Schooling

The Underground History of American Education, John Taylor Gatto’s screed about what’s really wrong with “public” schools brings tears to my eyes. The entire book is online. School is the ultimate in unsituated learning, an artificial world concocted for all the wrong reasons.

Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness.
According to official reports, only a small fraction of the population is capable of what you and I call mental life: creative thought, analytical thought, judgmental thought, a trio occupying the three highest positions on Bloom?s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Just how small a fraction would shock you.

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.

Don’t read Gatto unless you’re prepared to get pissed off. Do read him if you’re prepared to challenge your assumptions about compulsory schooling.