UG #520 - Education and Its Discontents (HowSchooling has Undermined Learning)
Robin Upton | 13.10.2010 01:04 | Analysis | Education | Sheffield
In the second hour, after an invitation to join an alternative media forum, http://UniverseCity.us, we hear Ken MacDermotRoe interviewing John Taylor Gatto in his History Counts episode, Dumbing Us Down. Then Kenneth Dowst of New World Notes plays the conclusion of one of John Taylor Gatto’s talks, followed by an excerpt from Jonathan Kozol, who observes the same phenomenon but reaches a different solution. Data is presented from Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi’s book "The Two-Income Trap."
"Keep in mind, this scheme was never intended... to be destructive, just the reverse. By converting Americans into specialized economic and social functions, into incompletely human human beings, this nation eventually achieved the most reliable domestic market in the world. The human mutilations of schooling are a trade-off for this prosperity. Comfort and security are achieved at the price of personal sovereignty and wholeness. That’s what makes extended childhood a paradox – give it up and people will enter a zone of great turbulence, since most people don’t have a clue what to do to make a living or how to entertain themselves. And the resolution of that turbulence nobody can predict.
Well-schooled people have a low threshold of boredom; they need constant novelty to feel alive. With only the flimsiest inner life, they must stay in touch with official voices... The cannot sit still without their minds wandering off to some commercial world or to the stock market... Well-schooled people must be poorly-trained in history, philosophy, economics, literature, poetry, music, art, theology, and anything known to develop a personal inner life... [It converts] spirits designed for independence into whiny, greedy, bored children who define themselves by what they consume... When you next find yourself appalled by infantile and irresponsible behavior that you see all around you, think of school as its forge and try to get rid of it."
— John Taylor Gatto
Robin Upton
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