2/09
The function of public education is to create citizens. What kind of citizens do we want?
This is from John Taylor Gatto, three time New York City Teacher of the Year, who quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while serving as New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children:
"The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous Address to the German Nation which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders."
"So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
1. obedient soldiers to the army
2. obedient workers to the mines
3. well-subordinated civil servants to government
4. well-subordinated clerks to industry
5. citizens who thought alike about major issues"
- from The Public School Nightmare
"Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880's when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard." - from Why Schools Don't Educate
"The next step came in 1890, when Andrew Carnegie wrote eleven essays, called The Gospel of Wealth. In it he said that capitalism (free enterprise) was stone cold dead in the United States. It had been killed by its own success. That men like himself, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Rockefeller now owned everything. They owned the government. Competition was impossible unless they allowed it. Carnegie said that this was a very dangerous situation, because eventually young people will become aware of this and form clandestine organizations to work against it. Ultimately they'll bring down this edifice. Carnegie proposed that men of wealth re-establish a synthetic free enterprise system (since the real one was no longer possible) based on cradle-to-grave schooling. The people who advanced most successfully in the schooling that was available to everyone would be given licenses to lead profitable lives, they would be given jobs and promotions and that a large part of the economy had to be tied directly to schooling."
~ from an Interview with John Taylor Gatto on the Origins of Compulsory Education, in Flatland Magazine 9/94
"The system of compulsory education in America was created by Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, and the efficiency expert Frederick W. Taylor, who provided the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany their operating philosophy."
4/29
The language merry-go-round,
Has come full circle. It does that.
Always has. Always will.
So call me Eric, and I'll call you
Whatever you tell me to call you.
And if you call me something else,
Smile when you say that. Or at least,
Lick your lips and raise an eyebrow.
Eric Bagai, 4/29/2014
Thank you, Julia Serano.
4/06
There will always be the next step
toward the inclusion of everyone,
until everyone is included.
Each step will be difficult.
Each will be fought with fear,
with ignorance, and
with secret longing.