My Favorite Passage in Kerouac's ON THE ROAD

By and by we came to a town, slowed down, and Montana Slim said, “Ah, pisscall,” but the Minnesotans didn’t stop and went right on through. “Damn, I gotta go,” said Slim.

“Go over the side,” said somebody.

“Well, I will” he said, and slowly, as we all watched, he inched to the back of the platform on his haunch, holding on as best he could, till his legs dangled over.  Somebody knocked on the window of the cab to bring this to the attention of the brothers.  Their great smiles broke as they turned.  And just as Slim was ready to proceed, precarious as it was already, they began zigzagging the truck at seventy miles an hour.  He fell back a moment; we saw a whale’s spout in the air; he struggled back to a sitting position.  They swung the truck.  Wham, over he went on his side, watering all over himself.  In the roar we could hear him faintly cursing, like the whine of a man far across the hills.  “Damn . . . damn . . .”  He never knew we were doing this deliberately; he just struggled, as grim as Job.  When he was finished, as such, he was wringing wet, and now he had to edge and shimmy his way back, and with a most woebegone look, and everybody laughing, except the sad blond boy, and the Minnesotans roaring in the cab. I handed him the bottle to make up for it. 

“What the hail,” he said, “was they doing that on purpose?”

“They sure were.”

“Well, damn me, I didn’t know that.  I know I tried it back in Nebraska and didn’t have half so much trouble.”

John Taylor Gatto: Against School

Gatto condenses his thesis to its essence in this piece.  As a fellow "education" insider going on thirty years in the business (and it is a business--not "first and foremost" but "only"), I can vouch for the accuracy of both his diagnosis and his remedies. 

So I do.  

John Taylor Gatto: "Against School"