217. Propaganda: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Propaganda 



To get where we got, public imagination had to be manufactured from command centers, 
but how was this managed? In 1914 Andrew Carnegie, spiritual leader of the original 
band of hard-nosed dreamers, gained influence over the Federal Council of Churches by 
extending heavy subsidies to its operations. And in 1918 Carnegie endowed a meeting in 
London of the American Historical Association where an agreement was made to rewrite 
American history in the interests of social efficiency. Not all leaders were of a single 
mind, of course. History isn't that simple. Beatrice Webb, for instance, declined to accept 
financial aid from Carnegie on her visit, calling him "a reptile" behind his back; the high- 
born Mrs. Webb saw through Carnegie's pretensions, right into the merchant-ledger of 
his tradesman soul. But enough were of a single mind it made no practical difference. 

On July 4, 1919, the London Times carried a long account reporting favorably on the 
propaganda hydra growing in the United States, without identifying the hand of Carnegie 
in its fashioning. According to the paper, men "trained in the arts of creating public good 
will and of swaying public opinion" were broadcasting an agenda which aimed first at 
mobilizing world public opinion and then controlling it. The end of all this effort was 
already determined, said the Times — world government. As the newspaper set down the 
specifics in 1919, propaganda was the fuel to drive societies away from their past: 

Efficiently organized propaganda should mobilize the Press, the Church, the stage, and 
the cinema. Press into active service the whole educational systems of both countries. ..the 
homes, the universities, public and high schools, and primary schools. ..histories. ..should 
be revised. New books should be added, particularly to the primary schools. 

The same issue of the London Times carried a signed article by Owen Wister, famous 
author of the best-selling novel The Virginian. Wister was then on the Carnegie payroll. 
He pulled no punches, informing the upscale British readership, "A movement to correct 
the schoolbooks of the United States has been started, and it will go on." 

In March 1925, the Saturday Evening Post featured an article by a prominent Carnegie 
official who stated that to bring about the world Carnegie envisioned, "American labor 
will have to be reduced to the status of European labor." 7 Ten years later, on December 
19, 1935, the New York American carried a long article about what it referred to as "a 
secret Carnegie Endowment conference" at the Westchester Country Club in Harrison, 
New York. Twenty-nine organizations attending each agreed to authorize a nationwide 
radio campaign managed and coordinated from behind the scenes, a campaign to commit 
the United States to a policy of internationalism. The group also agreed to present 
"vigorous counter-action" against those who opposed this country's entrance into the 
League of Nations. Pearl Harbor was only six years away, an international showcase for 
globalism without peer. 8 

Soon after this conference, almost every school in the United States was provided with 
full-size color maps of the world and with League of Nations literature extolling the 
virtues of globalism. That's how it was done. That's how it still is done. Universal 
schooling is a permeable medium. There need not be conspiracy among its internal 
personnel to achieve astonishingly uniform results; multiply this tactical victory 



thousands of times and you get where we are. Today we call the continuation of this 
particular strand of leveling "multiculturalism" — even though every particular culture it 
touches is degraded and insulted by the shallow veneer of universalism which hides the 
politics of the thing. 



If the article were written today, the magnitude of reduction would be to an Asian or "global" standard, I would imagine. 

y Just how wide a gulf there is between propaganda and reality where economic globalism is the issue can 

be gathered from a front-page article in the World Business section of March 7, 2003 New York Tines detailing Australia's "12th consecutive 
year of economic expansion" in the face of the dismal performance of other industrialized economies. Australia's secret, according to the text 
of "Australia keeps Bypassing Pitfalls of Global Economy," is that Australia's economy is not export-dependent, "domestic consumers are the 
main pillar of the economy." 

Freud's Nephew