[kevincarter]

[gebregebremarian]

Gatto was New York State Teacher of the Year several times. Reading Underground History changed my life profoundly. This is required reading for all peak oilers out there, especially if you warehouse your kiddies in government schools.

JOHN TAYLOR GATTO HOMEPAGE

[gebregebremarian]

The Six Lesson School Teacher

[BlueGhost]

If you feel a whole book is abit much, read his 'Six Lesson School Teacher' Article.

[GrizzAdams]

I have not read any of Gatto's books, but I have listened and read a few of his lectures, and I very much agree with his views. Primary education in this country is in much need of scrutiny, and I will never allow my own kin to be taken in by what I call, "A distraction, of an enormous proportion."

[UIUCstudent01]

I don't really trust him.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chapter 2 Part C', 'J')ust a few months before this report was released, an executive director of the National Education Association announced that his organization expected "to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force." You can’t get much clearer than that. WWII drove the project underground, but hardly retarded its momentum. Following cessation of global hostilities, school became a major domestic battleground for the scientific rationalization of social affairs through compulsory indoctrination. Great private corporate foundations led the way.

[Vexed]

Wow. Great links and info.
Thanks to all.
Summarizes my issues with modern american education.

[mgcardin]

Gatto's exposé of the ideology behind America's public school system makes for worthy reading in a peak oil context, I think. Thanks for mentioning him here. I'm presently in my fourth year of teaching English language arts at a small rural Missouri high school, and from time to time I've explained a few of Gatto's ideas to my students to see how they react. Many of them truly seem interested, and a few of them troubled, when I explain that the very form of the school experience itself, with its isolation of groups of people in separate rooms, its rigid schedule with time divions governed by the omnipresent Pavlovian bell, and all that, is actually the brainchild of social engineers who wanted to design the most effective system for teaching young people to obey authority and tolerate extreme boredom and social regimentation.

I've found it a useful experiment to bring these things up just a few minutes before the bell at the end of the class period is scheduled to ring. Then when it does and the students display the customary response of jumping like they'd heard a starter pistol, I ask them to notice how deeply that mindless fight-or-flight, "Time to go!"-flavored Pavlovian response has been conditioned into their unconscious minds. A few of them truly seem to understand what I'm talking about, and they respond with nervous laughter.