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

Weapons of Mass Instruction
III
The Australian Example
Australia has an ecosystem so delicately balanced that its health or
sickness is quickly transferred to every student in every school. Because
of that inescapable, ever-present reality, you might imagine government
policy toward the environment would provide compelling
analytical matter for curriculum in every academic specialty, but if
you thought so you would be dead wrong.
One instance will show you why. For years the government there
supported a project to eliminate deeply rooted grasses, replacing them
with shallowly rooted British grasses which provide food for sheep
in a land unsuited to sheep, but where a sheep industry is politically
powerful. Sheep chew grass far down; that causes salt to rise from
subsoil and concentrate in topsoil- a significant problem for farmers.
But something just as bad or worse happens, too: huge quantities
of soil blow away and contaminate rivers. Soil-laden water kills fish
populations and pollutes the tidal margins where land meets ocean.
All over the world this tidal margin is the great producer of fish, but
in Australia, with the longest coastline on earth, the tidal zone is the
least productive anywhere, in part a result of sheep farming in an environment
ill-matched to sheep.
There's more. Tourism, not sheep, is the nation's big money-maker.
Among its unique sights is the Great Barrier Reef, a vast mountain
of coral harboring a rich collection of sea life. As soil in rivers which
flow to the reef has increased, large sections of coral have died, losing
their characteristic brilliant red hues which in death change to ugly
grey.
Tourism which benefits every corner of the country has been
placed in jeopardy to please the sheep lobby. Jared Diamond's Collapse,
about historical patterns of social collapse, has a long chapter on
Australia, including a discussion of the impact of sheep.
But what, you say, does this ongoing tragedy have to do with school
affairsrWell, if the degradation of the economy the young must work
in isn't considered a suitable subject for study, it's hard to see why the
Leaning Tower of Pis a is. The simple truth is that Australian schools