An Angry
Look At Modern Schooling
by
John Taylor Gatto
See this video The Prussian Connection - UNDERGROUND HISTORY - John Taylor Gatto
Part one
Things you need to know about the Modern
day Public Education System before you send your children to the Public
School.
Also a must read below to be educated on the Public Education System
A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into
the Problems of Modern Schooling John Taylor Gatto, Author
Part Two
html5 video preload by EasyHtml5Video.com v3.9.1
Passages From his book
The Underground History of American Education:
An Enclosure Movement For Children
The secret of
American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn, and it
isn't supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command
economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn't made for
the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would
define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of
organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life
according to school is dull and
stupid, only consumption
promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that's where real meaning is
found, that is the classroom's lesson, however indirectly delivered.
The decisive dynamics
which make forced schooling poisonous to healthy human development aren't
hard to spot. Work in classrooms isn't significant work; it fails to satisfy
real needs pressing on the individual; it doesn't answer real questions
experience raises in the young mind; it doesn't contribute to solving any
problem encountered in actual life. The net effect of making all schoolwork
external to individual longings, experiences, questions, and problems is to
render the victim listless. This phenomenon has been well-understood at
least since the time of the British enclosure movement which forced small
farmers off their land into factory work. Growth and mastery come only to
those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting,
freely associating, enjoying privacy — these are precisely what the
structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.
Occasional Letter
Number One
Between 1896 and
1920, a small group of industrialists and financiers, together with their
private charitable foundations, subsidized university chairs, university
researchers, and school administrators, spent more money on forced schooling
than the government itself did. Carnegie and Rockefeller, as late as 1915,
were spending more themselves. In this laissez-faire fashion a system of
modern schooling was constructed without public participation. The motives
for this are undoubtedly mixed, but it will be useful for you to hear a few
excerpts from the first mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education
Board as they occur in a document called Occasional Letter Number One
(1906):
In our dreams..people yield themselves with perfect
docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions
"intellectual and character education" fade from our minds, and unhampered
by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive 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, educators, 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 ample
supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple... we will
organize children.. and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their
fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
Things you need to know about the Modern day Public Education System before you send your children to the Public School.
Also a must read below to be educated on the Public Education System
A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problems of Modern Schooling John Taylor Gatto, Author
Part Two
Passages From his book
The Underground History of American Education:An Enclosure Movement For Children
The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn, and it isn't supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn't made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that's where real meaning is found, that is the classroom's lesson, however indirectly delivered.
The decisive dynamics which make forced schooling poisonous to healthy human development aren't hard to spot. Work in classrooms isn't significant work; it fails to satisfy real needs pressing on the individual; it doesn't answer real questions experience raises in the young mind; it doesn't contribute to solving any problem encountered in actual life. The net effect of making all schoolwork external to individual longings, experiences, questions, and problems is to render the victim listless. This phenomenon has been well-understood at least since the time of the British enclosure movement which forced small farmers off their land into factory work. Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy — these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.
Occasional Letter Number One
Between 1896 and 1920, a small group of industrialists and financiers, together with their private charitable foundations, subsidized university chairs, university researchers, and school administrators, spent more money on forced schooling than the government itself did. Carnegie and Rockefeller, as late as 1915, were spending more themselves. In this laissez-faire fashion a system of modern schooling was constructed without public participation. The motives for this are undoubtedly mixed, but it will be useful for you to hear a few excerpts from the first mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education Board as they occur in a document called Occasional Letter Number One (1906):
In our dreams..people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions "intellectual and character education" fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive 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, educators, 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 ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple... we will organize children.. and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.