john-taylor-gatto-weapons-of-mass-instruction

WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION
two hours a week, with all the bookkeeping, training, oversight, and
hassle that would require It was a way of fatally trivializing the service
ideal, turning it into superficial drudgery for all concerned.
The Commissioner's Report
Once a principal in the richest secondary school in District Three -
you'll know the one I mean, Murray - asked me privately if I could
help him set up a program to teach critical thinking. Of course, I replied,
but if w~ do it right your school will become unmanageable.
Why would kids taught to think critically and express themselves effectively
put up with the nonsense you force down their throats That
was the end of our interview and his critical thinking project.
Murray, you're the only individual who ever willingly spoke to me
about the apparatus of pedagogy, in all 26 years I've been in the business.
The only one. In the thousands of hours I've spent in teachers'
rooms and teachers' meetings, not a single soul besides yourself was
open to discussing anything profound about our notions of pedagogy,
nothing that could get them in trouble. Surely that intellectual vacuum
says something terrible about the business which has swallowed
your life and my own.
My compliment is bait on the hook of my next question: At the
end of 1988, our rich district was ranked statistically last by the State
Commissioner of Education in a dull publication which looked like
a telephone directory. You had to massage the numbers a long time
to actually figure out what it was saying, but when I did, it seemed to
be saying that we were the worst school district in New York State,
736th of 736, in certain key categories. But our section of the city is
world famous, isn't it We have great universities, famous research institutions,
museums, centers for art, the best transportation system
around ... what gives
You know what contempt I have for the instruments used to rank
the student body, but in this one case I'm going to be inconsistent and
cite them as a measure of school district failure. In third-grade math
and reading, we rank dead last. We are only nine places off the bottom