155. Unpopular Government: The Underground History of
American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Unpopular
Government
Maine
built a stronger case in each successive book, Early History of Institutions
(1875) and Early Law and Custom (1883).
His magnificent tour de force, Popular Government (1885), smashed the very basis for popular
democracy. After Maine, only a fool could
believe wow-Anglo-Saxon groups should participate as equals in important
decision- making. At the same time,
Maine's forceful dismissal of the fundamental equality of ordinary or different peoples was
confirmed by the academic science of evolution and by commercial and manufacturing interests eager to collapse smaller enterprises into large ones. Maine's regal pronouncements were supported by mainstream urban Protestant churches and by established middle classes. Democratic America had been given its death sentence.
confirmed by the academic science of evolution and by commercial and manufacturing interests eager to collapse smaller enterprises into large ones. Maine's regal pronouncements were supported by mainstream urban Protestant churches and by established middle classes. Democratic America had been given its death sentence.
Sir Henry's work became a favorite text
for sermons, lectures, Chautauqua magazine
journalism and for the conversation of the best people. His effect is
reflected symbolically in a resolution
from the Scranton Board of Trade of all places, which characterized immigrants as:
The
most ignorant and vicious of European populations, including necessarily a
vast number of the criminal class;
people who come here not to become good citizens, but to prey upon our people and our industries; a
class utterly without character and incapable of understanding or appreciating our
institutions, and therefore a menace to our
commonwealth.
Popular Government was deliberately
unpopular in tone. There was no connection
between democracy and progress; the reverse was true. Maine's account of
racial history was accepted widely by
the prosperous. It admirably complemented the torrent of scientifically mathematicized racism pouring
out of M.I. T., Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and
virtually every bastion of high academia right through the WWI period
and even beyond. Scientific racism
determined the shape of government schooling in large measure, and still does.
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