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Reboot

14-September-2006 00:08

Kate Bush - Army Dreamers

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John Taylor Gatto - Classrooms of the Heart

Watch - Direct Download Options (Google Video - 27 minutes)

John Taylor Gatto has been named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He then quit teaching in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children.

Filmed by the Christian Science Monitor in Gatto's last New York City classroom, shown a number of times on the Discovery Channel.

www.johntaylorgatto.com

Radio Interviews

Philip Dru (philipdru.com): www.scotthortonshow.com/2003/09/06/september-6-2003-john-taylor-gatto/

Miscellaneous: www.altruists.org/gatto

See Also

Charlotte Iserbyt - The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

www.alfiekohn.org - www.unconditionalparenting.com (DVD) - The Schools Our Children Deserve (audio)

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all

Paul Simon / Simon & Garfunkel - Kodachrome

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned that Washington never told a lie
I learned that soldiers seldom die
I learned that everybody's free

I learned that policemen are my friends
I learned that justice never ends
I learned that murderers die for their crimes

I learned that war is not so bad
I learned about the great ones we have had
We fought in Germany and in France
And someday I might get my chance

I learned that our government must be strong
It's always right and never wrong
Our leaders are the finest men
So we elect them again and again

That's what the teacher said to me
And that's what I learned in school today
That's what I learned in school

Tom Paxton - What Did You Learn in School Today

Reboot

12-November-2006 02:04

John Taylor Gatto Interviewed by Lennart Mogren, Sweden, in March 2003

Watch - Direct Download Options (Google Video - 34 minutes)

John Taylor Gatto is a learned eloquent critic of the present school system all over the world. In this interview he exposes the hidden agenda that makes most of us hate school. I have written a book, "Sluta skolan!", on my own experiences and views and I have come to the same conclusions as Mr Gatto has.

He exposes the dark and terrifying machinery behind the scenes. Mr Gatto gíves us hope and tools to start dismantling this hideous institution. In my view parents need to get in charge of their kids' education in new loving and nurturing ways. Mr Gatto is a great inspiration for those us who realize this.

www.slutaskolan.nu - www.philosophy.org

Alfie Kohn - Homework: More Harm Than Good? (The Early Show - September 8, 2006)

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Kids are back in school now and that means they're coming home every night loaded down with homework. Rene Syler speaks with Alfie Kohn, author of "The Homework Myth."

An article by Kohn in which he presents his case against homework: www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/dwh.htm

www.alfiekohn.org

Chris Carota

13-November-2006 07:29

Reboot,

Thank you for the link to the new John Taylor Gatto's interview by Lennart Mogren... I'd never seen him give such a detailed yet succinct (35 minutes) overview of the Prussian Experiment, its roots in national-socialism and its links to the The Council on Foreign Relations.

Researchers seeking for more information from Gatto on this subject should check out his book "The Underground History of American Education". Here is an excerpt called "The Land of Frankenstein", from chapter 7 The Prussian Connection, which explains the historical development of centralized schooling through the Prussian army.

QUOTE

Prussian Fire-Discipline

On approaching the enemy, the marching columns of Prussians wheeled in succession to the right or left, passed along the front of the enemy until the rear company had wheeled. Then the whole together wheeled into line facing the enemy. These movements brought the infantry into two long well-closed lines, parade-ground precision obtained thanks to remorseless drilling. With this movement was bound up a fire-discipline more extraordinary than any perfection of maneuver. "Pelotonfeuer" was opened at 200 paces from the enemy and continued up to 30 paces when the line fell on with the bayonet. The possibility of this combination of fire and movement was the work of Leopold, who by sheer drill made the soldier a machine capable of delivering (with flintlock muzzle-loading muskets) five volleys a minute. The special Prussian fire-discipline gave an advantage of five shots to two against all opponents. The bayonet attack, if the rolling volleys had done their work, was merely"presenting the cheque for payment," as a German writer put it.
— Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, "Prussia"

The Land of Frankenstein

The particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian. The seed that became American schooling, twentieth-century style, was planted in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers bested the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is renting soldiers and employing diplomatic extortion under threat of your soldiery, losing a battle like that is pretty serious. Something had to be done.

The most important immediate reaction to Jena was an immortal speech, the "Address to the German Nation" by the philosopher Fichte—one of the influential documents of modern history leading directly to the first workable compulsion schools in the West. Other times, other lands talked about schooling, but all failed to deliver. Simple forced training for brief intervals and for narrow purposes was the best that had ever been managed. This time would be different.

In no uncertain terms Fichte told Prussia the party was over. Children would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning. They could no longer be trusted to their parents. Look what Napoleon had done by banishing sentiment in the interests of nationalism. Through forced schooling, everyone would learn that "work makes free," and working for the State, even laying down one's life to its commands, was the greatest freedom of all. Here in the genius of semantic redefinition1 lay the power to cloud men's minds, a power later packaged and sold by public relations pioneers Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee in the seedtime of American forced schooling.

Prior to Fichte's challenge any number of compulsion-school proclamations had rolled off printing presses here and there, including Martin Luther's plan to tie church and state together this way and, of course, the "Old Deluder Satan" law of 1642 in Massachusetts and its 1645 extension. The problem was these earlier ventures were virtually unenforceable, roundly ignored by those who smelled mischief lurking behind fancy promises of free education. People who wanted their kids schooled had them schooled even then; people who didn't didn't. That was more or less true for most of us right into the twentieth century: as late as1920, only 32 percent of American kids went past elementary school. If that sounds impossible, consider the practice in Switzerland today where only 23 percent of the student population goes to high school, though Switzerland has the world's highest per capita income in the world.

Prussia was prepared to use bayonets on its own people as readily as it wielded them against others, so it's not all that surprising the human race got its first effective secular compulsion schooling out of Prussia in 1819, the same year Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, set in the darkness of far-off Germany, was published in England. Schule came after more than a decade of deliberations, commissions, testimony, and debate. For a brief, hopeful moment, Humboldt's brilliant arguments for a high-level no-holds-barred, free-swinging, universal, intellectual course of study for all, full of variety, free debate, rich experience, and personalized curricula almost won the day. What a different world we would have today if Humboldt had won the Prussian debate, but the forces backing Baron vom Stein won instead. And that has made all the difference.

The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver:

1) Obedient soldiers to the army;2

2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms;

3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function;

4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry;

5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues;

6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.

The area of individual volition for commoners was severely foreclosed by Prussian psychological training procedures drawn from the experience of animal husbandry and equestrian training, and also taken from past military experience. Much later, in our own time, the techniques of these assorted crafts and sullen arts became "discoveries" in the pedagogical pseudoscience of psychological behaviorism.

Prussian schools delivered everything they promised. Every important matter could now be confidently worked out in advance by leading families and institutional heads because well-schooled masses would concur with a minimum of opposition. This tightly schooled consensus in Prussia eventually combined the kaleidoscopic German principalities into a united Germany, after a thousand years as a nation in fragments. What a surprise the world would soon get from this successful experiment in national centralization! Under Prussian state socialism private industry surged, vaulting resource-poor Prussia up among world leaders. Military success remained Prussia's touchstone. Even before the school law went into full effect as an enhancer of state priorities, the army corps under Blücher was the principal reason for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, its superb discipline allowing for a surprisingly successful return to combat after what seemed to be a crushing defeat at the Little Corporal's hands just days before.3 Unschooled, the Prussians were awesome; conditioned in the classroom promised to make them even more formidable.

The immense prestige earned from this triumph reverberated through an America not so lucky in its own recent fortunes of war, a country humiliated by a shabby showing against the British in the War of 1812. Even thirty years after Waterloo, so highly was Prussia regarded in America and Britain, the English-speaking adversaries selected the Prussian king to arbitrate our northwest border with Canada. Hence the Pennsylvania town "King of Prussia." Thirty-three years after Prussia made state schooling work, we borrowed the structure, style, and intention of those Germans for our own first compulsion schools.

Traditional American school purpose—piety, good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance, etc.—was scrapped to make way for something different. Our historical destination of personal independence gave way slowly to Prussian-purpose schooling, not because the American way lost in any competition of ideas, but because for the new commercial and manufacturing hierarchs, such a course made better economic sense.

This private advance toward nationalized schooling in America was partially organized, although little has ever been written about it; Orestes Brownson's journal identifies a covert national apparatus (to which Brownson briefly belonged) already in place in the decade after the War of 1812, one whose stated purpose was to "Germanize" America, beginning in those troubled neighborhoods where the urban poor huddled, and where disorganized new immigrants made easy targets, according to Brownson. Enmity on the part of old-stock middle-class and working-class populations toward newer immigrants gave these unfortunates no appeal against the school sentence to which Massachusetts assigned them. They were in for a complete makeover, like it or not.

Much of the story, as it was being written by 1844, lies just under the surface of Mann's florid prose in his Seventh Annual Report to the Boston School Committee. On a visit to Prussia the year before, he had been much impressed (so he said) with the ease by which Prussian calculations could determine precisely how many thinkers, problem-solvers, and working stiffs the State would require over the coming decade, then how it offered the precise categories of training required to develop the percentages of human resource needed. All this was much fairer to Mann than England's repulsive episcopal system—schooling based on social class; Prussia, he thought, was republican in the desirable, manly, Roman sense. Massachusetts must take the same direction.

Complete text for The Underground History Of American Education: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
Check out The Russian Roots of Nazism by Michael Kellog: http://www.conspiracyresearch.org/forums/i...showtopic=12293

Reboot

19-January-2007 20:28

Placebo - Teenage Angst

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John Taylor Gatto - A Different Kind of Teacher (C-SPAN - January 5, 2001)

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Mr. Gatto spoke about his book "A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling," published by Berkley Hills Books. The book analyses the roots of the modern American education system, detailing how it was designed to foster economic interests and facilitate management of the labor force. It also offers ways to revitalize the system through emphasis on critical analysis, creativity, practical knowledge, and real-world exposure.

The author's lecture focuses on educational policy in the U.S., how children are educated in government operated schools, and the difference between private and public education systems. Following his remarks he answered questions from the audience.

John Taylor Gatto - Washington Journal: Public Education (C-SPAN - September 1, 2003)

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Participating by telephone from New York City, Mr. Gatto talked about his recent Harper's article,
"Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why." He also responded to audience telephone calls, faxes and electronic mail.

www.c-spanarchives.org - www.c-span.org - Free Audio

See Also

Alfie Kohn - The Schools Our Children Deserve (C-SPAN - October 27, 1999)

Buy

Mr. Kohn talks about his book, "The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and 'Tougher Standards'," published by Houghton Mifflin. The book challenges the current state of education, and proposes multi-age, interdisciplinary classrooms. After his remarks he answered questions from the audience.

www.alfiekohn.org - www.unconditionalparenting.com - Free Audio

Reboot

20-January-2007 20:58

Alfie Kohn - Unconditional Parenting: Moving From Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

Most advice for parents begins with the question. "How can we get kids to do what they're told?" - and then proceeds to offer various techniques for controlling them. In his landmark book Unconditional Parenting - and in this talk based on that book - Alfie Kohn begins instead by asking "What are our long-term goals for our children?" It follows that we need to work with them, rather than doing things to them, in order to reach those goals.

Kohn argues that punishment (including time-outs) and rewards (including positive reinforcement) may sometimes produce temporary compliance, but they do nothing to help kids grow into responsible, caring, ethical, happy people. Moreover, he suggests that permissiveness is less worrisome than a fear of permissiveness that leads us to overcontrol our children.

www.unconditionalparenting.com - www.alfiekohn.org/updvd.htm

Unconditional Parenting (The Early Show - March 28, 2005)

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When it comes to parenting techniques and getting your children to behave, conventional wisdom suggests rewarding kids for good behavior and punishing them if they're bad.

Well, there's a new book that challenges those theories and says you should forget all of those techniques. It's called "Unconditional Parenting."

Reboot

13-February-2007 17:10

Collectivism in Europe

German Homeschooler in Psychiatric Ward

Homeschooling is not legal in Germany. There are over 40 cases currently in court or being appealed. Christian families are fleeing Germany for safety in nearby countries. The unconscionable treatment of sincere and faithful Christian homeschool families is a sad legacy from Germany's past. Homeschooling was first banned under Adolf Hitler, and that ban is still enforced today.

http://pub47.bravenet.com/forum/3966629559/fetch/705828/

Norway: If You Don't Like Our Education System We Take Your Children

Watch (YouTube - 47 seconds)

www.advar5el.no/2007/02/06/barnevernet-og-den-nye-offentligheten

What Did You Learn in School Today (US)

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What Did You Learn in School Today (UK)

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