bodily ailments. Wars, too, acts in the same way. It is a blessing, not a curse. What country ever became great without blood-letting?
"The Allied fortunes in the War began to improve soon after America joined them. Therefore America won the war."
SIR, I have no use at all for these newfangled notions in Education - free discipline, self-determination and so on. Look at the results. A lot of Bolsheviks, shiftless wasters, with no respect for authority or anything else for that matter. Give me the good old-fashioned discipline. If you spare the rod, you spoil the child. Besides, everyone knows the average boy likes strict discipline: he respects those who wield it. He knows that it does him all the good in the world. Yours, etc.
This scheme aims at an improvement in our system of education. But it is universally admitted that our educational system has been steadily improving; therefore this scheme is superfluous.
"I knew a man who spent a lot of money on the education of his daughter and she went and married a Chinaman."
"It is curious the number of parents insisting that their children learn Economics. There never was a more futile subject. It leads nowhere. And a good many come from Economic Schools half-developed Socialists and good for little. Keep away from it."
You must stand either for the protection of social privilege and private vested interests, or for the principle of human brotherhood and the common good.
The scarcer an article, the more valuable it is; in order to be wealthy, therefore, society should try to make things scarce.
Protectionist: And then you say that Protection raises prices. Why, ever since the introduction of tariffs after the financial crisis of 1931, prices have actually fallen, and many staple foods actually cost less today than they did in the palmy days before the Great War. That shows that tariffs have actually lowered prices.
The total wealth of a country has to be divided between workers and property owners. Obviously, what is taken from one is given to the other.
The McKenna duties have obviously benefited the Motor Trade; our production of cars has gone up by leaps and bounds, and the motor manufacturing industry now occupies a place among the first five important industries in G.B. The heavy industries - iron and steel - are now recovering quickly under the recent protection afforded them. The farmer is benefiting from the restriction in the imports of agricultural produce. It follows, therefore, that if all the products of this country were similarly protected, all classes in the community would feel the benefit.
Money is the source of happiness and comfort. If everybody had more money, the whole world would be a happier and more comfortable place.
Two of the most valuable things in life are air and light; yet they cost nothing.
Why all this outcry against the Capitalists? The humblest workman's bag of tools is capital; everyone with only a few shillings in the Savings Bank is a Capitalist.
Periods of monetary inflation are periods of active trade, little employment, rising wages, and high profits. Why not issue lots of paper money and so produce this desirable state of affairs?
I believe in improving the condition of the poor, but the trouble is that if you make them better off, they only multiply faster, and thus keep themselves in their old condition of poverty.
"Foreign travel is good for everybody, but it cannot be forgotten that behind all this anxiety to send children holiday-making on the Continent, is the intention to turn them into priggish little internationalists, the friends of every country but their own."
X was one of the best statesmen the country has ever had, for during his period of office we enjoyed a degree of prosperity unparalleled by anything before or since..
"You talk of the millionaire's luxury yachts, and shooting boxes, and deer forests, and armies of servants - and say such luxuries are needless and harmful. How would you like to give up your wireless set and your weekly visit to the cinema? Aren't they luxuries too?
This book is unindexed; I suppose this would be difficult. It is truly amazing how irrelevant the book is to serious considerations: there might be details of Mussolini and Hitler, for example. After all, there was a huge war! Thouless contributed one of his mock conversations, as an appendix. It includes a bit on income tax repaying war debt; perhaps the only nod to deep issues.
Another omission is the fact that Jews, unlike most nations, are distributed; the numbers of course are secret, but must be comparable with (say) Finns, Danes, New Zealanders, or perhaps allowing for mutual influence, Italy, Australia, or Britain. They co-operate in secret with each other, and can unify their attacks on one target after another. See for example Hexzane527's examination of details of the Second World War. There is no attempt by Mander to assess the case for Jews taking over Rssia, renaming it the USSR, and killing large numbers of Slavs. For this sort of reason I assign this book to the Jew sphere of influence.
Mander's Teach Yourself to Think has an oddly unsympathetic attitude to its audience, chiding them for ignorance, stupidity, credulity and what have you. This aspect of course is part of the Jew attitude to 'goyim'. I wonder how popular his book was.