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

Weapons of Mass Instruction 131
itself, I think, act over time to topple the house of cards erected in
the 20th century to prevent education from spreading. Whatever the
_ truth of that proposition, on the airplane back to New York I took up
the task of critiquing a bit of curriculum created for a chain of private
schools on the West Coast.
I had visited one of these schools near Los Angeles in the company
of the curriculum director and in the brief time there was impressed
by the good manners and easy-going civility of teacher-student relations,
and by the spirit of good will which visibly attended student efforts
to participate in their own education. But two things bothered
me a little. The first was this: in a meeting of school officials and myself,
to chat about school matters, several older students were asked
to sit in and though the discussion bore exclusively on their own
school lives, they had nothing to say and weren't encouraged to participate.
When I was invited to ask some questions, I directed the first
to the students in the room, "If you could change some things, say
one thing about this school, what would it be" I sensed a certain unease,
even mild shock, among everyone there, including the students.
What could kids possibly know, or care, about the management of
their studies!
Nobody actually said that, it was simply a feeling I had that, except
ceremonially, kids were in one compartment, professional staff in
another, administration and curriculum experts in a third. Thus the
powerful energy which would have been released by connecting all
these parts to exchange information and insights was lost.
The second thing that bothered me was that upon leaving, when
I paused to examine a shelf of eighth grade textbooks, my eye hit on
Homer's Odyssey, a book which along with Homer's Iliad had once
provided the beating heart of classical Greek education. Committed
to memory by many thousands, recited from memory, these tales of
the Trojan War and its aftermath were no simple stories with which to
kill time, but a series of particular moral dilemmas which in one form
or another would afflict everyone in the course of a lifetime. Debating
the proper course of action in these provided a rich mental diet.