Tag: Gatto

Beyond Six Stars–a Manifesto for Liberty

John Taylor Gatto

This book shocked me, and while I am not easily shocked, in shocking me made me realize how even my own radical outlook (as Howard Zinn notes, a radical is someone who no longer believes government is part of the solution) has come to accommodate, to accept, the most obvious tool of subordination, the public school system.

First, my fly-leaf notes, and then a couple of conclusions.

Constructive quote up front (xiv):

“We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness–curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight–simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student the autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.”

The author's bottom line: public schooling is a deliberate transplant from Germany that Carnegie and Rockefeller and Ford and other foundations designed as a deliberate means of dumbing down the mass population and segregating elite learning from mass “functional” learning devoid of political or philosophical reflection.

Continue reading “Review: Weapons of Mass Instruction”