From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Aug 14 2002 - 08:37:03 MDT
Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Harvey, it really isn't any question that the agendas of certain left
> wing groups today (and political parties) are identical to the agenda
> of the ComIntern for many decades. It also isn't any question that the
> NEA is one of these groups. They have a greater degree of influence
> over education laws, taxation and spending than any other group in any
> other area of politics, and why not, they are a monopoly. They decide
> what idiocy the kids get taught, and no matter what parents may want,
> the teacher in front of one's children is the final filter on anything
> the child learns.
Mike, I'm not going to argue (yet) about the NEA, but may once I read
further into Gatto's book. But I can present a summary of what I've
learned so far. I haven't yet tracked down every reference in Gatto's
book, and initial Google searches indicate some are *very* hard to find,
and may not even exist on the Net.
Basically, beginning shortly after the American Revolution, several
different threads in thinking began a convergence that (later) gained a
purpose when captains of industry realized that a nation of largely
self-educated shopkeepers, craftsmen, small farmers and such were not
going to be suitable for the factory work that would drive the
industrial revolution. Some of these forces were influenced by the East,
such as the Hindu caste system previously mentioned, and a Saracen model
of centralized governance (instead of feudal distributed authority)
along with a near fascist, Spartan training theory bought to the US via
Prussia and considerably accellerated by the changes which occured in
Prussia between its major defeat at Jena and subsequent victory at
Waterloo. Similar threads of change were occuring in France and Britain
as those countries moved toward industrialization, though less informed
from the Prussian model.
Around this same time there were many forces searching for a utopia
which was expressed in the numerous (mostly faith-based) intentional
communities and such which flourished in mid-19th century America.
These threads all combined to produce compulsory schooling, in which the
idea was to transform humans into human resources, so that they could be
measured and used as raw materials to bring the industrial revolution to
the US. Compulsory schooling was often violently opposed by the people,
to the extent that teachers were on occasion beaten to death by mobs of
angry parents. It took decades, but the end result was a lengthening of
childhood, and the destruction of meritocracy among the masses,
reserving it for captains of industry and other elites.
I would now argue against the mass consumption and, more specifically,
growth of advertising in the US, but feel I am not doing justice to the
whole story in the summary above and so will stop here.
Nonetheless it seems clear to me, that many libertarian and extropian
ideals were already realized in colonial and post-revolution America,
where (for example) the literacy rate (at least in the northeast) was
near 100%. They weren't atheists, they were Christian, but a
christianity informed much more by Old Testament rules of civility
rather than the New Testament.
(I suspect the core of Extropian thought may contain seeds of it's own
destruction being simultaneously informed by both libertarian and
utopian threads. We may have avoided such conflict since there are no
extropian-design utopian communities. But perhaps the arguments on this
list are due to people coming upon the list from both libertarian and
utopian influences. Perhaps the notion of a 'libertarian utopia' is an
oxymoron. Maybe we can have one or the other but not both (at least on
this planet). Based on the record of technocratic ideological conflict
in the 20th century, I'd now prefer libertarianism, though my initial
entry into this list years ago was much more influenced by utopian
ideals.)
It would be a mistake to consider Gatto's book just of interest to
reform-minded educators. So far it has been to me a very educational
experience of American history from the late 18th century to the early
20th. And I've only read 5 of the currently 8 chapters available online.
(I suspect that the promised 10 additional chapters will focus on
schooling since the early 20th century and possibly be more concentrated
on pedagogical theory).
But so far I'm not getting any sense of communism. In fact, it seems
much closer to facism. Perhaps if true that most mass media in the US
today is leftist (and I actually find most media to be extremely
conservative) then we are recreating (slowly, and w/o killing each other
by the millions) the ideological conflict between facism and communism
in the 20th century.
My interest in education began as purely professional, as I've done many
thousands of pages and applications for educational web sites. Gatto's
book is (for me) a real page-turner (though as I've said the web design
sux and the site is best viewed with a user style sheet, and the
navigation is a bit unintuitive as well). It's a fun read, though in
many ways heartbreaking as I said previously. Start here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
It's back to work for me so I may not be posting as frequently as I have
this past week. I'm not going to be available to argue the details of
the summary above, and no doubt I've simplified many things that require
more complete and complex explanations.
Thanks all,
-Mike
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