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

WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION
began to drive him, the idea of a store dedicated to bringing beauty
and utility at low cost, to everyone. This dyslexic fish peddler is worth
31 billion dollars at the moment, as the founder of IKEA, and more
important than that money - which he'll never live long enough to
spend - the flame of his determination to add value to the lives of
others still burns brightly.
The Graduate
You're on the road to being educated when you know yourself so thoroughly
you write your own script instead of taking a part written by
others. A migrant fruit picker named Charles Webb fits this description
for me. You've very likely consumed a piece of Mr. Webb's imagination,
if not the fruit, if you've ever seen the classic American film,
The Graduate. Webb sold millions of copies of the book, and his film
became a beacon to an entire generation of American young people.
It's theme, that a life built around buying things is a disaster, helped
turn the film into a runaway hit, still shown and still rented years later.
Charles and his wife made millions and were on every A-team guest
list from Easthampton to Maui.
As their life turned into the non-life of perpetual celebrity and
celebrity projects, Webb and his wife made the copyright over to the
Anti-Defamation League, gave their entire fortune away, and set out
as vagabonds in a trailer, at one time becoming migrants picking fruit
in California.
"Wealth didn't work for us;' he said.
Dropouts
Every single school day in America, 7,000 students drop out, some
confused, some angry, but all are brave. If we had the sense our ancestors
did, we'd look on these dropouts as a grand resource, as people
whose minds the standard programming couldn't tame. We'd treat
them with respect. One and a quarter million people a year, perhaps
more, with potential not necessarily inferior to Ben Franklin, the
dropout, or Branson, the dropout, or the dropout Wright brothers, or
slum urchin Lula da Silva, grown to the presidency of Brazil without