I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my
thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to
the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists
are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in
English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except
how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane,
caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the
abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.
Although teachers to care and do work very, very hard, the institution is
psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the
middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell
where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.
(John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling,
1992).
