66.
A Lofty, Somewhat Inhuman Vision: The Underground History of American Education
by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
A
Lofty, Somewhat Inhuman Vision
Take
a case reported by the Public Agenda Foundation which produced the first-ever
survey
of educational views held by teachers college professors. To their surprise,
the
education
interviewed did not regard a teacher's struggle to maintain an orderly
was
generally unwilling to attend to these matters seriously in their work,
believing that
widespread
alarm among parents stemming from worry that graduates couldn't spell,
couldn't
count accurately, couldn't sustain attention, couldn't write grammatically (or
write
at all) was only caused by views of life "outmoded and mistaken."
While
92 percent of the public thinks basic reading, writing, and math competency is
"absolutely
essential" (according to an earlier study by Public Agenda), education
professors
did not agree. In the matter of mental arithmetic, which a large majority of
ordinary
people, including some schoolteachers, consider very important, about 60
percent
of education professors think cheap calculators make that goal obsolete.
The
word passion appears more than once in the report from which these data are
drawn,
as
in the following passage:
Education
professors speak with passionate idealism about their own, sometimes lofty,
vision
of education and the mission of teacher education programs. The passion
translates
into
ambitious and highly-evolved expectations for future teachers, expectations
that
often
differ dramatically from those of parents and teachers now in the classroom.
"The
soul
of a teacher is what should be passed on from teacher to teacher," a
Boston professor
said
with some intensity. "You have to have that soul to be a good
teacher."
It's
not my intention at this moment to recruit you to one or another side of this
debate,
but
only to hold you by the back of the neck as Uncle Bud (who you'll meet up
ahead)
once
held mine and point out that this vehicle has no brake pedal — ordinary parents
and
students
have no way to escape this passion. Twist and turn as they might, they will be
subject
to any erotic curiosity inspired love arouses. In the harem of true belief,
there is
scant
refuge from the sultan's lusty gaze.
Rain
Forest Algebra
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