Ugh. I found that quote and assumed it was from the review. Apparently, not. The review in its entirety from the 'American Mercury' is below:
The Little Red Schoolhouse
THE GOSLINGS: A STDUY OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS, by Upton Sinclair. Pasadena: Upton Sinclair.
This volume is a sort of continuation of the author's previous work, "The Goose-Step," and is devoted to the elementary, grammar and high schools of the Republic, chiefly but not exclusively those maintained at the public cost. It presents an engrossing, instructive, and, if allowance be made for the author's indignation, highly amusing record of chicanery and imbecility--a vast chronicle of wasted money, peanut politics and false pretenses. The theory behind the public schools, which cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions every year, is that they manufacture hordes of enlightened and incorruptible voters, and so safeguard and mellow democracy. The fact is that they are mainly manned by half-wits and bossed by shysters, and that their actual tendency is to reduce all their pupils to the level of Kiwanis.
Mr. Sinclair proves all this by an immense accumulation of facts. he not only toured the country, inspecting innumerable schools himself; he also entered upon relations with many rebellious schoolmarms, male and female, and so heard the details of the sad story from the inside. Furthermore, he threw himself into a scientific study of the inner operations of the National Education Association, the trades union of the higher pedagogical functionaries, and digested whole shelves of reports, statistical tables, volumes of graphs, and other such fearful documents. The result is a tale that lacks nothing in the way of circumstantial corroboration. It is, in truth, overwhelming in its plausibility, and I doubt that anyone will ever challenge successfully any essential feature of it. But under the telling of it, alas, there is an erroneous assumption, and there springs therefrom a great deal of false reasoning and vain indignation.
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. 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. That is the aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. If any contrary theory is cherished among us it is simply because public schools are still relatively new in America, and so their true character and purpose are but little understood. The notion that they were invented by American patriotism and ingenuity, and go back, in fact, to the first days of the New England Puritans--this notion is, of course, only hollow nonsense. The early Puritan schools were not public schools at all, in our modern sense; they were what we now call church schools; their aim was to save the young from theological heresy--the exact aim of the Catholic parochial schools and Jewish Cheder schools today. The public schools, which originated in Prussia during the Eighteenth Century and did not reach the United States, save sporadically, until the middle of the century following; even in Massachusetts there was no Board of Education until 1937--,have quite the different aim of putting down political and economic heresy. Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible. How they succeeded in Prussia is well known to every student of the war papers of George Creel, Woodrow Wilson, Newell Dwight Hillis, Owen Wister and other such eminent experts. How they are
If you were getting rich off the people, would you want them educated?
Read Upton Sinclair's books about the schools in the 1920s, about how they were corporate-controlled indoctrination centers back then. Read John Taylor Gatto's book available for free online, 'The Underground History of American Education.'
Here's a small quote from H.L. Mencken's review of Sinclair's book "The Goslings":
"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."
Slashdot Mirror
Skip over the intros asking for donations, but watch the interviews: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL463AA90FD04EC7A2 By the time I got to college, it had already turned into more shitty high school.
Ugh. I found that quote and assumed it was from the review. Apparently, not. The review in its entirety from the 'American Mercury' is below:
The Little Red Schoolhouse
THE GOSLINGS: A STDUY OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS, by Upton Sinclair. Pasadena: Upton Sinclair.
This volume is a sort of continuation of the author's previous work, "The Goose-Step," and is devoted to the elementary, grammar and high schools of the Republic, chiefly but not exclusively those maintained at the public cost. It presents an engrossing, instructive, and, if allowance be made for the author's indignation, highly amusing record of chicanery and imbecility--a vast chronicle of wasted money, peanut politics and false pretenses. The theory behind the public schools, which cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions every year, is that they manufacture hordes of enlightened and incorruptible voters, and so safeguard and mellow democracy. The fact is that they are mainly manned by half-wits and bossed by shysters, and that their actual tendency is to reduce all their pupils to the level of Kiwanis.
Mr. Sinclair proves all this by an immense accumulation of facts. he not only toured the country, inspecting innumerable schools himself; he also entered upon relations with many rebellious schoolmarms, male and female, and so heard the details of the sad story from the inside. Furthermore, he threw himself into a scientific study of the inner operations of the National Education Association, the trades union of the higher pedagogical functionaries, and digested whole shelves of reports, statistical tables, volumes of graphs, and other such fearful documents. The result is a tale that lacks nothing in the way of circumstantial corroboration. It is, in truth, overwhelming in its plausibility, and I doubt that anyone will ever challenge successfully any essential feature of it. But under the telling of it, alas, there is an erroneous assumption, and there springs therefrom a great deal of false reasoning and vain indignation.
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. 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. That is the aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. If any contrary theory is cherished among us it is simply because public schools are still relatively new in America, and so their true character and purpose are but little understood. The notion that they were invented by American patriotism and ingenuity, and go back, in fact, to the first days of the New England Puritans--this notion is, of course, only hollow nonsense. The early Puritan schools were not public schools at all, in our modern sense; they were what we now call church schools; their aim was to save the young from theological heresy--the exact aim of the Catholic parochial schools and Jewish Cheder schools today. The public schools, which originated in Prussia during the Eighteenth Century and did not reach the United States, save sporadically, until the middle of the century following; even in Massachusetts there was no Board of Education until 1937--,have quite the different aim of putting down political and economic heresy. Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible. How they succeeded in Prussia is well known to every student of the war papers of George Creel, Woodrow Wilson, Newell Dwight Hillis, Owen Wister and other such eminent experts. How they are
If you were getting rich off the people, would you want them educated?
Read Upton Sinclair's books about the schools in the 1920s, about how they were corporate-controlled indoctrination centers back then. Read John Taylor Gatto's book available for free online, 'The Underground History of American Education.'
Here's a small quote from H.L. Mencken's review of Sinclair's book "The Goslings":
"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."