64. The Prototype Is A
Schoolteacher: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor
Gatto from archive.org
The
Prototype Is A Schoolteacher
One
dependable signal of a true believer's presence is a strong passion for
everyone 's
children.
Find nonstop, abstract interest in the collective noun "children,"
the kind of love
Pestalozzi
or Froebel had, and you've flushed the priesthood from its lair. Eric Hoffer
Mussolini,
so were many other prominent warlike leaders of our time, including Lyndon
Johnson.
In Hoffer' s characterization, the true believer is identified by inner fire,
"a
burning
conviction we have a holy duty to others." Lack of humor is one touchstone
of
The
expression "true believer" is from a fifth-century book, The City of
God, occurring in
a
passage where St. Augustine urges holy men and women to abandon fear and
embrace
their
sacred work fervently. True Belief is a psychological frame you'll find useful
to
explain
individuals who relentlessly pursue a cause indifferent to personal discomfort,
indifferent
to the discomfort of others. 1 All of us show a tiny element of true belief in
our
makeup,
usually just enough to recognize the lunatic gleam in the eye of some purer
zealot
when we meet face to face. But in an age which distances us from hand-to-hand
encounters
with authority — removing us electronically, bureaucratically, and
institutionally
— the truly fanatical among us have been granted the luxury of full
anonymity.
We have to judge their presence by the fallout.
Horace
Mann exemplifies the type. From start to finish he had a mission. He spoke
passionately
at all times. He wrote notes to himself about "breaking the bond of
association
among workingmen." In a commencement harangue at Antioch College in
1859,
he said, "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for
humanity." A few
cynical
critics snipe at Mann for lying about his imaginary school tour of Prussia
(which
led
to the adoption of Prussian schooling methodologies in America), but those
cynics
miss
the point. For the great ones, the goal is everything; the end justifies any
means.
Mann
lived and died a social crusader. His second wife, Mary Peabody, paid him this
posthumous
tribute: "He was all afire with Purpose."
Al
Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in one
of
his
last Sunday advertisements in The New York Times before his death: "Public
schools
do
not exist to please Johnny's parents. They do not even exist to ensure that Johnny
will
one
day earn a good living at a job he likes." No other energy but true belief
can explain
what
Shanker might have had in mind.
1
For instance, how else to get a handle on the Columbia Teachers College bureau
head who delivered
himself
of this sentence in Education Week (March 18, 1998), in an essay titled
"Altering Destinies":
"Program
officials consider no part of a student's life off limits."
Teachers
College Maintains The Planet
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