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.
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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!
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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.
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)
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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.
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.
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.)
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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.
Thank you for so eloquently displaying your stupidity, not to mention the utter failure of the public school system, D.K.
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.
I’d like to see an example of a school improvement plan.
————-Conservatives oppose the public school system because they don’t like lower class people or minorities getting free educations.———–
Where in the hell do you get the authority to speak? Lemme guess, out of your ass?
The REAL reason Conservatives oppose the public school system is because they don’t want to be forced to pay for other people’s education through taxes. Most conservatives, including myself, find it criminal to force people to give up their own income to benefit someone else. This should come through charity.
Do some research sometime and you will find that the federal labor board is creating the mandates for the public school system. That has to tell you something, well, maybe not you.
I left teaching because of things mentioned in previous comments. I realized that textbooks, which are costly, are written not to exhance learning but to impede it and that schools, at least public ones, are more concerned with test scores than learning. Luckily, I went to a segregated public school in a small Texas town where our teachers, because they were black, could not get the college jobs they deserved and were some of the best public school teachers I’ve ever learned. Of course, this was in the 1960s when there was still cooperation between home and school and teachers were revered the way they are in Asian countries. I am a professional writer because I had a seventh grade homeroom teacher recognized my talent and my high school English teacher developed it. Our test scores at the “colored school” were consistently higher than those at the white school where some if the teachers never attended college and I always tested way above grade level as did many of my classmates. My high school standards were so high, I was only the second student in its history to make straight As. Now, students in the public schools where I live are on the honor roll but can’t read. I taught children to read as a second grade teacher and now run an after school program where I’m teaching a teen with autism to read based on his musical interest. It’s not difficult to teach reading, math, science, history, grammar, or spelling. It is often difficult to motivate students. That’s where good teachers excel. However, schools now make it difficult to be a good teacher because of all of the testing done today that has little to do with learning and everything to with funding. I think smaller class size helps because it allows teachers time to individualize learning. However, infant (elementary) schools in England once had as many as 60 students in a class and with parents volunteering to work with individual students and small groups were able to assure that every child received instruction. Parents aren’t welcome in most American public schools these days. I am a former public school teacher and retired three years ago after working for twenty years with children and adults with developmental disabilities in a county agency and as a newspaper reporter and freelance journalist parttime. But I advocate homeschooling. My nephew was homeschooled this past school year abd I had the pleasure of working with him while his homeschooled teacher (my mother who was also my Kindergarten teacher) was on vacation for two weeks last fall. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had as a teacher. His eagerness to learn and engagement as we explored his favorite subject, science, which was also one of my undergraduate minors. Now, I work parttime with a private agency and fulltime as a writer. I’ve written a number of curriculum guides for staff working with individuals with developmental disabilities. I’d love to write learning material for schools, but unless the lessons accommodate the current mandate that no one can fail, schools won’t purchase the material. Failure is not option, even when children can’t read, write, or compute. And critical thinking us completely out of the question.