[Clintonfatigued]

Here is an excerpt of Gatto's which is worth memorizing"

"The new dumbness - the non thought of received ideas - is much more dangerous than simple ignorance, because it's really about thought control. In school, a washing away of the innate power of individual mind takes place, a "cleansing" so comprehensive that original thinking becomes difficult. If you don't believe this development was part of the intentional design of schooling, you should read William Torrey Harris's The Philosophy of Education. Harris was the U.S. Commissioner of Education at the turn of the century and the man most influential in standardizing our schools. Listen to the man.

"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred," writes Harris, "are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom." This is not all accident, Harris explains, but the "result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual." Scientific education subsumes the individual until his or her behavior becomes robotic. Those are the thoughts of the most influential U.S. Commissioner of Education we've had so far.

The great theological scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer raised this issue of the new dumbness in his brilliant analysis of Nazism, in which he sought to comprehend how the best-schooled nation in the world, Germany, could fall under its sway. He concluded that Nazism could be understood only as the psychological product of good schooling. The sheer weight of received ideas, pre-thought thoughts, was so overwhelming that individuals gave up trying to assess things for themselves. Why struggle- to invent a map of the world or of the human conscience when schools and media offer thousands of ready-made maps, pre-thought thoughts?"

[Skip Ripley]

The American educational system is great at teaching kids how to answer questions. It's terrible at teaching kids how to ask questions....

[Skip Ripley]

The American educational system is great at teaching kids how to answer questions. It's terrible at teaching kids how to ask questions....

[skandalon]

Who put all the screwy keywords up? I like Gatto's work for the most part.

[Zon]

From the article; on comparing libraries to schools:

"That's what the questions at the end of chapters are designed to do, to bring you back to a reality in which you are subordinate. Nobody really expects you to answer those questions, not even the teacher; they work their harm solely by being there. That is their genius. Schoolbooks are a crowd-control device."

See the same thing often with the main stream media. Special Reports, when the President speaks and general "news" coverage.

 

"Only the very innocent and well-schooled see any difference between good ones and bad ones; both kinds do the same work. In that respect they are much like television programming, the function of which, as a plug in narcotic, is infinitely more powerful than any trivial differences between good programs and bad."

 See this often when participating in politics. Partisan politics; voting for the lesser of evils still always begets evil.

"Real books educate, schoolbooks school, and thus libraries and library policies are a major clue to the reform of American schooling. When you take the free will and solitude out of education it becomes schooling. You can't have it both ways."

Compared to libraries subverting collectivist indoctrination from public schooling, the Internet and especially the world wide web dwarf libraries.

[wintertime]

Government school can and DO use the threat of armed police, court, and foster care action to
FORCE their will upon parents with no other alternative. ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip.)If you do not believe this, please do a Google search on the words: Truant and Police.

If a taxpayer refuses to pay for the non-neutral political, cultural, and religious agenda of the government school, armed sheriff's will soon be at his door to sell his home and business at auction.

If a parent or taxpayer is sufficiently resistant, he risks prison or even death by bullet.

THAT is what government schools are!

Government school taxes have turned us into a nation of renters. If we do not pay our rent ( school taxes ) to the government, the government will evict us from our home or business. (Remember: Real bullets in those guns on the hip)

The following is from Gatto's essay:

" In my own life, with my own children, I'm sorry I lacked the courage to say what Hester Prynne, the wearer of the scarlet letter, said to the Puritan elders when they tried to take away her daughter. Alone and friendless, dirt poor, ringed about by enemies, she said, "Over my dead body." A few weeks ago a young woman called me from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania to tell me the state had just insisted she stop home-schooling her little girl, Chrissie. The state was going to force her to send Chrissie to school. She said she was going to fight, first with the law, although she didn't know where the money would come from, and then by any means she had. If I had to bet on this young, single mother or the State of Pennsylvania to win, I'd bet on the lady because what l was really hearing her say was, "Over my dead body." I wish I'd been able to say that when the state came to take my own children. I didn't. But if I'm born again I promise you that's what I will say."

[wintertime]

It is past time that homeschoolers STOPPED defending their decision. It is time that we pointedly ask those using government schools, "Why on earth are you doing THAT to your children? What is the problem? Are you that bad off that you have no other option?"

We must pointedly state that homeschooling is the MOST natural and healthy way to raise a child to adulthood.

Will some children need to be institutionalized. Yes, of course! There will always be parents who dislike their kids, are too stupid, disorganized, dysfunctional, poor, too interested in material gain, too sick, tired, or ill-educated themselves.

These children will need institutions. We need orphanages too, but no one would suggest that it is the best way to raise a child.

By the way, I personally have never met a fat homeschooler who has been homeschooled from the beginning. Why? They aren't fat because they have the time and leisure to PLAY.

[Tired of Taxes]

Homeschool Ping!

If you want on/off this ping list, please let me know.

Are you a homeschooler looking for advice from other homeschoolers? Visit our Free Republic Homeschoolers' Forum 2006-2007.

[Aquinasfan]

Dumb people are now well-informed about the opinions of Time magazine and CBS, The New York Times and the President; their job is to choose which pre-thought thoughts, which received opinions, they like best. The élite in this new empire of ignorance are those who know the most pre-thought thoughts.

JTG, profoundly insightful, as always. I could highlight the whole article.

The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle and upper-middle-class people, who have already been made shallow by the multiple requirements to conform. Too many people, uneasily convinced that they must know something because of a degree, diploma, or license, remain so convinced until a brutal divorce, alienation from their children, loss of employment, or periodic fits of meaninglessness manage to tip the precarious mental balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn adult lives.

It took me about ten years to fully shake off the effects of schooling, but it was well worth the effort.

As JTG said, they'll get my kids over my dead body.

[after dark]

I like John Gatto Taylor. It does seem like the really good school teachers I had were rebelling against the school system. I can read any thing I want because of a third grade teacher who taught Latin root words in the slow reading class of all places. In retrospect she was probably bucking the system.

[Clemenza]

Alot of balls to post this. GATTO IS RIGHT!

Answer this question Publik Skool defenders: why is it that you don't trust the government to buy your groceries, but you trust them to educate your children?

But of course, bubble headed suburban mom will say "the publik skools in my area are Graaaate! Yer an elitist (what a sh-tkicker says when they are losing an argument) snob!"

[Clemenza]

BTW: The masses ARE revolting. They truly are! Public school education and junk food mass culture are to blame.

[Tired of Taxes]

This was an excellent article. Even as a homeschool parent, I tend to bog us down in "school-like" work sometimes - an old habit of learning inherited from my own schooldays. So, every once in awhile, I too need to be reminded what homeschooling is all about.