http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3981afe7645b.htm
In a mere three centuries, America has written some of the most glowing chapters in the long history of man’s struggle for freedom.
So how did we become—in the space of only a few generations—a nation of pathetic bed-wetters, mewling “Oh, please don’t trust me and my neighbor to save for our own retirements; we might blow it”—“Oh, please don’t trust me and my neighbor to own military-style weapons; we’d probably shoot each other.”
John Taylor Gatto, a former New York state (public) Teacher of the Year, thinks he’s found the answer: the government schools.
Gatto’s thesis is one of those “big ideas” that takes a little time to wrap the mind around. The public schools cannot be reformed because they’re not failing, he argues. They’re succeeding beyond all expectations at precisely what they’re supposed to be—not only a huge make-work jobs program, but also the incubators of a dependent class of conscienceless sociopaths, their emotional development purposely stunted, a generation (by now two or three) with little knowledge of “the narrative of American history connecting the arguments of the founding fathers to historical events, defining what makes Americans different from others besides wealth.”
Oblivious to that heritage, our young people instead sulk about, whining for the modern Morlocks of our welfare/police state to do a better job feeding them and keeping them entertained.
Gatto started to develop this thesis in his slim but estimable 1992 volume “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.” Now he’s returned with a massive and far better-developed follow-up, the 400-page “Underground History of American Education,” subtitled “A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling” ($34 postpaid, Oxford Village Press, 725 McDonough Road, Oxford, N.Y. 13830.)
Great posts, DT.