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

Afterword 195
finally destroyed if schooling is ever again to take up a mission of in- ·
tellect and character enhancement. And so, as I told you earlier, you'll
be invited to lead - not join, but lead - a plan to cut the testing empire
off at the knees; a plan to rip its heart out swiftly and cheaply. An
incidental byproduct of the Bartleby Project will be to turn the men
and women who create and supervise these murderous exercises into
pariahs, but that isn't the point. l
No organization will be required to oversee this simple plan -
or, rather, thousands of organizations will be; all local, all uncoordinated.
Otherwise, we will be certain to be co-opted, marginalized,
corrupted - as all reform organizations become in time: and one as
powerful as the Bartleby concept would be quickly subjected to sabotage
were it centralized. To make this work - and soon you'll know
what it looks like specifically - requires exactly the kind of courage it
took to sledgehammer the first chunks out of the Berlin Wall, a currency
in ready abundance among teenagers - the rightful leaders.
I'll briefly mount a case why such a project is needed and then introduce
you to its spiritual godfather, Bartleby the Scrivener.
On May 8, 2008, the New York Sun reported that despite legal mandates
which require physical education be offered every school day,
only one kid out of every twenty-five received even the legal minimum
of 24 minutes a day. The New York City comptroller Was quoted by
the Sun, saying that physical training was a major concern of parents.
But then, parents have had no significant voice in school for over a
century. The story gets even darker than you realize.
1 Many test creators are fully aware of radical shortcomings in the tests they devise,
and aware as well of severe political misuse of their assessment creations. Still, they
continue to serve the testing regime for the personal benefits gained. For a recent
example of this, see test expert Daniel Koretis book, Measuring Up (Harvard University
Press, 2008), in which the damage tests cause is someone else's responsibility,
not Dr. Koretz's; to be deplored, of course between paychecks. Should these people
be held responsible for long-term consequences of their work - "generating a feeling
of inferiority ... that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be
undone;' to borrow Justice Warrens language from the Brown case