Topic: The Underground History of American Education

[LadyVirginia]

I've mentioned this book by John Taylor Gatto before.  It's now available to read online.

While I do take issue with some of his assertions I found the history and agenda of public education to be enlightening when I read this book over 15 years ago.


link

A sample:

Chapter Two
An Angry Look At Modern Schooling
The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”

Chapter Three
Eyeless In Gaza
Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of terminating our universal reading proficiency.

[albertfabian012]

After a log time i visit here and happy to see such forum with lot of new and informative topics.The info you gave here related to history of American Education is fantastic and i must forward this information in my friend circle for more awareness.

[IronDioPriest]

After a log time i visit here and happy to see such forum with lot of new and informative topics.The info you gave here related to history of American Education is fantastic and i must forward this information in my friend circle for more awareness.

The info you given in short visit here to such forum help this one know and happy to ban. Must aware and laugh with friends. Thank much, you.

[Libertas]

I've mentioned this book by John Taylor Gatto before.  It's now available to read online.

While I do take issue with some of his assertions I found the history and agenda of public education to be enlightening when I read this book over 15 years ago.


link

A sample:

Chapter Two
An Angry Look At Modern Schooling
The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”

Chapter Three
Eyeless In Gaza
Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of terminating our universal reading proficiency.

I am reminded of our Founders and many who follwed them, self-taught men who became brillant thinkers, writers and leaders.  Men like Franklin and Lincoln.  Having an appetite and desire to learn goes a long way to being truly educated.  One doesn't need to be penned, branded and tamed and forced to memorize useless datum.  Both the terms "liberal" and "education" have been perverted from their original meaning.

[LadyVirginia]

A good way to understand a college's focus is to look at the textbooks sold in its bookstore. 

I was in the bookstore at the UW-Whitewater campus last fall.  Most of the "history" books were books about the downtrodden, under- represented and otherwise put-upon people in this country.  It left me with the impression of an America full of victims. Contrast that with the textbooks at Hillsdale College (I was just there and always stop in the bookstore) and it made me acutely aware of my sorry public education -- Dante, Paine, Jefferson, etc.