Before you send your child back to public school, there’s something you should know
The American public education system is dumbing down your kids and preparing them for a life of mediocrity.
That’s the startling, but perhaps not surprising, premise behind John Taylor Gatto’s
Gatto is a former New York State Teacher of the Year who taught for 30 years before finally quitting in disgust at the things the education system asked him to do to children. If you want to understand how America’s educational system works and what its true goals are, this book is required reading.
He argues that the system is designed to suppress in children the abilities of critical thinking and judgment needed to accomplish great things, and to psychologically warp children so as to be docile, apathetic, uncomplaining employees and consumers when they grow up.
Thanks to Liberty for Sale for bringing this very important work on American education to light. I can tell you no child of mine will ever attend a public school. Now go read the book, and come back here in a week or two when you’re finished, and let me know what you think.
Today’s Stupid Person of the Day is anyone who leaves their children in public school after learning what’s really going on in those classrooms.
[...] This politically correct speech thing has really gotten out of hand. Our children do not need to be misled by terms such as “deferred success,” which imply that she may get it right the next time. She may not. How long shall success be deferred, and do you really think the child will not catch on? Children aren’t stupid, at least not until they’ve been through the public education system. This will just make them even dumber. [...]
Pingback by Make Stupidity History » Failure is only deferred success — July 25, 2005 @ 11:51 pm
[...] Back in July, we let you know that the dumbing down of America’s children is a result of deliberate changes in the education system. [...]
Pingback by Make Stupidity History » American quality of education declining — September 14, 2005 @ 2:45 pm
[...] I’ve been saying for a long time that the quality of American education is in decline. We don’t need more studies to tell us there’s a problem. We need to begin addressing the problem. And the problem is the Department of Education itself. Since its creation the country has enacted laws and regulations which have chipped away at the quality of American education until by now we have three-fourths of college graduates unable to read properly. [...]
Pingback by Make Stupidity History » New study: 75% of college graduates are stupid — December 16, 2005 @ 9:26 pm
[...] But this is not news. Public schools aren’t designed to give children an education. Instead, they’re designed to make them dumb. Anyone managing to get an education in public school has done so despite the best efforts of the school system to prevent them from getting one. [...]
Pingback by Make Stupidity History » One-fifth of California high schoolers fail graduation exam — December 24, 2005 @ 12:52 am
[...] It appears that dumbing down the schools wasn’t enough to get everyone in America to be conforming, subservient little sheep. Now they want to drug all of our children into submission. Baa. Filed under: Homeland Stupidity, Privacy, Education [...]
Pingback by Drugged from birth - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity — March 24, 2006 @ 10:05 pm
It only seems to happen in the US! Irish School system seems fairly sound, and the UK one seems okay. I just don’t get how someone could knowingly set millions up for stupidity every year!
Comment by Neil Grogan — March 25, 2006 @ 9:14 pm
[...] Forget the truth, your children are being forced to memorize the state-approved dogma. It’s about time we realized that public education has been a complete failure at educating, and a complete success at dumbing down each successive generation. At this point the only way to improve American education is to get it out of the hands of the federal government. Filed under: Humor, Education [...]
Pingback by Your children are being brainwashed - Homeland Stupidity — June 20, 2006 @ 4:24 am
This article was amazing to me. I homeschool my seven year old. I have felt that our children are being controlled educationally in a negative way for quite some time. I live in one of “those states” that is at the bottom of the list on everything. Our educational system is light years behind other states. And I don’t feel like I should have to pay for a mediocre private school. Homeschooling is a difficult thing when you have a young child at home also. But, this article has given me incentive to continue. I have the POWER to choose the curriculum that best suits my child and that is challenging also. As far as socialization, she gets plenty!!! Thanks for the good work. I look forward to more articles.
Comment by Dana — July 20, 2006 @ 1:32 pm
YES – the public schools are a deliberate trap for all students, bright or otherwise. The Department of Education and National Education Association (NEA – teacher’s union) have replaced all effective tools such as phonics and real math (replaced with the “New Math”). The intent could not be more lucid. It is not difficult to learn to read. Before this new “plan”, many childen (as was my case) had begun to read, being taught by older siblings even before school.
In the 40’s and 50’s, there were precious few illiterate kids – a real rarity. There was no ADHD (LMNOP) or learning disabled. Handwriting could be read by another and most students could solve math problems on their own. Children could write creatively in a form called “written compositions” or stand-up in front of the class “oral compositions”. Correct spelling was encouraged. And the class sizes? – 30 to 40 in every class. There was discipline and quiet.
Now, in the 1980’s and beyond, small class sizes, “time-out” rooms, kids lined up to ingest their “meds” (powerful, addictive, cocaine-like psychotropic drugs). No dictionaries needed either because a close guess is acceptable. No expectations of excellence – gotta protect their self esteem (as idiots).
That is the public school of today. This is deliberately evil and unacceptable.
Sincerely,
Fred Hall (b.1935)
Comment by Fred Hall — July 24, 2006 @ 4:48 pm
[...] These are the questions which must not be answered, we are told from kindergarten onward. In fact, for at least the last century, our public schools have been reengineered from the ground up to create prison-like environments where conformity, not curiosity, is encouraged, where the bright as well as the average are held back to the level of the below average, where maturity is retarded and intelligence crushed. [...]
Pingback by Keep HOPE alive - Homeland Stupidity — July 25, 2006 @ 12:29 am
A meek and subservient society is LESS LIKELY to revolt and slaughter the masters. If you keep them from learning the math that will allow them to figure out they are being cheated every day of their lives you stand a better chance of perpetuating the hoax. If really sorry teachers can get certificates it discourages good teachers from competing for a subsistence pay. There is plenty of money to pay teachers, but that is not the game. The game is to dumb down the slaves and medicate the the masses. More is known about Britney Spear’s sex life and Miley’s teenage escapades than will ever be know about how to figure simple interest. That is NO ACCIDENT. No talk show host EVER discusses the Federal Reserve or fiat money. NEVER – they would be cut. IT IS NO ACCIDENT. One thing the masters did not plan for though – they do not have a life raft. They all live on the same boat as we do and the time to dump them overboard is here.
Comment by Randy — January 29, 2009 @ 3:52 am
The article is trash. If you compare the school systems of today with the school systems of the 1800s, the ones of today are much, much better in quality.
Also, the claim in the article is that there is an intentional degradation of the school systems. There is not any evidence of that though.
Comment by Robert Holloway — May 19, 2009 @ 5:14 am
Much better in quality? Where have you been? Try going to a public school sometime. Sending your child to one is akin to child abuse.
As for no evidence of intention, that you refuse to look at the evidence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (Try clicking blue underlined things once in a while.)
Comment by Michael Hampton — May 22, 2009 @ 8:03 pm
[...] Before you send your child back to public school, there’s something you should know Filed under: Fighting Stupidity — Michael Hampton @ 11:27 pm Comments (13) [...]
Pingback by JesseLovesYou.com » Public Education = Mental Death — December 21, 2009 @ 1:52 am
Conservatives oppose the public school system because they don’t like lower class people or minorities getting free educations. They think that the privilege of a good education should be reserved for the rich elite who can afford private schools. This is the main goal of conservative ideology: to set up and maintain an aristocracy in which a small group of wealthy elites and tycoons rule unopposed over an impoverished mass of virtual slaves, too uninformed to know they’re being oppressed and too unskilled to move up in society.
In fact, the only reason this country has so many educated, successful people in it is because of the public school system, in which everyone is entitled to an education. A society without public schools is a society where the poor cannot afford education and therefore cannot lift themselves out of their lot in life. The fact that a site entitled “Make Stupidity History” is railing against an institution that has pretty much single-handedly generated an educated, well-informed, and financially well-off society such as ours is asinine.
Comment by D. K. — January 14, 2010 @ 9:36 am
Thank you for so eloquently displaying your stupidity, not to mention the utter failure of the public school system, D.K.
Comment by Michael Hampton — January 14, 2010 @ 4:16 pm
While it is true that the public school system has allowed for more children to get an education (something VERY important for the survival of any society), it doesn’t help that many teachers don’t care, simply because they don’t think they get enough money to deal with the stupidity of the average idiot. Teachers need to get over themselves and either (A) get a better-paying job, or (B) realize that the sooner a child is well-educated, the sooner they’re out of your hair for good, because the students who are stupid enough will keep coming back.
Not to nitpick, but any student over the age of 5 that writes out full sentences in text-lingo and hands it in as an assignment, needs to be sent back to kindergarten until they can learn to spell properly. Any student who harasses others for their intelligence or any other of a number of insignificantly stupid reasons (like height, weight, race, or sexuality) needs to be grouped together with all the other intollerant bigots, and be sent home to be taught by the parents that taught them this intollerance in the first place; but not by them, because the LAST thing we need is stupidity, ignorance, or bigotry if we want to advance any further as a society.
Now, as a high-school graduate diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, I do feel that smaller class sizes do allow for better student-teacher ratios, which can help with grades (at least in my experience). Zero-tolerance of intolerance (as much of a paradox as that may seem to be) can help keep the unintelligent out of the way. But the ideology of teaching the standard of the least-intelligent student to the rest of the student body IS a load of bull, and it needs to end, NOW!
Just a few decades ago, America was the land of oppurtunity, where you could be anything you wanted, as long as you had what it takes. Now, we consider it lucky if our graduates don’t burn the fries.
Comment by Magnus Rex — July 20, 2010 @ 12:48 am