145. A Scientifically Humane Future: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Chapter Twelve 



Daughters of the Barons of Runnemede 

Membership Requirements 

Membership in the Society is composed of women who are of legal age and he lineal 
descendant of one or more of the twenty-five Barons, selected to enforce the Magna 
Carta, those Barons in arms from the date of King John 's Coronation until June 15, 
1215. Membership is by invitation only. Within the Society there is an Order of 
Distinction Committee composed of members who trace their ancestry to Knights of the 
Garter, Ladies of the Garter and Knights of the Bath. 
— Charter, Daughters of the Barons of Runnemede 

A Scientifically Humane Future 

In the founding decades of American forced schooling, Rockefeller's General Education 
Board and Carnegie's foundation spent more money on schools than the national 
government did. What can a fact like that mean? Because they possessed a coherent 
perspective, had funds to apply to command the energies of the ambitious, possessed a 
national network of practical men of affairs, and at the same time could tap a pool of 
academic knowledge about the management of populations held in the universities they 
endowed, these and a small handful of men like them commanded decisive influence on 
forced schooling. Other influences had importance, too, but none more than this 
commitment of a scientifically benevolent American ruling class whose oversight of the 
economy and other aspects of living was deemed proper because of its evolutionary merit 
by the findings of modern science. The burden of this chapter is to show how a national 
upper class came about, what was on its mind, and how schools were the natural vehicle 
it mounted to ride into a scientifically humane, thoroughly Utopian future. 

Exclusive Heredity