educate your enemy
tonite i finished dumbing us down by john gatto. cool book with definite anti-authoritarian tendencies. much of what he puts forward in the book dove-tails nicely with anarchism. the basic idea is that the public school system in the u.s. is unreformable because--despite its seeming failures--it is a total success. in other words, the compulsory, gov't monoploy school system we all grew up with is not designed to educate, rather it is designed to enforce conformity and acceptance of our future destiny as walmart clerks and burger flippers. realize that you are just a cog in the machine or you don't get a bathroom pass.
but the book also points out how this is counter to the nature of children. kids have a natural inclination to learning, a curiosity about the world of adults. but school squeezes such concerns out by forcing them to accept an absurd order of class, time, age, etc. and because most of us take public school as it exists as an unalterable fact of our existance as americans, no one even thinks to question it. school does not allow us to grow up as whole people. and we hardly noticed that we sacrificed our childhood to a blind institution that tried to suck the essence right out of us. but we can heal our schools with magic legislation, right?
gatto also wrote the monarch notes for one flew over the cuckoo's nest, ken kesey's classic anti-authoritarian novel of the 1960's. interesting parallels between school and the mental institution presented in that book. aparently gatto even quotes that christ-figure che guevara: "educate your enemy, don't kill him, for he is worth more to you alive that dead." this little phrase is a real stinker... it points to the communist & authoritarian faux-dialectic in kesey... but it could go really deep.
but the book also points out how this is counter to the nature of children. kids have a natural inclination to learning, a curiosity about the world of adults. but school squeezes such concerns out by forcing them to accept an absurd order of class, time, age, etc. and because most of us take public school as it exists as an unalterable fact of our existance as americans, no one even thinks to question it. school does not allow us to grow up as whole people. and we hardly noticed that we sacrificed our childhood to a blind institution that tried to suck the essence right out of us. but we can heal our schools with magic legislation, right?
gatto also wrote the monarch notes for one flew over the cuckoo's nest, ken kesey's classic anti-authoritarian novel of the 1960's. interesting parallels between school and the mental institution presented in that book. aparently gatto even quotes that christ-figure che guevara: "educate your enemy, don't kill him, for he is worth more to you alive that dead." this little phrase is a real stinker... it points to the communist & authoritarian faux-dialectic in kesey... but it could go really deep.