Here is a review of
Weapons of Mass Instruction written by John Taylor Gatto.
A few gems from Weapons of Mass Instruction:
Quoting H.L. Mencken on the aim of American education: “The aim… 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.”Schools intend “to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.”Quoting Ellwood Cubberly: “Our schools are… factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned… And that is the business of the school, to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they’ll never be bored.I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs project, contract giver, and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “re-formed.”School is a religion.Schooling is organized by command and control from without; education is self-organized from within; school disconnects its clientele from other primary sources of learning. It must do that to achieve administrative efficiency; education sets out to provide a set of bountiful connections which are random, willful, promiscuous, even disharmonious with one another — understanding that the learning of resourcefulness, self sufficiency, and invention will inevitably involve surprising blends of things, things impossible to predict or anticipate in advance.
Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 10:06 pm 