John Gatto: Speech to the Vermont Homeschooler's Conference

What I intend to talk to you about this afternoon is what I understand

you are aware of: the positive goals and values that you seek as

homeschoolers, but I want to talk about the specifics of what you're

fleeing because what you're fleeing is alive and well in the green state

of Vermont. Perhaps Vermont is one of a half-a-dozen states that the U.S.

Dept. of Education uses as testing grounds. I believe they picked

Vermont because they understand that you people are so reasonable that

you're always willing to negotiate, anyway I have some information to

bring to you on a different outlook on what the intention of schools is,

the title of this talk is:

"A SHORT ANGRY HISTORY OF AMERICAN FORCED SCHOOLING".

Between 1967 and 1974 teacher training in the US was covertly revamped

through the coordinated efforts of a small number of private foundations,

certain universities, global corporations and several other interests

working through the U.S. Dept. of Education and through key state

education dept.'s, one of which is the state of Vermont.

Three critical documents in this transformation are Benjamin Bloom's

multivolume "TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES". That was the first. The

second was a many-state project begun in 1967 called "DESIGNING EDUCATION

FOR THE FUTURE", and it was set forth in an enormous manual of nearly

1000 pages and finally was the "BEHAVIORAL TEACHER EDUCATIONAL PROJECT"

which came in a manual of over 1000 pages...these were inserted into

every state education dept. in the country and moneys were inserted there

to pay faculty salaries a certain range of bribes for the school

districts that would pioneer the use of these things.

Let me start with the "DESIGNING EDUCATION FOR THE FUTURE" papers. They

were the collusion with the Federal Education Dept. and the presumably

independent state agencies. They redefined education after the 19th

century Germanic fashion as a means of (quoting now from the document)

"as a means to achieve important economic and social goals for the

national character" and I would hasten to add that none of those goals

included the maximum development of your son or daughter. State agencies

would henceforth "act as Federal enforcers insuring compliance of local

schools with Federal directives". The document proclaimed that each

state, I'm quoting again, "each state education dept. must be an agent of

change", proclaimed further "change must be institutionalized". I doubt

if an account of this appeared in any newspaper in the state of Vermont

or for that matter any newspaper in the country (U.S.). Ed dept.s were, I

am quoting a third time, "to lose their identity as well as their

authority in order to form a partnership with the Federal Government".

The "BEHAVIORAL TEACHER EDUCATIONAL PROJECT" outlines specific teaching

reforms to be forced on the country, unwillingly of course, after 1967. It

also set out--in clear language--the out look and intent of it's

invisible creators. Nothing less than quoting again "the impersonal

manipulation through schooling of a future America in which few will be

able to maintain control over their own opinions", an America in which

quoting again "each individual receives at birth, a multipurpose

identification number which enables employers and other controllers to

keep track of their underlings", underlings is my interpretation...

everything else can out of the document. "and to expose them to the

directors subliminal influence of the state education dept. and the

federal dept. acted through those whenever necessary".

Readers learned in 1967, of course you and I were not among those

readers, that chemical experimentation on minors would be normal

procedure in the post 1967 world". That is a pointed foreshadowing of the

massive Ritalin interventions which would accompany the student body of

the future. Teachers were expected to function as government change

agents and their trainers, this the first time reading this document that

I realized that the expression "teacher trainer" is an odd, like animal

trainer, is an odd locution. The teacher trainers were notified that

behavioral science would be henceforth replace academic curriculum in

schools. The project to identified the future as one again I'm quoting

"in which a small league would control all important matters one in which

see that their classmates, and indeed the average man or woman were so

inadequate, so irresponsible that had to be controlled and regulated. The

tremendous rise in school violence and general chaos in the late 1960's,

a period when teachers and schools across the land were stripped of their

ability to discipline children, might be seen as a convenient public

justification for sharp constrictions of traditional liberty. Each out

burst resonated through the press was like a billboard for emergency

measures.

According to the "BEHAVIORAL TEACHER EDUCATIONAL PROJECT", post modern

schooling would focus, I quote directly from the document, "on pleasure

cultivation and interpersonal relationships and other attitudes and

skills compatible with a non-work world". It makes sense of course

doesn't it? That irresponsible semi-illiterate people could not be

trusted with much responsibility so in the new change agentry schooling,

which is called for by this national teacher training document, the

teacher is a therapist, translating the prescriptions of the social

psychologists into practical action research in the classroom.

The third critical gospel signaling a great transformation was at hand,

to those in the know, was Bloom's "TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES",

which has since it's publication, spawned a number of descendant forms,

like mastery learning, outcomes based educations and school to work

business-government-economic projects. Dr. Bloom's compilation was a

tool, I'm quoting from Dr. Bloom, "a tool to classify the ways

individuals are to act, think or feel is the result of participating in

some unit of instruction". I would be dubious if any parent in the U.S.

would send their children to schools under these auspices if they were

thinking people. In this fashion, children would learn proper attitudes

and their improper attitudes (brought from home) remedied. In all

stages of the school manipulations, testing would be essential to locate

the child's mind on a official continuum.

But why is all of this being done? One large piece of the answer can be

found in the current edition of FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE, which will be

in all your libraries. It is surely one of the most influential

periodical in the U.S.,perhaps in the world. Which extols the American

economy with it's massive lead over Europe and Asia, and an article

written by the owner of U.S. News and World report in the New York daily

news by Mort Zukerman. Zukerman attributes our superiority which he

claims can not be lost in the 21st century, that it is impossible for us

to lose our lead in the 21st century, so huge is it, to certain

characteristics to the American worker and the American workplace. If

you read between the lines, of this article it's quite easy to see that

the advantage that Zukerman boasts of can only come from our training of

the young. What does the advantage consist of then?, According to

Zukerman in the first position, the American is a push over, dominated by

management with little to say about what happens by contrast says

Zukerman, Europe suffers from a strong crafts tradition which demands a

worker voice in decision making. Asia is even worse off, their tradition,

religion and government interferes with the business could do. The

Islamic world is so far behind, so crippled by religion that Zukerman

His analysis makes further telling points about the American worker and

the American consumer. Like nowhere else, he says "workers in America

live a constant state of panic, a panic against of being left out, they

know that companies owe them nothing, there is no power to appeal to for

management's decisions. Fear is our secret supercharger, it gives

management the flexibility other nations will never have". Zukerman says

that even after 6 years of economic expansion, American workers including

management workers fret they might not survive. He is boasting of

course - this is not a critical article, this a laudatory article.

In 1996 almost half the employees of large firms feared being laid off. This is double the number of being laid off in 1991 when things were not nearly as good as they are now. This keeps wages under control.

And finally our endless consumption completes the golden circle. Consumption driven, says Zukerman, by an astonishing American addiction to novelty which provides American businesses with the only domestic market in the world. Elsewhere in hard times, business dries up...here we continue to shop till we drop mortgaging our futures to keep the flow of goods and services coming Remember this is not, in any way a critical

article. There can be no doubt that the fantastic wealth of American big

business is a direct of school training. Schools training a social lump

to be needy, frightened, envious, bored, talentless and incomplete. The

successful mass-production economy demands such an audience. It isn't

anybody's fault. Just as the Amish small business, small farm economy

requires intelligence, competence, thoughtfulness and compassion, ours

needs a well managed mass, level, anxious, spiritless, families, godless

and conforming; people who believe that the difference between Coke and

Pepsi is matter worth arguing about. The American economy depends on

school us that status is purchased and others run our lives. We learn

there that sources of joy and accomplishment are external, that the

contentment comes with the possessions, seldom from within. School cuts

our ability to concentrate to a few minutes duration, creating a life-

long craving from a relief from boredom through outside stimulation. In

conjunction with television and computer games, which employ the

identical teaching methodology, these lessons are permanently inscribed.

We become fearful, stupid, voiceless and addicted to novelty.

The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way

children learn nor is it supposed to. Schools conceived to serve the

economy, and the social order rather than kids and families that is why

it is compulsory. As a consequence the schools can not help anybody grow

up, because its prime directive is to retard maturity. It does that by

teaching that everything is difficult, that other people run our lives,

that our neighbors are untrustworthy even dangerous. School is the first

impression children get of society, because first impressions are often

the decisive ones, school imprints kids with fear, suspicion of one

another and certain addictions for life. It ambushes natural intuition,

faith and love of adventure.....wiping these out in favor of a gospel of

rational procedure and rational management.

About a month ago, the New York times sent a reporter to 3 day care

centers in Houston, Texas, one for white kids, one for black kids and one for Hispanic kids. To every one's surprise, it found that all 3 were identical, they were wonderful places, they were very well appointed, they were clean, bright, they were colorful. All looked fine. But according to the reporter, each gave only token personal attention to individual kids, because mathematically no more than that was possible.

Communication was by cheerful admonitions like "Don't do that Wilma" or to whom it may concern statements like "Its line-up time!". Workers saw their goals more as managing children than interacting with them. Managing children is what professional childcare is about in America. Schools are part of the professional child care empire and education has nothing what so ever to do with it.

The U.C.L.A. study done recently of a 1000 public schools found that the teachers" averaged 7 minutes daily in personal exchanges with students, divided among 30 kids, that is a total of 14 seconds each. The constant scrambling for attention, status in the close confines of the classroom...were those are only officially conferred by an adult who

lacks both the time or the information (to be fair), teaches us to

dislike and distrust each other. This continuous auction of favors, has

something to do with our anger, and our inability to be honest or

responsible, even as grown-ups. Yet ironically irresponsibility serves

the management ideal much better than decent behavior ever could. It

demands close management, it explains all those lawyers, all those

courts, all those policemen and all those schools. Now either we are

Ceaseless competition for attention in the dramatic fishbowl of the  classroom, I have never seen this dynamic examined in the public press... not in 50 years of reading the public press. Ceaseless competition for attention in the dramatic fishbowl of the classroom, reliably delivers cowardly children, toadies, school stoolies, little people sunk into chronic boredom, little people with no apparent purpose, just like caged rats, pressing a bar for sustenance, who develop eccentric mannerisms on a a-periodic reinforcement schedule. (Those of you who took rat psychology in college will know what I'm referring to)......just like the experience of rat psychology, the bizarre behavior kids display is a function of the reinforcement schedule in the confinement of schooling to a large degree. I certain of that. Children like this need extensive management.

Columbia's Teacher's College and their industrialist allies decided to

bend government schooling to business and the political state just

exactly as it been bent in Prussia. A higher mission would exist too.

Schools would serve as "instruments of managed evolution establishing

conditions for selective breeding before the masses take things into

there own hands", now I quoted that from a published essay by Edward

Thorndike at Columbia Teacher's college in 1911. Standardized testing

would separate those fit to breed and those fit to work and those unfit.

Back before WW1, educational psychology, which was the creation of Edward

Thorndike, had established that certain kinds of mental training in

history, in philosophy, in rhetoric, for instance, made students

resistant to manipulation because it developed independent intellect, it

reduced their plasticity. That knowledge coupled with the new German

directive, to serve corporation and government provided a sufficient

motive to dumb instruction down.

Between 1906 and 1920, a handful of world famous industrialists and

financiers, together with their private foundations, hand picked

University administrators and house politicians, and spent more attention

and more money toward forced schooling than the national government did.

Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller alone spent more money than the

government did between 1900 and 1920. In this fashion, the system of

modern schooling was constructed outside the public eye and out side the

public's representatives. Now I want you to listen to a direct quote, I

have not altered a word and this is certainly traceable through your

local librarians, from the very first report issued by John D.

Rockefeller's General Education Board........this is their first mission

statement: "In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility

to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual

and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition

we work own good will upon a grateful and responsive Folk. We shall not

try to make these people or any of their children into men of learning or

philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them

authors, educators, poets or men of letters, great artists, painters,

musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, creatures (he's really covering the whole

gamete of employment isn't he?) statesmen, politicians, of whom we ample

supply (whoever the pronoun we is meant to stand for there). The task is

simple. We will organize children and teach them in an perfect way the

things their father's and mother's are doing in an imperfect way".

Now you might say that is quoting out of context and I would speculate

what the context of such a statement could possibly be, but in any case,

if you want to get the whole thing, that's "OCCASIONAL LETTER NO.1. OF

THE GENERAL EDUCATION BOARD", which I told you was spending more money

than the Federal Government on education of the first two decades of this century.

The real purpose of modern schooling was announced by the legendary

sociologist Edward Roth in his manifesto of 1906 called "SOCIAL CONTROL", your librarian will easily be able to get a copy of this book. In it Roth wrote, I am quoting "plans are underway to replace family, community and church with propaganda, mass-media and education (of course he meant schooling)...people are only little plastic lumps of dough". Another insider, H.H. Cadard, who was chairman for the Psychology Dept. at Princeton, called government schooling, approvingly, "the perfect organization of the hive with the anthill", Cadard wrote further, "standardized testing would cause the lower classes to confront their biological inferiority, sort of like wearing a dunce cap, in time that would discourage reproduction of the ants on the anthill".

The first curriculum was dumbed down, then national testing was inserted, next morality was weakened and finally between 1970 and 1974, teacher

training in the U.S. was comprehensively and covertly revamped. In 1971,

the U.S. office of Education, now committed to gaining access to your

private lives and thoughts, granted contracts for seven volumes of change

agent studies to the Rand Corporation. Change agent training was launched

with Federal funding under the EDUCATION PROFESSIONS DEVELOPMENT ACT.

Soon afterward, a book appeared called THE CHANGE AGENT'S GUIDE TO

INNOVATION IN EDUCATION. Grants were awarded to colleges for the training

of change agents while further Rand documents like FACTORS AFFECTING

CHANGE AGENTS PROJECTS continued to pour forth for implementation to

teacher training courses, Machiavelli had been modernized.

Using schools as the principle forge, the building blocks for a self-

perpetuating ruling dynasty organized on scientific principles moved into

place during the first 5 decades of the 20th century. Obstacles like

religion, tradition, family, the natural rights guaranteed by our

founding documents were steadily beaten back. Schools slowly became after

WW1 the huge reconstruction project conducted with the enthusiasm of the

evangelical religion. The traditional God was banished entirely before

1950 to be replaced by psychological missionaries in a social-work

priesthood. Public school was transmuted into a social laboratory with

out public knowledge or public consent. Think of what happened as the

second American Revolution, striking down those perverse founding

documents which granted sovereignty to ordinary people.

School was a lie from the beginning and continues to be a lie, you a

great deal of nonsense these days about the need of a high tech economy

for a well educated people, but the truth staring you in the face is that

it requires no such thing. As our economy is rationalized into

of subsystems coordinated centrally by mathematical formulae which simply

can not accommodate different ways of thinking and knowing. Our

profitable system demands radically incomplete customers and workers to

make it go. Educated people are it's enemies, so is any nonpragmatic

morality.

To get better schools that actually served us instead of suffocating us,

we would need to successfully challenge certain scholastic and corporate

assumptions. We would need to abandon, entirely, the idea that any such

reality as mass-man actually exists. We would have to believe what

fingerprints and intuition tell us, that no two people are alike, that

nobody can be accurately described by numbers, that trying to do this

sets up a future chain of griefs. We would have to except that there is

no such thing as a science of pedagogy, nor is one possible.....that each

individual has a private destiny. We would need to transfer faith to such

principles and behave as if it were true. We would have to come to our

senses and admit that knowledge is not a substitute for wisdom. We would

have to believe each American has the right to live as he or she deems