Compulsory Education And Permanent Childhood

[squarepusher]

Compulsory Education And Permanent Childhood

this was posted in main, but im sure its gunna get buried really fast there

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=217954

http://www.theemotionmachine.com/gov...nent-childhood

11.06.2009
Compulsory Education And Permanent Childhood
Categories: Government and Politics


John Taylor Gatto is an American retired school teacher of 30 years and author of several books on education. He has been the winner of the New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions and is an outspoken critic of the compulsory American education system.

Incredibly sharp-witted and a great storyteller, Gatto always has something thought-provoking to say. In this great speech he describes how our modern schooling system was formed to make us childish, docile, and dependent.

John Taylor Gatto Quotes

“I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us… I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them 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 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.”

“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.”

“By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers – backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. – has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.”

For more information please check out John Taylor Gatto’s official website.

[SimpleName]

Permanent childhood. Behind simple stupidity, that is the worst effect of compulsory education. This is the government's ultimate ends. They want everyone to be children. Already they talk to us like we are all five year olds as if none of us understand the issues. Just like a child, government wants us to be wholly dependent on a parent, which is the govt. in this case. It is no wonder the schools days, school years, and school careers progressively get longer. It isn't to create geniuses. It is to create MORE children.

Important to mention our drinking and gambling laws here. If people are children longer, they withhold self responsibility longer. Therefore, they can't possibly handle responsibility of their own money and refrain from exhausting it all on gambling. Or in the other case of alcohol, who can expect a child to properly level how much alcohol to consume? This is actually much bigger in scope than just education. It is in every corridor of life.

[DamianTV]

I for one would like to state for the record that I am not trapped in a state of perpetual or permanent childhood.

IM NOT!!! IM NOT!!! IM NOT!!! IM NOT!!! IM NOT!!! :P

[heavenlyboy34]

John Gatto is awesome!

[dannno]

I agree.