John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board (GEB) in 1903. The GEB was to dispense Rockefeller funds to education.

I don’t want a nation of thinkers.
I want a nation of workers.
~ John D. Rockefeller

Workers and their taxes are more profitable to the Rockefellers than thinkers:

I would rather earn 1% off 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.
~ John D. Rockefeller

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all. It is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level – to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
~ H.L. Menchen

1880-1956 – journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, critic of American life and culture, and scholar of American English

Excerpt from Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars:

CONSEQUENTLY, in the interest of future world order, peace, and tranquility, it was decided to privately wage a quiet war against the American public with an ultimate objective of permanently shifting the natural social energy (wealth) of the undisciplined and irresponsible many into the self-disciplined, responsible, and worthy few.
In order to implement this objective, it was necessary to create, secure, and apply new weapons which, as it turned out, were a class of weapons so subtle and sophisticated in their principle of operation and public appearance as to earn for themselves the name “silent weapons”.
In conclusion, the only objective of economic research, as conducted by the magnates of capital (banking) and the industries of commodities (goods) and services, is the establishment of an economy which is totally predictable and manipulatable.
In order to achieve a totally predictable economy, the lower class elements of the society must be brought under total control, i.e., must be house-broken, trained, and assigned a yoke and long term social duties from an early age, before they have an opportunity to question the propriety of the matter. In order to achieve such conformity, the lower class family unit must be disintegrated by a process of increasing preoccupation of the parents and the establishment of government operated day care centers for the occupationally orphaned children.
The quality of education to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the moat of ignorance isolating the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and tranquility for the ruling upper class.