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

Weapons of Mass Instruction
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kindergarten movement of the 19th century, but that never
took sufficiently to satisfy its managers, so inserting cartoons
into children's heads instead of real world ideas became the
vogue as part of a great project to artificially extend childhood
and childishness. The project started in earnest at the
beginning of the century and was acknowledged and even
boasted about - by the dean of Teacher Education at Stanford
University, who played a hand in its inception.
As a weapon of mass instruction it's superior in its destructive
effect to all the others, the master weapon as it were.
It's a principal cause of the intense and growing childishness
of Americans in every social class, an indictment I hear from
every corner of the world as I travel- and increasingly from
domestic commentators, too.
I know this is a heavy trip to lay at the doorstep of your
choo-choo, but since this is just me talking to you I wanted
to bypass the public relations aspect of things and strike
at what troubles me about every sequential curriculum -
simple to complex-I've ever seen. It's a strategy which has
traveled under many names throughout history as leadership
groups have worked to make their ordinary populations
manageable. The project was brought to its scientific pinnacle
in the early decades of the 19th century in Prussia and exported
all around the world in the last half of that century.
That's why I call it the German disease - the artificial
extension of childhood. Make no mistake, it works. Once
sufficiently infected with the virus the disease is progressive.
Its victims become inadequate to the challenges of their existence
without help, and that relative helplessness makes
them manageable.
Remember, I'm using your talking choo-choo metaphorically,
there are many ways to interdict the growth of competence,
of clear thinking, of forceful purpose, and each is a
talking choo-choo in different guise: think of slasher flicks,