Schools as Weapons: What are you Being Taught?

         

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John Taylor Gatto was a public school teacher for over thirty years. He speaks from the perspective of the teacher. Once Gatto retired he sought to understand the true meaning of public schools, because as far as he could tell, “making kids their personal best” was not true. He credits his ideas to James Bryant Conant, one of the most revered american men of the twentieth century. In Conant’s essay The Child, the Parent, and the State, he alludes to a revolution in the american school system that happened in the early twentieth century. He declines to speak more of it, but offers Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, “Principles of Secondary Education” to anyone curious. In his book Inglis's offers new ideas into the true aim of the American education system.

          At 18 years old many kids believe that what they are doing is not actually important. They spend all day and night working for “points” and not the actual knowledge, which will be forgotten after the test. Not to mention they are isolated from the rest of the world for seven plus homework hours a day, five days a week, nine months out of the year for twelve years. “Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest” (Gatto XV). Realizing this, it really brings one to question why school is such an overwhelming aspect of their life if they are not even learning real world skills from it.

          What Gatto found in his research was a school system based off the once military state of Prussia’s education system. One of indoctrination and standardization. Gatto discovered the idea of rendering a common populace manageable by splitting them up at birth, and dumbing them down throughout childhood. It was backed by “Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller” (Gatto XX). Once this idea is brought up, it is kind of hard not to see not happening to some extent today. If it weren't for warehouse style schools, do you think fashion retailers (LULU Lemon) would make as much money?

If you want to read Gatto's "Weapons of Mass Instruction" yourself here is the link: Weapons of Mass Instruction