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

Everything You Know about Schools is Wrong 9
Board should be read more than once, until the illusions about school
so carefully implanted in your mind are broken,
"Is This Nuts"
At the start of WWII, millions of men showed up at registration offices
to take low-level academic tests before being inducted, Years of
maximum mobilization were 1942 through 1944, and our fighting
force had mostly been schooled in the 1930S, Eighteen million were
tested and 17,280,000 were judged to have the minimum competence
in reading necessary to be a soldier - a 96 percent literacy rate,
This was a two percent fall-off from the 98 percent of ten years
earlier, but the dip was too small to worry anyone, The generals might
have been more concerned had they been able to foresee profound
changes being foreshadowed by this nearly imperceptible two percent
decline,
WWII was over in 1945, Six years later, another war began in Korea
and several million more men were tested for military service, This
time, 600,000 were rejected, Literacy in the draft pool had mysteriously
dropped to 81 percent from 96 percent, even though all that was
needed to classify a soldier as literate was fourth grade reading proficiency,
In a few short years from WWII to Korea, a terrifying problem
of adult illiteracy had appeared, seemingly from nowhere,
The Korean War group had received most of its schooling in the
1940S while the conflict with Germany and Japan was being waged, It
had more years in school, with more professionally trained teachers
in attendance, and more scientifically selected textbooks than the
WWII men, Yet, it could not read, write, count, speak, or think as
well as the earlier, less-schooled contingent,
A new American war began in Vietnam in the middle 1960s, By
its end in 1973, the number of men found non-inductible by reason of
inability to read safety instructions, interpret road signs, decipher orders
- the number found illiterate in other words - had reached 27