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

72 WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION
competency would count for more. This seemed a way to put a bell
around the neck of grade point averages and test rankings, fingering
them for the frauds they are, albeit in the time-honored elliptical manner
of charlatans everywhere. That caught my interest, so I read on.
The brochure identified nine qualities its author felt were essential
for successful adaptation to the evolving world of work, so I'm asking
you, Murray, to temporarily put aside your customary apologia for
District Three's shameless schools and let me know how many of the
nine you can honestly say are the priorities of the wealthy school district
we work for on the Upper Westside of Manhattan:
I. The ability to ask hard questions of data, whether from textbooks,
authorities, or other "expert" sources. In other words, do
we teach dialectics
2. The ability to define problems independently, to avoid slavish dependence
on official definitions.
3. The ability to scan masses of irrelevant information and to
quickly extract from the sludge whatever is useful.
4. The apility to conceptualize.
5. The ability to reorganize information into new patterns which
enable a different perspective than the customary.
6. The possession of a mind fluent in moving among different
modes of thought: deductive, inductive, heuristic, intuitive, et al.
7. Facility in collaboration with a partner, or in teams.
8. Skill in the discussion of issues, problems or techniques.
9. Skill in rhetoric. Convincing others your course is correct.
Now, from where I sit, and I've been sitting in District Three for
nearly three decades, we don't teach any of these as a matter of policy.
And for good reason. Students so trained would destroy the structure
of familiar schooling and all the comfortable hierarchies some of us
depend on.
Just think for a second about the transmission of competencies.
Our school population is drawn largely from families of the working
poor, but we've abandoned shop and cooking programs, interscholas-