35. Occasional Letter Number One: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

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.