From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Tue Aug 13 2002 - 08:23:05 MDT
Reading Gatto's book is scary indeed:
<<Since Aristotle, thinkers have understood that work is the vital
theater of self-knowledge. Schooling in concert with a controlled
workplace is the most effective way to foreclose the development of
imagination ever devised. But where did these radical doctrines of true
belief come from? Who spread them? We get at least part of the answer
from the tantalizing clue Walt Whitman left when he said "only Hegel is
fit for America." Hegel was the protean Prussian philosopher capable of
shaping Karl Marx on one hand and J.P. Morgan on the other; the man who
taught a generation of prominent Americans that history itself could be
controlled by the deliberate provoking of crises. Hegel was sold to
America in large measure by William Torrey Harris, who made Hegelianism
his lifelong project and forced schooling its principal instrument in
its role as an unrivaled agent provocateur.
Harris was inspired by the notion that correctly managed mass schooling
would result in a population so dependent on leaders that schism and
revolution would be things of the past. If a world state could be
cobbled together by Hegelian tactical manipulation, and such a school
plan imposed upon it, history itself would stop. No more wars, no civil
disputes, just people waiting around pleasantly like the Eloi in Wells’
The Time Machine. Waiting for Teacher to tell them what to do. The
psychological tool was alienation. The trick was to alienate children
from themselves so they couldn’t turn inside for strength, to alienate
them from their families, religions, cultures, etc., so that no
countervailing force could intervene.>>
--http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/5k.htm
-Mike
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