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See Gatto's talk on the 14 differences between elite boarding schools and other schools (public and private).

Basically, at college homework is so much better. I hear that there are high schools like this, I guess for gifted kids; too bad I didn't go to one.

You went to a high school for the proletariat. All men may be created equal (genius is common in our species), but the system can be rigged to produce winners and losers. Rich people send their kids to boarding schools, where they're molded into leaders. See the first video here.

Usually when I address the public school myth, I reframe the terminology around 'government schools'. Public libraries operate for the benefit of the public, and the 'public schools' we formerly had in the united States were operated for the benefit of the students. The children could take as much or as little schooling as they wanted.

But the government allows no choice in their schools. They mandate that children & young adults attend their child prisons until they're 16 (or 18, in certain states) years of age. The child's personal interests are irrelevant to the prescribed course of study.

The U.S. Feral Government needs dysfunctional schools to produce good soldiers, willing to obey whatever their commander tells them to do. See Gatto's videos. All modern imperial states (Prussia, Germany, U.K., United States, etc) implement disfunctional school systems to get the home populace under their thumb first.

I believe you when you state that the public schools work well in Nordic countries - they don't have to support an empire.

Not the fact that gaming is popular is South Korea, but rather the fact that the submitter describes it as forward thinking. I love Nethack and Q3A as much as the next guy, but there are some things playing a real sport will do that videogames won't.

*Get you in shape
*Teach you teamwork
*Teach you leadership
*Teach you commitment
*Get you laid

Make fun of athletes all you want, but the fact is that varsity collegiate athletes make more money than non-athletes after they graduate college. Competing and being part of a team that's bigger than yourself teaches you something that I'm not sure videogames can replicate. Years of studying Go is one thing, Starcraft is another entirely.

I know lot of Slashdotters like John Taylor Gatto's work. He used to be very much against sports, but after analyzing the differences between public and private schools he has since changed his position. He now says that playing sports in high school isn't just an option, it's the only way to achieve grace.

Holt often failed at getting his students to learn what, according to the curriculum, they were supposed to learn, but he was determined to figure out why. He soon became as interested in the reasons for the failure as he had been in the original task of following the curriculum. Team teaching allowed him long periods of simply observing the children, trying to experience the classroom as they experienced it rather than as he imagined they were experiencing it. He was surprised and puzzled to find that most of the children in his classroom were bored and frightened, intent only on figuring out what the teachers wanted and whether or not they should try to give it to them. The classroom was not the place of active learning and exploration that Holt had imagined it to be.

    To the thousands and millions of readers of How Children Fail (1964) who found in the book confirmation of their own school experience, Holt was one of the first to see through educational jargon and theory and to write about what life in school was really like for children and teachers. People reading it and remembering their own childhoods found, often for the first time, someone who said that disliking school made sense. Students and teachers who had suspected that something was wrong but had not been able to say what it was found someone who could articulate it for them. ...

-from Susannah Sheffer's introduction to John Holt's A Life Worth Living, pg 2-3 (emphasis added)

... But his [Mann's] contention is that this spirit of the system is separable from the manner of teaching itself. And here American teachers can learn much.

The Prussian schoolmaster, he [Mann] discovered, combined complete mastery of subject matter with superb pedagogical finesse. They taught from "the head," never relying on a textbook. Beginning not with abstract theories -- neither principles, rules, nor axioms -- but with objects and phenomena familiar to each child, these master teachers encompassed elements of reading, spelling, writing, grammar, drawing, and general information into every lesson. Students in the Prussian schools, unhampered by the artificial formalisms of rote memorization, enjoyed learning; the liked their teachers and held them in high esteem. The teachers rarely used physical punishment; they secured discipline through the affection and respect -- even awe -- the students had for them. The Prussian schoolmaster was the complete authority; children unquestionably accepted and believed what he said.

Horace Mann dreamed of making American teachers as authroitative as their Prussian counterparts. ... (Perkinson pg. 77. Italics in original, bold my emphasis)

The paranormal has had three centuries to demonstrate it exists. How many more centuries of statistical noise should be gathered before we state that we are as certain as experiment allows to say it has absolutely no basis in fact?

Suppose, for a moment, that Telepathy was a normal phenomena, a skill that anyone could access. However would the earth's self-appointed ruling class keep the roiling masses in line?

For example, could George W. Bush's handlers have pushed the populace into initially accepting the necessity of invading Iraq, if most of us could tell telepathically that the alledged WMDs were a bald-faced propaganda ploy?

No, I think the 'paranormal' proves itself, and such proof must be violently suppressed by those who wish to maintain the power structure status quo. Government Schools and a scientific establishment greatly assist this ambition. See my other posts in this and the other story.

I picked up a copy of Mr. Gatto's A Different Kind of Teacher the summer after finishing my 4-year college degree (from an expensive science/engineering school), and realized that I didn't really know how to read.

Gatto had discovered that most of his 7th graders couldn't read beyond the level required for a multiple choice test, and offered his readers a question on the classic All Quiet on the Western Front. I went to the library, borrowed the book, read the first 20 pages as best I could... And had no idea whatsoever what was going on.

I'd tried to read many books before - The Hobbit, Moby Dick, texts for college course, etc. I couldn't even read Harry Potter.

Someone posted a link to some Gatto videos when I posted a comment linking to Underground History some months back. So if you're like me, and can't really read, then at least you can watch the movies. :)

http://www.edflix.org/gatto.htm

I kind of disagree with your conclusion that the answer is turning the books into film, but that being said I think Gatto's book has influenced me more than anything else I've ever read. If you liked Underground History, you should definitely check out these video clips of him talking about the book. He has really expanded his views on what a good primary education should encompass since the book was published, and these video clips are the only place that reflects these ideas as far as I know.