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And John Taylor Gatto would agree with that if you change the word "education" to "schooling" (which is what you really seem to be referring to, as the two are not the same). See: Underground History of American Education

Further, Gatto argues schools are functioning perfectly to accomplish what they were designed for about 150 years ago by industrialists -- dumbing down the masses so they become compliant factory workers and consumers, with any initiative to press for change alone or through unions long since beaten (psychically) out of them.

So is it any surprise real wages per worker (adjusted for inflation) have dropped since the 1950s, but news articles frequently misleadingly trumpet that family incomes have risen -- yet ignore the fact that is only because now both parents work and the kids are left unsupervised to be brainwashed by school and television and dumbed-down peers?

Gatto argues schools need to be completely dismantled, a big project as at the same time other aspects of our society need to be rethought as well. Because, as W's reelection despite Iraq, our collective continued oil dependency, and the popularity of unsafe SUVs all show -- as just a few related examples -- the current system has failed the US and the world.

BILDERBERG EXPOSED

World Shadow Government Uncovered by AFP Again

BILDERBERG EXPOSED

World Shadow Government Uncovered by AFP Again

They don't care what your aim was, all they care about is that some kid is doing stuff they shouldn't be.

Someone like John Taylor Gatto would agree that a conformist
and obedient sort of person is exactly what mainstream schools were
designed to turn out. From:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/8e.htm
"The first exhibit for your perusal is the U.S. Bureau of Education's
Circular of Information for April 1872, which centers around what it
calls the "problem of educational schooling." With whose interests in
mind did the bureau view education as a problem? The amazing answer is:
from a big business perspective. By 1872, this still feeble arm of the
federal government is seen filled with concern for large industrial
employers at a time when those were still a modest fraction of the total
economy. According to this Circular of Information, "inculcating
knowledge" teaches workers to be able to "perceive and calculate their
grievances," thus making them "more redoubtable foes" in labor
struggles. Indeed, this was one important reason for Thomas Jefferson's
own tentative support of a system of universal schooling, but something
had been lost between Monticello and the Capital. "Such an enabling is
bound to retard the growth of industry," continues the Circular. There
is nothing ambiguous about that statement at all, and the writer is
correct, of course. Sixteen years later (1888), we can trace the growth
in this attitude from the much more candid language in the Report of the
Senate Committee on Education. Its gigantic bulk might be summarized in
this single sentence taken from page 1,382: "We believe that education
is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting
itself among the laboring classes." Once we acknowledge that planned
economies of nation or corporation are systems with their own operating
integrity, quite sensibly antagonistic to the risks educated minds pose,
much of formal schooling's role in the transformation that came is
predictable. If education is indeed "one of the principal causes of
discontent," it performs that subversive function innocently by
developing intellect and character in such a way as to resist absorption
into impersonal systems: Here is the crux of the difference between
education and schooling-- the former turns on independence, knowledge,
ability, comprehension, and integrity; the latter upon obedience."

A public school, like any bureaucracy, has its financial incentives backwards: the more they fail, the better their chances of arguing for a bigger budget next year.

In my home town it happens the same every year. The school board screams that if they don't get more money, they'll need to cancel <favorite program X>. Then they hand out pink slips to the teachers -- it's all a big show. Then they use the funds to hire their friends and family.

I've learned enough about our education system to know I don't want my kids in the typical public school.

The above comment speaks for itself. There is something very wrong with the American psyche. The poster is completely unable to see that every statement made about the 'Dastardly French' is actually much more relevant to their own country and its media-fed mass psychosis. http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m (remove stupid space in URL)

You can read more about them here.

Your opinion seems to be rather uninformed. There has always been a great deal of tension between innovators and investors; they detest each other but also need each other. America was made into what it is just as much buy the capital that backed the innovators as it was by the innovators.

The sorry state of American education actually has its roots in the desire of industrial magnates (Morgan, Carnegie, et al) to cultivate/create a nation of economically dependant consumers, and the among the techniques used to accomplish this are those rooted in India's caste system, including compulsion schooling. Viz.:

How Hindu Schooling Came To America (I):
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1m.htm/

Ironically, roles appear to be reversed and not only is the innovation and hungry creative problem solving that was once the bedrock of American prosperity is showing up BIGTIME in India, but so is the capital that once lifted the US into the economic stratosphere.

As a consultant to an investment bank (yes, the evil "international banksters" of tinfoil hat fame), I am a firsthand witness to BILLIONS in assets formerly invested in US securities flooding into India, and not just high tech companies.

So back to your point: "However, since most places, India included, prize rote memorization as the best way to educate, I can't see them ever turning out large numbers of innovators the way the US has." If the big money needs innovators in India, you better believe that the cream of the crop will get the kind of education you assume doesnt exist there.

IIRC, it was a Rothschild who said "the best time to buy is when blood is flowing in the streets". Now India may not be a violence infested third world wasteland, but there is one HELL of an upside to their economy, whereas the US "Superpower", is really past its peak and the average American just hasn't figured it out yet.

BTW, I am an American, and love my country, but let's be objective about this, and save ourselves a catastrophic fall. Its going to be painful enough if even if we recognize it and prepare for it...

Actually, I have read his book The Underground History of American Education , and found it to be not only interresting and enlightening, but also conformed to my own experiences with the public education system. He is truly a brilliant man, and it is refreshing to see that someone awarded Teacher of the Year by the state of New York would write an expose of that kind. I also recommend reading his works.

If you haven't read John Taylor Gatto's books yet, you should. He goes into a lot of detail about people like John Dewey and the other architects of American state schooling.

His major work is published online entirely.

If you haven't read John Taylor Gatto's books yet, you should. He goes into a lot of detail about people like John Dewey and the other architects of American state schooling.

His major work is published online entirely.

Why is this a troll? Several educators, not the least of the them a former teacher of the year, share this view. Just because it's a controversial idea does not mean that the poster is trolling.

In this context, see some of the writing of John Taylor Gatto.

In this context, see some of the writing of John Taylor Gatto.

On the particular part you quoted, check out the writings by John Taylor Gatto (a New York State Teacher of the Year) on all the things schools and prisons share in common, and how much damage conventional age segregated schooling with a fixed curriculum and standardized testing does to developing minds. You can find a book he wrote online here: The Underground History of American Education.

By the way, I agree with you some on the sweeping generalization on feminism (which in some variants is more liberational) but I think his point still stands -- that reconstructing the nature of work is to my (perhaps incomplete) understanding not typically an aspect of mainstream feminism -- especially when that was written (1985?) -- just deciding who does the work or who supervises it or who benefits from it monetarily or otherwise. But as a piece of rhetoric, I still think that paragraph is compelling in showing how people refuse to think systematically about what work needs to be done in society and how best to do it from various points of view.

E.F. Schumacher made similar points in his essay on Buddhist Economics if you want to read an author who is more well known.

It would take me a long time to explain to you my views on the decline of the intellegentia and the arts and Science in general, but if you're interested, there's a good outline of it in "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto. Another of his books is online here in it's entirety and addresses much the same subject.

Read the book The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto. It is available for free on his website. If you want to see briefly what it is about before you read it (fair enough) there is a 2 page essay that is kind of similar by him here. However unlike in his essay, in his book gatto meticulously quotes from primary sources to make his points about the evils of our educational system.

...cautioned the reader to take the material with a grain of salt. This is *always* good advice: people should never blindly accept any theory as fact.

Don't forget that the school system does not want you to question authority...

(Look up John Gatto, he's got some interesting writing out there.)

Is consumer culture planned obsolescense or is it the result of our wish to do less work, have more leisure time, and "make life easier?" Every purchase is the result of a more or less deliberate decision-making process, and in most product categories, the passage of time does bring "better" things, and by better I mean more features, miniturization, etc. In this system, durability naturally suffers, but since most consumers tend to buy replacements before the original actually breaks, it is a sensible descision on the part of the manufacturer to make items this way. Anyway, check this link. The book is most relevant to this discussion. No time to elaborate further, cheers.

Much agreement, and take a look at this for some more issues: Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto

If you're asking yourself the question "how did that happen ?", check out this book (which you can read online for free btw) :

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

It's an eye opening in depth investigation into what happened to american schooling in the course of the past 2 centuries.
Pretty mind blowing to find out the level of education that was to be found even in modest/rural families before the spread of compulsory centralized schooling, and how it consistently dwindled during the 20th century as each reform made it through. Enlightening also what kind of people were behind the reforms, and the ideology that drove them (fashionable philosophy from the 1900's is truly scary in that respect)

1. Dumbing Us Down
2. Another Gatto book
3. An online write-up
4. Many Children Left Behind.
5. Saving Our Schools

Incidentally, I found that my brother, who is a freshman in high school, learned multiplication several years ago in one messed-up way (I'm 13 years older than him). While we would simply write this:

137
x23

...he was taught to break it down into:

137 x 20 + 137 x 3

While I have no problem with distributed equations in, say, algebra, this was a bad way of explaining it to someone new, I think. Hooray for public education.

The major problem, is the young generation of today don't look at the long term problems of the working environment. Companies have to give back to the society they take resources from. We (The people) build schools and infrastructure so companies can flourish, not so companies can pillage.

If you really want to worry about our kids, let's take a real, good look at our schools and what they're doing to our kids (to us.)

Today it seems like a given that everyone should be taken from their close communities, neighborhoods, etc and subjected to to an enviroment so oppisite a kids spontaneous, highly intelligent, independently motivated learning experinces.

This is an extremely interesting book (readable onine) detailing a long time public school teachers research into the true history of forced education: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m

What is the purpose of these licenses? Do they ensure there are no bad drivers? Do they convey the physical (or mental) ability to drive? Do they reserve the roads to a select group of individuals? Exactly what purpose do these licenses serve in a free society?

I think I'm with you on this one. They sure don't seem to keep bad drivers off the road. This article relates a bit (OK, the terrorism comments are unfortunate, but still):

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1d.htm

There are numerous examples of private schools that spend *FAR LESS* per child than your average failing inner city school, yet they achieve vastly better results, even with children who were referred to them as "problem cases" who couldn't succeed in public school.

Read the facts in The Underground History of Education, full text online.

Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100% wherever such a thing mattered.

According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don't want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it's too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it.

If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?

By 1820, there was even more evidence of Americans' avid reading habits, when 5 million copies of James Fenimore Cooper's complex and allusive novels were sold, along with an equal number of Noah Webster's didactic Speller -- to a population of dirt farmers under 20 million in size.

In 1835, Richard Cobden announced there was six times as much newspaper reading in the United States as in England, and the census figures of 1840 gave fairly exact evidence that a sensational reading revolution had taken place without any exhortation on the part of public moralists and social workers, but because common people had the initiative and freedom to learn. In North Carolina, the worst situation of any state surveyed, eight out of nine could still read and write.

In 1853, Per Siljestromm, a Swedish visitor, wrote, "In no country in the world is the taste for reading so diffuse as among the common people in America." The American Almanac observed grandly, "Periodical publications, especially newspapers, disseminate knowledge throughout all classes of society and exert an amazing influence in forming and giving effect to public opinion." It noted the existence of over a thousand newspapers.

Tell me exactly what the United States of America did in 1776 to become the greatest nation ever formed in the history of the Earth?

My opinion is that it granted freedom to it's citizens.

The libertarian viewpoint isn't to destroy government, but to re-focus it on giving individuals the freedom to "Life, Liberty, and " property/pursuit of happiness.

In addition, please explain how universal education directly affects Companies, Lords, Kings, and Warlords.

Since the latter three generally do not exist in the USA, an explanation of how Companies are affected would suffice.

There is information to suggest that not only is Universal Education (Government Schools) not beneficial, it actually creates the whole problem of an overly gullible populace.

There are definitely people willing to make a well-reasoned argument against government schools.

Government schools are propogandizing tools, created very specifically to put out a product that is easily persuaded of the "fact" that Government solutions are the only possible solutions. You might consider yourself one of those "products" if you believe everything posted on a Government website.

Yes, read the work of John Taylor Gatto. His Underground history of Education documents the people and organizations that shaped our present failure of a system.

By 1917, the major administrative jobs in American schooling were under the control of a group referred to in the press of that day as "the Education Trust." The first meeting of this trust included representatives of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association. The chief end, wrote Benjamin Kidd, the British evolutionist, in 1918, was to "impose on the young the ideal of subordination."

You may read the whole book at: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.ht m

Yes, indeed. I don't have the direct links right in front of me, but there's an entire chunk of John Taylor Gatto's book "The Underground History of American Education" devoted to this very subject, complete with relevant source materials. You can find Gatto's book online here, and from there you can find the sources that you need to confirm what I said.

This was big news in the late 1800's and early 1900's when even common people had a pretty good idea that something fishy was going on, but since then we've been convinced that "government regulation is always good, mmmkay" and swallow this horseshit without a second thought.

Max

Education isn't necessarily the common man's fault.

Even though education has it's part in this mess, outsourcing certainly can't help.

Kuro5hin: Here

And the book text is Here

Unfortunately, as education is a contentious issue, most of the discussion here seems to be about peoples' experiences with schooling, rather than about the merits of Gatto's book. I have read the majority of the book, and while I believe that many of his first-hand observations about the damaging effects of education gone wrong, or the unreasoning faith in schooling and the expansion of the school system as intrinsic goods, are valid, the argument of the book as a whole (inasmuch as it may be said to have a unified argument) is unconvincing, to say the least.

As has been noted before, Gatto does not cite his sources very often, let alone very well, nor does he contextualize them well enough to convince me that all his damning quotes really are so. He denigrates the failures of modern schooling by holding up such representative examples of unschooled successes as Benjamin Franklin. But worse than sins of omission or proofs by anecdote, the book has two major flaws: its arguments are often self-contradicting, and its attribution of the flaws of the American educational system to the schemes of a cabal of Fabians, Unitarians, industrialists, &c., &c., is ridiculous when viewed in its ungainly totality.

For a representative example of the latter flaw, see the footnote to The Cult of Forced Schooling, at: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16c.htm. It contains the following about Alexander Inglis, author of the 1918 work Principles of Secondary Education:

Is the Inglis bloodline germane to his work as a school pioneer? You'll have to decide that for yourself.

Unfortunately, the book is thick with such allegations. And in making them, it resorts to arguing in the alternative (as I understand the phrase). For example, Gatto describes how the shadowy cabal that shaped American education was horrified by the 19th-century influx of immigrants that would overwhelm America's Anglo-Saxon bloodlines, which were supposedly held to be vital by innumerable organizations devoted to their preservation; yet their solution to the problem, according to Gatto, was to transform these foreigners into docile, worthwhile Americans through the newly forged school system, and to adopt them into their families. If these Anglo-Saxon bloodlines were supposedly so important to the shadowy cabal, and were so vital to the character of their possessors, then why was their solution to try to reform immigrants in their own image (when that was, by the assertions Gatto attributes to them, impossible due to the immigrants' purportedly inferior lineages) or adopt their children into their families (which would presumably 'taint' their bloodlines)? I hope that the evil secret masters of the world really are that confused; if they are, we may have hope after all.

I don't have the time or patience to give a thorough rebuttal to Gatto's lengthy book, nor, unfortunately, have I seen one elsewhere; but I encourage people who are considering adding this book to their stack of evidence (largely anecdotal, I fear, at least from what I have seen [if you'll pardon the pun]) that 'school is evil' to read at least a healthy percentage of it--not just its introduction--and see what they make of its argument(s). In short, the book as a whole is full of tripe; were this to be rendered out, we would have a much slimmer, quite possibly coherent volume, which might be widely read and whose theses might be profitably debated by people interested in ensuring that children learn what they should, in school or outside it. Instead, we have a mass of ramblings that I fear is destined to be cited by the faithful rather than read.

As an addendum, if you read only one page from his book read this: National Adult Literacy Survey. This shows how the literacy rate has been steadily dropping since schools were introduced. And if you think Gatto is full of shit, google for this survey and read the primary source for yourself. The results will make you Shit Your Pants (tm).

No, the full text is not available (as far as I can tell). From this page:
Each month we will post a new chapter on this Web site. If you are patient, in 18 months you will have read the book in its entirety.

Maybe a moderator would like to challenge the content of my post instead of modding down? Hmm? Here is my source, directly from the book. And I quote:

School is a religion. Without understanding the holy mission aspect you're certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare. All are present in the equation, it's just that none of these matter very much--even without them school would move in the same direction.

Anyone who has a problem with religions (ANY religions) being discussed in school is not someone who can be educated. Whether you like it or not, Christianity, Muslim, Jewish, Greek Mythology, Buddism, and other religions all have played a strong part in history.

So get it right, will you?!? The author said "school is a religion", not "school has too much Christianity".

The Business of Schooling

Since bored people are the best consumers, school had to be a boring place, and since childish people are the easiest customers to convince, the manufacture of childishness, extended into adulthood, had to be the first priority of factory schools. Naturally, teachers and administrators weren't let in on this plan; they didn't need to be. If they didn't conform to instructions passed down from increasingly centralized school offices, they didn't last long.

And this book explains EVERYTHING.
Underground History of American Education

You can read the whole thing online, but I ordered a copy to have on the shelf... Perhaps I'll donate one to the library here in town, if they don't already shelve it.

The Business of Schooling

Since bored people are the best consumers, school had to be a boring place, and since childish people are the easiest customers to convince, the manufacture of childishness, extended into adulthood, had to be the first priority of factory schools. Naturally, teachers and administrators weren't let in on this plan; they didn't need to be. If they didn't conform to instructions passed down from increasingly centralized school offices, they didn't last long.

And this book explains EVERYTHING.
Underground History of American Education

You can read the whole thing online, but I ordered a copy to have on the shelf... Perhaps I'll donate one to the library here in town, if they don't already shelve it.

Typing is not just a "good skill" it is essential in the preservation of a free and open society. How many journalists do you know who are not skilled typists? How many programmers who aren't fast typists, for that matter?

At the turn of the century, super-rich industrialists created planned, forced schooling as a means of limiting the intellect of the masses, making them easier to control. One of the great achievements of this system was to reduce literacy from levels before forced schooling, with restricted, age-graded curricula and "scientific" methods such as see-and-say reading. (see here for more, frightening, details.)

Not content to merely extend childhood and condition sheeplike mass consumers, the beast bears on, attempting to mitigate the speech-multiplying effects of the computer age by crippling students' ability to interface with computers.

By limiting the number of fast touch-typists, the dumb-factory ensures that not too many free citizens will be expressing their minds, promoting discourse, and exercising their reason in debate with computers.

That's not surprising news, since the public schools quickly picked up the insane ``Look-say'' method, which teaches that words are ideograms, rather than that words are collections of sounds. This left children who didn't get phonics instruction at home out in the cold, and may have kept some children from learning to read who would have learned to read if left to themselves. Furthermore, the children were entirely dependent on their teachers, since Look-say provides no tools for learning on your own.

You can find some practical information on phonics and Look-say on my web site.

The official statistics show that white school enrolment had essentially no affect on white literacy, while black literacy tracked black school enrolment fairly closely. That is, whites learned to read whether they went to school or not, while blacks learned to read at school, only. That may be because white parents were able to provide their children with phonics instruction at home, while black parents more often couldn't.

If you want a good history of the public school movement, I'd suggest starting with Gatto's book Undergound History of American Education and Richard Mitchel's Graves of Academe. Market Education: the Unknown History is another excellent resource, but unfortunately isn't available online.

That's not surprising news, since the public schools quickly picked up the insane ``Look-say'' method, which teaches that words are ideograms, rather than that words are collections of sounds. This left children who didn't get phonics instruction at home out in the cold, and may have kept some children from learning to read who would have learned to read if left to themselves. Furthermore, the children were entirely dependent on their teachers, since Look-say provides no tools for learning on your own.

You can find some practical information on phonics and Look-say on my web site.

The official statistics show that white school enrolment had essentially no affect on white literacy, while black literacy tracked black school enrolment fairly closely. That is, whites learned to read whether they went to school or not, while blacks learned to read at school, only. That may be because white parents were able to provide their children with phonics instruction at home, while black parents more often couldn't.

If you want a good history of the public school movement, I'd suggest starting with Gatto's book Undergound History of American Education and Richard Mitchel's Graves of Academe. Market Education: the Unknown History is another excellent resource, but unfortunately isn't available online.

These days, literacy rates are massively higher.

Many children are turned off by reading because it is "boring". That's because the books they're forced to read in school have far less complexity and richness than the language children use verbally every day.

There's lots of historical precedent for successfully introducing children to "adult level" books. See for example the writings of John Taylor Gatto.

Americans have been bred and trained to be "asleep" for 8 generations or more. Ever wonder how the unions ever came to be? Lord forbid that they didn't exist, and someone was trying to unionize now... it would be impossible. I wondered, then I realized people 100 years ago were different than you and I. Back then, they had wills. Ours have been erased. Oh well, the unions were co-opted long ago, and are worthless.

This book (online ebook) deals with the situation from a different angle, and much of what he says pertaining to our own discussion is tangential to our own. Don't read it if you are depressed easily.

As did you

Seriously, Gatto's analysis is deeper than the link you gave. That article makes it out to be all the Big Bad Gubbimints fault. Gatto has all the information your article provides, but he also shows how governemt was deliberately influenced by non-profit foundations set up by Carneigie and his ilk.