You kids don't know how easy you've got it.

[jackshoegazer]

If anyone is qualified to intelligently analyze the institution of modern schooling, it’s John Taylor Gatto. While teaching in the public schools of Manhattan for 30 years, Gatto was named New York State teacher of the year as well as New York City teacher of the year three times. Then, at the height of his teaching career in 1991, he published an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled I Quit, I Think… and promptly quit.

The primary objective is to convert human raw material into human resources which can be employed efficiently by the managers of government and the economy. The original purposes of schooling were to make good people (the religious purpose), to make good citizens (the public purpose) and to make individuals their personal best (the private purpose). Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command. In this fashion, poor Prussia with a small population became one of the great powers of the earth. Its new schooling method was imitated far and wide, from Japan to the United States.

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( x-posted to thelunarsociety )

Comments

[lightodawn.livejournal.com]

What a great article. I've been saying that for years (in the vague, poor commicative way I have of making one statement and thinking others will somehow miraculously understand the mountains of meaning underneath), so its nice to finally read someone saying it correctly, and well!

[shaktipat.livejournal.com]

Spot on. And, having just completed teaching a freshman history class at the university here, I found myself repairing some of the damage caused by said system of "education"--and let me tell you, it's a disgrace what has been done, not to mention an incredible waste of human potential--esp. as the sort of genius most likely to succeed brilliantly in research or scholarship is also often likely to hate and fail out of such high "schools"--or I should say state-run day-care centres.

I should know; I went to one, and now I'll never learn mathematics and science thanks to them.

[enodia.livejournal.com]

"Teaching in government schools can make a worthwhile career if you go into it with the consciousness of a saboteur, ready to overturn the status quo by making a significant difference in the lives of individuals who are young. Don’t, however, expect any thanks for doing this. Indeed, unless you largely conceal what you’re up to, you won’t last very long. So you need a taste for battle which doesn’t look like battle, and you’ll need to maintain this taste throughout your entire career. It also helps to have the consciousness of an anthropologist among some remote tribe so that you aren’t constantly frustrated with the culture of schooling but can adapt to it, on the surface, while running silent and deep when the classroom door is locked."

That is the most accurate description of effective teaching within our school system that I have ever read. I am sorry to report that the micromanagement going on in NYC public schools is hitting the point where it is becoming nigh impossible to pull off due to it's incredible restrictiveness. This has been a major incentive behind my career change decision this year.