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.

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