|
Reflections on
"Weapons of Mass Instruction"
Old-Thinker News |
Jan. 7, 2009
By Daniel Taylor
Related:
John Taylor Gatto: On Life and Education
I've been researching the history of our schooling (there's a difference
between schooling and true education) system in the United States for a
couple of years now and I've found some amazing as well as angering
information. I've read all of John Taylor Gatto's books on the subject
to help me understand just how it came to be. He is a former New York
state teacher of 30 years. He finally quit, saying that he couldn't hurt
children anymore. I can't do justice to his way of explaining our school
system in his books, but here are some of my own reflections on his
latest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction.
It's easy to see how the spark of life can be squelched in the schooling
system. I experienced it myself, as did everyone who has been through
public school. Easily managed people make for an easy day for the elite
of society. Incomplete, predictable people are the products of forced
schooling. Imagination, creativity, and original thinking have no place
in the schooling system. There are a variety of reasons we have the
school system that we have, but I'll use one example. When wealthy
industrialists like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (who were
both, ironically, high school and elementary school dropouts
respectively) created their vast empires, they made the rational finding
that self-reliant, independent, creative, inventive people didn't make
good workers. Our current consumer economy would shrivel if schooling
didn't produce masses of people who were incomplete, who couldn't cure
their permanent state of dissatisfaction by creating their own
entertainment.
Here's an anomaly, or perhaps a view into what real education is: In
almost every branch of society there are industries, arts, inventions,
revolutionary ideas, and scientific achievements that we wouldn't have
if it weren't for the dropouts that created them. We wouldn't have the
computer industry of today if it weren't for a handful of dropouts.
Virgin airlines was created by a dropout. The mapping of the human
genome was pioneered by a dropout and a homeschooler.
I guess having more degrees than a thermometer isn't that important
after all, is it? When I consciously made that realization, a whole
world opened up that had been sealed off by my well schooled thought
process. America didn't used to be like this. Open source learning, as
John Taylor Gatto calls it, used to rule the day. We wrote our own
scripts, we weren't actors in somebody else's play.
Only you can educate yourself. School can't do it for you. School wasn't
meant to educate you, as Gatto points out, it is designed to put you in
your place. Permanently.
For parents who have children in the school system, there are ways to
counter school's detrimental effects on young people, other than
removing them completely from it. John Taylor Gatto writes in Weapons of
Mass Instruction,
"School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to
be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively;
teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids
have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life
so that they'll never be bored."
Gatto points out that School doesn't allow for the development of a
unique consciousness. With the advent of television, even less time is
allowed for this critical development outside of school. I remember
taking long hikes every summer from an early age in the beautiful
Michaux State park. Having time in a quiet forest to hear nothing but
the sounds of nature allows for a time of solitude, a time for
introspection. This was one of the pieces of a firm foundation that
provided me with a sturdy shield against the "Weapons of Mass
Instruction" of public schooling, as Mr. Gatto calls them. I wasn't
immune to all of them, but no one is. The truth of what Gatto is saying
hits home for all of us that went through the school system. Whether we
want to consciously realize it or not, our gut tells us that something
wasn't quite right with our experience in school. Vital time that our
ancestors used to gain their bearings in the real world and discover
their own strengths and weaknesses is now pre-empted sitting in school
classrooms. For those that have a
solid foundation to hold them steady through their 12 years of
confinement, the detrimental effects of schooling are dramatically
lessened.
Gatto's "Guerilla Curriculum" involved getting his students involved in
"real world" activities. He found that many children had an addiction to
television. They were seeing only simulations of things that they could
be doing in the real world. He gave students the choice to do a walk (by
themselves if they chose to do so) around New York City, observing the
business of the grown up world, taking notes, and even doing
apprenticeships. Anything they saw on TV, as Gatto describes, now paled
in comparison to the thrill of actual risk taking and engagement.
School teaches us to police ourselves. Choking fear of ridicule keeps
too many people from doing anything out of the ordinary, from thinking
unconventionally, from taking risks. Imagine if the public schools of
today had gotten hold of the self-reliant, unpredictable, independent
people that made America. Their self determined, inventive, imaginative
and self confident ways would have them branded with too many labels
that the school system hands out to fathom. George Washington had little
to no official schooling, with nothing more than an elementary school
education. He made his own path.
Could it be that the elite are deathly afraid of the average man and
woman? It makes sense that the elite of society would have us police
ourselves, to artificially limit our potential. If they allowed us to be
free from their system, we would prove far too dangerous. They can't have
too much competition. They have to hold back the tide of humanity. One
of the most powerful insights in John Taylor Gatto's new book, Weapons
of Mass Instruction, comes from an 11 year old boy that Gatto met named
Andrew Hsu. Gatto writes,
"When asked to describe the most important lesson of his life, the one
which held the most influence over his choices, he said it was a story
told to him by his father about the method used to train fleas to swing
on trapezes, drive little chariots, (or pull them) and all the wonderful
things fleas learned to do to amuse kings and courts in world history.
The story his father told goes like this:
If you put fleas in a shallow container they jump out. But if you put a
lid on the container for just a short time, they hit the lid trying to
escape and learn quickly not to jump so high. They give up their quest
for freedom. After the lid is removed, the fleas remain imprisoned by
their own self-policing. So it its with life. Most of us let our own
fears or the impositions of others imprison us in a world of low
expectations."
Why have we been convinced to think so little of ourselves, instead
relying on expert opinion? Could it be the conditional self-esteem that
we were taught in school? It's hard to break our conditioning, but it's
not impossible. The human spirit is resilient.
|
