193. Pathology As A Natural Byproduct: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Pathology As A Natural Byproduct 

With these eight lessons in hand you should have less trouble seeing that the social 
pathologies we associate with modern children are natural byproducts of our modern 
system of schooling which produces: 

• Children indifferent to the adult world of values and accomplishment, defying the 
universal human experience laid down over thousands of years that a close study 
of grown-ups is always the most exciting and one of the most necessary 
occupations of youth. Have you noticed how very few people, adults included, 
want to grow up anymore? Toys are the lingua franca of American society for the 
masses and the classes. 

• Children with almost no curiosity. Children who can't even concentrate for long 
on things they themselves choose to do. Children taught to channel-change by a 
pedagogy employing the strategy "and now for something different," but kids who 
also realize dimly that the same damn show is on every channel. 

• Children with a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is linked to today. 
Children who live in a continuous present. Conversely, children with no sense of 
the past and of how the past has shaped and limited the present, shaped and 
limited their own choices, predetermined their values and destinies to an 
overwhelming degree. 

• Children who lack compassion for misfortune, who laugh at weakness, who 
betray their friends and families, who show contempt for people whose need for 
help shows too plainly. Children condemned to be alone, to age with bitterness, to 
die in fear. 

• Children who can't stand intimacy or frankness. Children who masquerade behind 
personalities hastily fabricated from watching television and from other distorted 
gauges of human nature. Behind the masks lurk crippled souls. Aware of this, 
they avoid the close scrutiny intimate relationships demand because it will expose 
their shallowness of which they have some awareness. 

• Materialistic children who assign a price to everything and who avoid spending 
too much time with people who promise no immediate payback — a group which 
often includes their own parents. Children who follow the lead of schoolteachers, 
grading and ranking everything: "the best," "the biggest," "the finest," "the worst." 
Everything simplified into simple-minded categories by the implied judgment of a 
cash price, deemed an infallible guide to value. 



• Dependent children who grow up to be whining, treacherous, terrified, dependent 
adults, passive and timid in the face of new challenges. And yet this crippling 
condition is often hidden under a patina of bravado, anger, aggressiveness. 

A Critical Appraisal