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.
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