John Taylor Gatto summarises the real agenda of the compulsory state school system, as laid out in Alexander Inglis's 1918 book 'Principles of Secondary Education':1 - The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2 - The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3 - The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4 - The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5 - The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6 - The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
Quoted from "Weapons of Mass Instruction" by John Taylor Gatto.
Read his earlier book "The Underground History of American Education" here.
Find Alexander Inglis's "Principles of Secondary Education" here.
15 comments:
I think that the real role of state education is to provide child care for lower and middle class mothers so that they can work mindnumbing wage slave jobs just like the men.
That is undoubtedly one of the key reasons for it: get the women into taxation and get the kids as young as possible to start the conditioning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TENiMKsxe4
Trooper is this what you want?!?!? Kids should be allowed to go to school so they can get away from their parents delusional bronze age superstitions.
I haven't watched that vid yet, but even if it gives a bad impression of home schooling, I will remain implacably in favour of this and wholly opposed to the state school system.
"Kids should be allowed to go to school"
Sure, if they want to.
"they can get away from their parents delusional bronze age superstitions"
See, now you're stepping over the line. As I said, I haven't seen the vid, but people have freedom of religion, and the state has zero right to prevent parents teaching their children their beliefs.
What if their beliefs include child abuse? which I would class what the parents in the vid i posted are doing. Sure not on the worst level but child abuse none the less. So it would need to be regulated anyway. Otherwise most kids would be dumb and eventually everyone would turn into hillbillys!
"Otherwise most kids would be dumb and eventually everyone would turn into hillbillys!"
Arrogant, elitist nonsense.
"What if their beliefs include child abuse?"
What kind of question is that?
"So it would need to be regulated anyway."
Total ad hominem rubbish. You are putting forward the idea, heard elsewhere from the stinking government and their outriders, that home-schoolers must be 'regulated' to see if they are child-abusers - now expanded to include passing on beliefs that you don't share.
I watched about one minute of the video, so I'm not going to go into that as an example of anything.
dont' watch it then and it won't be true! then you can go on believing this nonsense.
"What kind of question is that?"
one you don't want to hear obviously!!! i gave you a link showing parents home schooling teaching a belief in a very bad way making the child extremely miserable (not expanding anything emotional abuse is child abuse!). the question arose from this:
"the state has zero right to prevent parents teaching their children their beliefs."
anyway just wanted to clarify that since you asked. good luck with brown and his nwo. peace out!
Okay. I watched the vid you linked to. I'm not going to watch all of them, but I saw a girl living a good life with a family that loved her, in beautiful surroundings. What did you see?
A girl deprived because she doesn't know who Britney Spears and Victoria Beckham are?
"A girl deprived because she doesn't know who Britney Spears and Victoria Beckham are?"
haha no, that is not the point. the fact that she thinks everyone is going to hell, she thinks she is "wretched" and deserves it too. By the end of the film she is in tears because she's been so tormented.
This is because she hasn't been out of her house and home schooled so she has not had the opportunity of other opinions. Maybe I should have linked you the last video..
but actually it proves my point - you said you saw what you did, but on further investigation there is a life of torment. how would anyone know any different just from a brief view of their life, this is why it would be and has been allowed to go on for so long. and why home schooling should be illegal.
Ah, so now you get to the point: that homeschooling should be illegal, not regulated as you said earlier.
I will watch the rest of the video and see if there is anything to support what you say,so far all I've seen is a young girl being asked manipulative and very personal questions, but even if it was everything and more that you have said it is, it is ridiculous to say that all homeschooling should be banned on the basis of one example. Bad things happen in school - do you want schools illegal as well? No, of course you don't.
Your main problem is evidently the religious nature of her upbringing. I'm just not quite sure on what authority you get to decide how other people bring up their children? It's not just this girl, as you say, it's all homeschooled children.
Therefore I wonder whether you think it is part of the job of state schooling to eradicate what you refer to as 'bronze age superstitions'?
BTW, there's quite an interesting thread on this documentary here:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3655,Deborah-13-Servant-of-God,BBC-3
(It may be old news to you).
Among the strange notions which have been broached since I have been in the political theatre, there is one which has lately seized the minds of men, that all things must be done for them by the Government, and that they are to do nothing for themselves: the Government is not only to attend to the great concerns which are its province, but it must step in and ease individuals of their natural and moral obligations. A more pernicious notion can not prevail. Look at that ragged fellow staggering from the whiskey shop, and see that slattern who has gone there to reclaim him; where are their children? Running about, ragged, idle, ignorant, fit candidates for the penitentiary. Why is all this so? Ask the man and he will tell you. “Oh, the Government has undertaken to educate our children for us. It has given us a premium for idleness, and now I spend in liquor which I should otherwise be obliged to save, to pay for their schooling.”
~~John Randolph. Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention (1830)
"All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education."
Frederic Bastiat
well to be honest i wasn't up for banning homeschooling just regulating it better until you convinced me otherwise Trooper! if you cannot see the abuse here what chance has the usual drone got of spotting it.
and to answer your question
"Therefore I wonder whether you think it is part of the job of state schooling to eradicate what you refer to as 'bronze age superstitions'?"
Yes i think it's the states job to eradicate ignorance through education. Oh wouldn't that be nice!!
cheers for the dawkins link, seems they agree with me ;)
Not everyone's gonna go along with your brand of utopian statism.
The kind of country and society I wish to live in is very different, I think, to that which you favour.
I believe in individual freedom and limited government. The state is a necessary evil, and no better, and it has no right - by natural law - to enforce religious beliefs. It wasn't right when the state forced christian orthodoxy, and it ain't any more right when the state forces a creed of secular, materialist, pantheistic state-worship or whatever name sticks to its greasy surface.
I trust parents better than agents of the state to take care of their children. This is the rule. Exceptions to it are rare, firstly because most parents love their children and wish to provide for them, and secondly because even below average parents are better for the child than state care.
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