[shibumi]

"I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to *prevent* children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior."

With these words, John Taylor Gatto (former New York City Teacher of the Year) hit on the plot fomented by John Dewey and his cohorts, Beard, Robinson and Verblen to "dumb down" the American public with the specific objective of making us unable to think and distinguish good from evil in an objective manner.

The election of The Usurper and the last Congress is nothing more or less than Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

One more thought from the fertile mind of Dr. Gatto:

"Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory."

[50mm]

I’m part of the “degraded rabble”. My yearly review is coming up. This year it’s a 360 degree review which means some who probably rode the short bus to school will help decide my raise.