144. A New
Collectivism: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor
Gatto from archive.org
A New
Collectivism
By 1919 a deluge of state legislation
appeared, specifically designed to counteract
rampant Bolshevism. Idaho and Utah established criminal penalties for
failure to attend Americanization
classes. Fifteen states ordered English to be the only language of instruction in all schools, public and
private. Nebraska demanded that all meetings be
conducted in English. Oregon required every foreign language publication
to display prominently a literal English
translation of its entire contents. In 1922, Oregon outlawed private schools for elementary school
children, a decision reversed by the Supreme Court later in
the Pierce vs. Society of Sisters case (1925).
the Pierce vs. Society of Sisters case (1925).
At
the same time, or just a bit later, a new biology began to emerge — a molecular
vision of life under the direction of
the Rockefeller Foundation, a vision in which scientific interventions could and should be used
deliberately, by the best people, to control
biological and social evolution. With Rockefeller as a principal engine,
the shared social view of corporate
thinkers was comprehensively imposed, bit by bit, on academic science. Elite universities, with Caltech as
leader, became sites for implementation of the
Rockefeller project. It was, in the words of Lily Kay in {The Molecular
Vision of Life), "a potent convergence
of social agendas and scientists' ambitions."
Eugenic goals played a significant role in
conception and design of the new Rockefeller
biology, to such a point that open discussion of purposes had eventually
to be kept under wraps as a political
liability, particularly when the great dictators of Europe appeared to be taking some of their cues from America.
Molecular biology promised a politically
safer, and even a more certain path to an eventual Utopia of social
planning by elites, and one now properly
"scientific," completely free of the embarrassing candor of eugenic selection.
The
experience of these times gave reformers a grand taste for blood.
Government intervention everywhere was
proclaimed the antidote for dissent. Intervention took many unexpected shapes. For instance, the
"Athlete's Americanization League" agitated intensely to provide free sports equipment
for every public school with its battle cry:
"Sports are the logical antidote for unrest." By the time
national passion cooled, in every nook
and cranny of American life new social organizations with powerful government
or private sponsorship flourished. All
fed on intervention into families for their
nourishment, all clamored to grow larger, all schemed to produce
political testimony of their value. A
new republic was here at last, just as Herbert Croly'" had announced,
and government school was to be its
church.
10. The new republic we were driving toward,
according to Croly, bore little resemblance to either a republic or a democracy. It was to be an apolitical
universe, a new Utopia of engineers and skilled administrators, hinted at by
Bellamy, spun out further by Veblen in
The Engineers and the Price System, and The Theory of Business Enterprise. A
federal union of worldwide scope was the target, a peculiar kind of union of the sort specified
in Cecil Rhodes' last wills, which established the Rhodes Scholarships as a
means to that end. Politics was outdated
as a governing device. Whatever appearances of an earlier democratic republic were
allowed to survive, administrators would
actually rule. A mechanism would have to be created whereby administrators
could be taught the new reality discreetly so that continuity and progress could be assured. De
Tocqueville's nightmare of an endlessly articulating, self-perpetuating bureaucracy
had finally come to life. It was still
in its infancy, but every sign pointed to a lusty future.
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