Weapons Of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through The Dark World Of Compulsory Schooling (2008) - Plot & Excerpts
"There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all." (p.xx)"I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves." (p.xxiii)"The great purpose of school [self-alienation] can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places....It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world. [The Philosophy of Education, 1906]" (p.13)"When you flip hamburgers, sit at a computer all day, unpack and shelve merchandise from China year after year, you manage the tedium better if you have a shallow inner life, one you can escape through booze, drugs, sex, media, or other low level addictive behaviors. Easier to keep same if your inner life is shallow. School, though Harris the great American schoolman, should prepare ordinary men and women for lifetimes of alienation. Can you say he wasn't fully rational?" (p.14)"In every age, men of wealth and power have approached education for ordinary people with suspicion because it is certain to stimulate discontent, certain to awaken desires impossible to gratify." (p.15)"Twelve to twenty years of stupefying memorization drills weakens the hardiest intellects." (p.17)"We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. [Woodrow Wilson, in 1909 to an audience of businessmen in New York City.]" (p.23)"...in open source, teaching is a function. Not a profession. Anyone with something to offer can teach. The student determines who is or is not a teacher, not the government. In open source, you don't need a licence to teach any more than Socrates did. Right there you can feel how different the basic assumptions of open source are. No student faces failure for deciding not to learn from you." (p.31)"Degrees should never stand as proxies for education." (p.35)"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." (p.36)"Childish people are not only obedient (if we discount their occasional tantrums), but they make the best consumers because they have little natural sales resistance." (p.41)"The trouble with open source learning, as far as policymakers are concerned, is that it almost guarantees an independent mind will develop- not a cosmetic simulation of those things, which schooling cultivates. Even worse, taking charge of mixing your own education leads to a healthy self-regard – and confident folks are considerably less manageable than anxious ones." (p.42)"...the enormous American military has not, for a very long time, been primarily about protecting common American citizens from harm. It exists for several never-discussed reasons: to provide employment for the underclasses; to avoid uprisings at home; to act as a centrifuge in distributing wealth through contracts back to the managers of the system and their allies; and it exists, in the gravest extreme to “go domestic”..."(p.43)"The collective rituals of lower grades are about habit training, about practicing attention and fealty to authority. In this way, independent consciousness can be undermined in its formative stages." (p.43)"Complex minds are always dialectical." (p.43)"...imaginative individuals are notoriously unmanageable and unpredictable, because they are irrepressibly inventive." (p.47)"What American has to show for 50 years of continuous warfare against weak, stone-age opponents, is this: besides crippling our future with a reckless expenditure of capitol on products which produce nothing, like weaponry, and destroy themselves in use, we have notified every corner of the world that our overwhelming military isn't overwhelming at all and can be beaten by ordinary people of courage, with primitive military hardware, who refuse to be intimidated." (p.57)"Formulaic schooling is worthless to common citizens, even destructive. It's only useful to policymakers and managers. It must be killed, not modified." (p.57)"Real education can only begin out of a foundation of self-awareness. Know the truth of yourself or you are nothing but a pathetic human resource. Your life will have missed it's point." (p.60)"Education must be largely self-initiated, a tapestry woven out of broad experience, constant introspection, ability to concentrate on one's purpose in spite of distractions, a combination of curiosity, patience, and intense watchfulness, and it requires substantial trial and error risk-taking, along with a considerable ability to take feedback from the environment -to learn from mistakes." (p.62)"School is the first impression we get of organized society and its relentless need to rank everyone on a scale of winners and losers." (p.63)"Dumb people are no longer merely ignorant. Now they are dangerous imbeciles whose minds must be conditioned with substantial doses of commercially prepared disinformation for tranquilizing purposes." (p.86)"Important people believe, with the fervor of religious zealots, that civilization can survive only if the irrational, unpredictable impulses of human nature are continually beaten back and confined until their demonic vitality is sapped." (p. 89)"The principal reason bureaucracies are so stupid is that they cannot respond efficiently to feedback." (p.92)"People become dangerous when too many see through the illusions which hold society together." (p.107)"...it's the widespread understanding among the young that school isn't about them (and their interests, curiosities and futures), but exclusively about the wishes of other people. School is built around the self- interest of others. (p.110)Thanks to the vast new ball of connections, official truth in every conceivable area is subject to verification by a promiscuous collection of uncertified critics armed with the tools to back up their contrarian critiques.Thanks to the Internet, the concept of mass schooling by experts is nearly exhausted." (p.113)"But if life were found to be inherently better where cooperation rules, as Wallace said, the priviledged world would turn upside down."(p.116)"...when competition is seen as essential to a good life, when winning against one's neighbors is put at the heart of society, business thrives. To win, others have to lose: the more losers, the better winning feels." (p.116)"Educated people, or people with principles, represent rogue elements in a scheme of scientific management; the former suspect because they have been trained to argue effectively and to think for themselves, the latter too inflexible in any area touching their morality to remain reliably dependent. At any moment they may announce, 'This is wrong. I won't do it'. Overly creative people have similar deficiencies from a systems point of view." (p.126)"The logic of collectivization seeks to disconnect each child from his or her own unique constellation, particular circumstances, traditions, aspirations, past experiences, families, and to treat each as the representative of a type." (p.129)"Most of all, the educated mind is connected to itself. There is not a major philosopher of Western history since Socrates who didn't discover that knowing yourself is the foundation of everything else." (p.130)"Even at seven don't rush to edit the truth out of things. If the family has an income kids need to know to the penny what it is and how it's spent. Assume they are human beings with the same basic nature and aptitudes that you have; what you have superior in terms of experience and mature understanding should be exchanged for their natural resilience, quick intelligence, imagination, fresh insight, and eagerness to become self-directing.Don't buy into the calculated illusion of extended childhood." (p.137)"Most of us let our own fears or the impositions of others imprison us in a world of low expectations." (p.141)"The biggest danger to the social order comes from those who retreat into the secret recesses of their inner lives where no snoop can penetrate." (p.141)"...hard reading has been discouraged in the schools; if you read too much the official stories wear thin and blow away like smoke." (p.166)"Refusing to allow yourself to be regarded as a 'human resource' is more revolutionary than any revolution on record." (p.204)"College is a business before it's anything else; already a business starving for customers." (p.205) A great read. The classical homeschool mom in me loved it. On first glance, Gatto is challenging, thought-provoking, even inspiring. However, he lacks concrete supportive evidence in parts - especially the most intriguing parts - which is why I only give it three stars. His thesis is plausible, believable, even probable, but his argument for that thesis still flawed. I am intrigued enough to read more of his work, however. Some themes of this book reminded me of the beginning of Susan Cain's, 'Quiet,' which I loved. Recommended with some reservation.
What do You think about Weapons Of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through The Dark World Of Compulsory Schooling (2008)?
Fantastic read. As a public school teacher, I agree with what he's saying here.
—Alyssa
Never ceased to amaze me. Both terrifying and inspiring.
—Tyng
