35. Occasional Letter Number One: The Underground History of
American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Occasional
Letter Number One
Between 1896 and 1920, a small group of industrialists
and financiers,
together with their
private charitable foundations, subsidized university chairs, university
researchers, and school
administrators, spent more money on forced schooling than the government
itself did. Carnegie and
Rockefeller, as late as 1915, were spending more themselves. In this laissez-faire fashion a system of
modern schooling was constructed without public
participation. The motives for this are
undoubtedly mixed, but it will be useful for you to hear a few excerpts from the first mission statement of
Rockefeller's General Education
Board as they occur in a document called Occasional Letter Number One
(1906):
In our dreams.
..people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions
[intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will
upon a grateful and responsive
folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men
of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall
not search for embryo great
artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers,
politicians, statesmen, of whom we
have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple. ..we
will organize children... and
teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.
This mission statement will reward
multiple rereadings.
No comments:
Post a Comment