Critical Thinking is a Threat

Sterling — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:54:20 +0000

Julia and I brought the video camera to chronicle our walk to the dark room at the Purple Thistle Community Center. The Founder of the Purple Thistle Center, Matt Hern, wrote a great book I read last year called “Field Day: Getting Society out of School”. I highly recommend it. I could be wrong, but I think it was inspired by John Taylor Gatto’s book “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”. Another brilliant read.

I have included a couple of quotes from John Gatto’s book as well as our video below:

“The universal national banner has become – Good education = good job, good money, good things. This prescription makes parents and students easy to regulate as long as the connection goes unchallenged.”
John Taylor Gatto

“If for example, we agree that an A average is considered the central purpose of adolescent life- the requirements for which take most of the time and attention of the aspirant – and if the worth of this individual is reckoned by victory or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine has been constructed which , by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless and fantastic behavior, will certainly dehumanize students, alienate them from their own human nature and break the natural connection between them and their parents. Welcome to the world of mass schooling, which sets this goal as its supreme achievement”
John Taylor Gatto

“A monthly report, impressive in its provision, is sent into a student home to elicit approval or mark exactly, down to a single percentage point, how dissatisfied with the client a parent should be. The ecology of “food” schooling depends on perpetual dissatisfaction, just as the commercial economy depends on the same fertilizer.

These “objective” seeming documents establish a profile that compels children to arrive at certain decisions about themselves and their futures based on a casual judgment of strangers.”
John Taylor Gatto

Romantic Child Studios » Mini-Docs

Critical Thinking is a Threat