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

A Letter to My Granddaughter About Dartmouth 167
Thomas Jefferson was one of the few public figures who saw the
dangers of a compulsory universal schooling scheme and was willing
to chance it only if powerful safeguards could be erected to prevent
the mental colonization it threatened. Those safeguards were only
up a very short time before institutional schooling came along and
broke them. Jefferson was familiar with Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher
who designed systematic schooling expressly to put the minds
and imaginations of the ordinary population to death. He knew that
at best school would be about making clerks and servants, not thinkers
and artists.
I spent ten years poking around the great school legend. What
I learned is available to you without cost on my website, wwwJohn
taylorgatto.com where you'll find as my gift, 330,000 words on the
underground history of American education to supplement those in
this book. The connection between schooling as you know it, including
collegiate schooling, and education is mostly a masterpiece of fabrication
- on par with the medieval theory of four humors.
If you can force yourself to read Walter Lippman's early books, like
Phantom Public and those of Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays
- the man who convinced ladies to take up smoking (and did
public relations for Adolph Hitler), you'll be face to face with some of
the ways this was done and the technicians who did it. Indeed, if you
struggle hard to free yourself, Kristina, before you're dragged any
further into the abyss by Dartmouth, I have evidence that personal
miracles are still possible. I'm going to take a bit of that evidence from
a surprising source.
The Great Imposters
The record of great imposters in recent years is one text you need to
reflect upon for the priceless lesson it can teach about the supposedly
vital training required to operate successfully inside certain occupations.
Let's start with surgery and "Dr" Ferdinand Demara, a "Lieutenant
Commander" on a Canadian warship operating off the Korean
coast during the so-called"Korean War:'