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

Walkabout: London 49
quid pro quo. He was 13 when he began to employ that ancient Roman
principle.
With the time saved by not copying from the blackboard, Wasserman
used the hours to think up brilliant show business contracts
which are still studied in law schools as models of the genre. With
those contracts, he signed stars like Fred Astaire and the Gish sisters
into his new MCA stable.
Warren Buffet
Warren Buffet started in business at the age of 6, selling iced Coca­
Colas door-to-door in un-airconditioned Omaha, Nebraska one hot
summer during the Depression.
Steadily he added other businesses to his string: selling lost golf
balls to the club pro shop; sifting discarded race track betting tickets
for winners accidentally thrown away; designing a system which allowed
him to deliver 1,500 newspapers on one delivery route; renting
pinball machines to barber shops. From age 13 he supported himsel£
and by 18 Buffet had the equivalent of $100,000 in the bank. Then he
applied to Wharton Business School. and was turned down.
What Buffet learned open source, by active risk-taking, imagination,
and real work, schools either cannot or will not teach. It's fair to
ask "why nott Why don't schools anywhere get into the minutiae of
opportunity and self-sufficiency Why do they keep selling "a good
job" as the end of the school road when, as many Americans like the
Lancaster Amish still believe, no 'Job" is worth giving up your independence
for, at least not for very long
Consider what society would look like if 65 million trapped
schoolchildren learning to be consumers were suddenly set to actively
imagining themselves in independent livelihoods, adding value to the
rest of the community; imagining themselves as producers instead of
bored consumers. Wouldn't we soon be overrun with Buffets, Venters,
Wassermans, Danica Patricks and Diablo Codys Isn't that exactly
what America needs at this sorry, sterile juncture in our history,
not more well-schooled zombies on whose backs the few can ride