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

160 WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION
long and hard about going to Dartmouth or to any school famous for
its power to confer social privilege on you. It's an illusion, they can't,
and even if they could, such a state turns your life into a prison, with .
each hour of the day and each association predestined.
Don't trust what your high school, or your friends, have to say
about this - the latter have been brainwashed just as you have and
the former doesn't work in your best interests but in the interests of a
system you don't understand. Your four years at a special high school
will have infused you with the essential gospel of our command economy
- that college is the foundation of a successful life and that only
elite colleges like Dartmouth possess the secrets you need. Never
mind that nobody could actually tell you specifically what happens
at those places, in those seats, to transform you. It must be taken on
faith like the virgin birth.
As you await the college's fateful decision you'll hear friends say
that if they don't get the fat acceptance envelope to a prestige school
they will kill themselves. Every year a few desperate souls do just that.
I remember back in the early 1950S when Duke turned me down I was
ready to enlist in the Army until my second choice, Cornell, opened
its heart and took me in. As for Pitt or Penn State where the common
herd grazed, it was unthinkable for a snob like myself to contemplate.
Such was the malignant influence of the country club set
over my judgement.
Feelings like this are common now in our country, a clear sign our
once brilliant uniqueness grounded in hard-nosed egalitarianism is
dead. The philosophy abroad in American schools these days was
best rendered by George Orwell in Animal Farm as a belief among
managerial pigs that although all animals, of course, are equal, some
animals are more equal than others.
If you feel that way, even a little bit, get rid of it as you would
a tumor. It's a moral cancer and it will eat you alive if you accept it.
The best part of America, our promise that everyone who tries will
have a turn, is on life support because of the spread of this ugly stain.
Where you go to college, or even if you go at all, only makes a differ-