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"

Obama: He Has Come for Your Children

Now, here's a story that should have otherwise reasonable families hightailing it to remote, farm-based communes. It's a vision of a brave new world in which perfection and (therefore?) happiness are achieved by never-ending school attendance....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school/print

What our allegedly "brilliant" and "enlightened" leaders fail to acknowledge is that more of what hasn't been working will not result in greater success but in greater failure.

Those wondering how in 233 years we've gone from cherishing "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to cherishing "school attendance, school attendance, and more school attendance" will want to read John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education, a book that--while it could have and should have been better written--nevertheless traces the all-encompassing tentacles of our education system to their obnoxiously statist roots, a book that anyone can now read online for free at http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm.

And here's another rejoinder that runs circles around the education philosophy emanating from the White House: http://www.reason.com/news/show/136423.html