32. Bad Character As A Management Tool: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Bad Character As A Management Tool

A large piece of the answer can be found by reading between the lines of an article that
appeared in the June 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs. Written by Mortimer Zuckerman,
owner of U.S. News and World Report (and other major publications), the essay praises
the American economy, characterizing its lead over Europe and Asia as so structurally
grounded no nation can possibly catch up fori 00 years. American workers and the
American managerial system are unique.

You are intrigued, I hope. So was I. Unless you believe in master race biology, our
advantage can only have come from training of the American young, in school and out,
training which produces attitudes and behavior useful to management. What might these
crucial determinants of business success be?

First, says Zuckerman, the American worker is a pushover. That's my translation, not his,
but I think it's a fair take on what he means when he says the American is indifferent to
everything but a paycheck. He doesn't try to tell the boss his job. By contrast, Europe
suffers from a strong "steam age" craft tradition where workers demand a large voice in
decision-making. Asia is even worse off, because even though the Asian worker is
silenced, tradition and government interfere with what business can do.


Next, says Zuckerman, workers in America live in constant panic; they know companies
here owe them nothing as fellow human beings. Fear is our secret supercharger, giving
management flexibility no other country has. In 1996, after five years of record
profitability, almost half of all Americans in big business feared being laid off. This fear
keeps a brake on wages.



Next, in the United States, human beings don't make decisions, abstract formulas do;
management by mathematical rules makes the company manager-proof as well as
worker-proof

Finally, our endless consumption completes the charmed circle, consumption driven by
non- stop addiction to novelty, a habit which provides American business with the only
reliable domestic market in the world. Elsewhere, in hard times business dries up, but not
here; here we shop till we drop, mortgaging the future in bad times as well as good.

Can 't you feel in your bones Zuckerman is right? I have little doubt the fantastic wealth
of American big business is psychologically and procedurally grounded in our form of
schooling. The training field for these grotesque human qualities is the classroom.
Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored,
frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass
production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like
that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and
universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious,
familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between
Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about.

The extreme wealth of American big business is the direct result of school having trained
us in certain attitudes like a craving for novelty. That's what the bells are for. They don't
ring so much as to say, "Now for something different."

An Enclosure Movement For Children