[X] Ted Dunlap – governor

Education is probably the most damaging thing THE STATE does to our society. I will be adding quite a bit to this website on this topic over the next few months. For starters, I introduce you to New York City Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the year, John Taylor Gatto. Visit his website. Here is a brief excerpt from his book Dumbing US Down.

Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children’s power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior. (p. xii)

In his Teacher-of-the-Year acceptance speech to the New York legislature, he makes this charge explicit, describing seven ‘lessons’ that form the heart of the compulsory curriculum.

“These are the things you pay me to teach”:
1. Confusion. ‘Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the unrelating of everything.’ (p. 2)
2. Class position. “That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.’ (P. 3)
3. Indifference. ‘Indeed, the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything?* (p. 6)
4. Emotional dependency. ‘By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command.’ (p. 7)
5. Intellectual dependency. ‘Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers…. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity* (p. 8). Gatto says this is ‘the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives.’ (p. 8 )
6. Provisional self-esteem. ‘The lesson of report cards, grades and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.’ (p. 11)
7. One can’t hide. Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers (such as Plato, Augustine, Calvin, Bacon, and Hobbes). All these childless men … discovered the same thing: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control.’ (pp. 11-12)