How About We Just DUMP Government Run Education All Together?
Because it isn't "Education". It's indoctrination into Marxism.
John Taylor Gatto, a veteran of 26 years in the New York City public schools and former New York State Teacher of the Year, said that public education cannot be reformed and should be abolished.
There you have an assessment directly from the mouth of an honest insider.
Gatto, in speeches and essays, said that public education everywhere teaches a covert curriculum, whether teachers realize it or not. This curriculum consists of confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem and the feeling that there is no escape from oversight.
In short, public education does exactly what its Prussian inventors in the 19th century intended -- it turns out a docile, obedient population ready for the factory and the army. True education is not even a consideration. It is the main reason Karl Marx included it in the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto.
Gatto says that public education has become such a giant bureaucracy with so many vested interests that reform has become impossible. Better to do away with it and explore alternatives.
Here is how he describes his pupils: They cannot concentrate for very long; they have a poor sense of time past and time to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy; they hate solitude; they are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive and violent but timid in the face of the unexpected. And they are addicted to distraction. Just look around today. When I’m at the gym the younger generation can’t do a complete workout without continually burying their faces in their cell phones. And most have those little blue tooth ear buds in their ears while working out so you can’t talk to them without them removing the device. Talk about distractions! Heck I just watched a video of a police officer who was apparently texting while driving ran off the road into a river drowning himself AND his shackled prisoner in the back seat.
This, he says, is the result of the current system that affects all children, whether they attend so-called good schools or slum schools. He has taught in both.
People should remember that mass public education in this country dates back only to around 1850. It started in Massachusetts, and it was strenuously opposed. Prior to that, education was left entirely to the private sector, and consequently education was tailored to the individual's interests and needs. Which is why we homeschooled. We found that all four of our sons had different interests and needs.
The Wright brothers did not have degrees in aeronautical engineering; the great car inventors had no degrees in automotive engineering; the great builders of the past had no civil-engineering degrees. So-called experts are an invention of a giant bureaucracy that consumes billions of dollars to indoctrinate children and turn them into creatures really not fit to be citizens of a free society. Do you suppose that was the purpose? To convert the society into a slave society?
Fortunately, some of the children resist the indoctrination and emerge able to think critically and independently and creatively, but it seems that each year, there are fewer who do so. I was one of the few. That is why I am writing this. It was BECAUSE of the government controlled schools that I went from being a cowardly lion to a courageous lion. So at least I did get that out of my years of confinement within a jail cell called a classroom listening to an idiot called a teacher who couldn’t answer any of my simple questions and would get upset with me for asking. And if I answered my own question, it wasn’t that uncommon for some other student to say, “Sounds like Mark is right”.
Gatto says, by the way, that reading, writing and arithmetic can easily be taught in 100 hours -- not in the six or seven years public education says is required. No doubt in my mind!
It's insane, when you think about it, to institutionalize our children well past their prime of life. In the past, people by the age of 15 were doing productive work, and many had started families. We force our children to sit in industrial-style institutions for 12 or 13 years of secondary education and another four for so-called higher education.
Even so, children finish secondary school for the most part totally unprepared to make a living. Most are unprepared for higher education. This is despite the fact that universities have themselves dumbed down to the point that few college graduates today could pass tests given to eighth-graders in the early 1800s.
Here’s the famous 1895 eighth-grade test from Kansas. See how you would do.
What is really needed is a genuine debate about education. Do not confuse education with the public-indoctrination industry. The oldest trick in the book used by those with a vested interest is to narrow the debate to tinkering with status quo. That's what politicians are doing today.
Oh, and WHY should I have to PAY for the indoctrination of my neighbors? My wife homeschooled our four boys and gave up over a million in salary over the 20 year period she did so. She was a registered nurse. So not only did we pay for our boys by making that sacrifice as none of my neighbors said, “Gee, let us help you out by subsidizing your “income”, but we are still to this day being extorted with PROPERTY TAXES so that my dumb ass neighbors can send their children to government school to make dumb ass kids so that my whole neighborhood is made up of dumb asses.
Realize this…the 1st plank of the communist manifesto which makes for abolition of all rights to private property is paying for the 10th plank which is free education for all children in government schools. Look at your property tax bill and note the first thing it pays for. But Mark, they call it RENT. Well hell, tell me the difference if I can’t tell them to go to hell and not pay it without some public parasite coming to force me out at gun point or KILL ME. So is the first plank in force and effect? Hell, is the USA a communist country when you can see all 10 planks in force and effect?
https://classicalconversations.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/LostToolsOfLearning-DorothySayers.pdf
Love this! I've said our educational system in this country needs an overhaul and this is proof. They're raising people to grow up and make other people money. As a self employed entrepreneur, I love the freedom of being my own boss and I work hard, but my money is mine. As a Christian with strong faith, who went to college in my forties, I can see how they do it, but that's because I have street smarts and common sense. The first thing necessary to start over is to give our children the ability to think for themselves, and teach them to research and question EVERYTHING!