Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Joined: Aug 04, 2005 Posts: 429 Location: Traded the man in front of the tank for a cat playing the banjo
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:19 pm Post subject: 'Underground History of American Education' John T. Gatto
Get ready to grab your pants because they may as well fall when you read that book. The title is Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto. The main subject is not oil but compulsory schooling, why it happened and how it happened, and it’s all very energy related.
First of all remember that school does not educate, it schools, it teaches obedience, it kills all imagination and autonomy in the kid. As Gatto puts it “the question is rarely is: is my kid learning? But: does he behave good in class?”. And besides that how could compulsory school laws be passed in an America with a literacy rate of 98%? Strange huh?
Where is the link between compulsory school and energy? Well the link starts with the discovery of coal and the steam engine and its capacity to make money in the form of industrialization, before industrialization there was no need of school. A very autonomous America didn’t need schools in the same way that it didn’t need much stuff, you made your own clothes, grew your own food, teach your kids how to read and write at home etc, that’s freedom after all. Well, the way to break all that was to make people stupid. Yes, man was not created stupid by God but it became stupid in school. Iindustrialization required obedient workers, non thinkers, mere cogs of the machine waiting to be told what to do and school could deliver all that and at the same time make big bucks. Let no one forget that this industrialization was powered by coal and then by oil and that schools where built with money “donated” by the rich class (that did not send their kids to those same schools!), I'm sure they were very worried about all those poor kids... yeah. So compulsory school was born to cover a need created by an industry powered by cheap energy, that's all. No cheap energy, no industry, no need of compulsory school. Interesting enough.
You can read the whole book online, it's huge.here _________________ When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem.
Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:14 pm Post subject: Re: Compulsory school and oil
Gatto was New York State Teacher of the Year several times. Reading Underground History changed my life profoundly. This is required reading for all peak oilers out there, especially if you warehouse your kiddies in government schools.
Joined: Aug 21, 2005 Posts: 105 Location: Iowa, US
Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:31 pm Post subject: Re: 'Underground History of American Education' John T. Gatt
I have not read any of Gatto's books, but I have listened and read a few of his lectures, and I very much agree with his views. Primary education in this country is in much need of scrutiny, and I will never allow my own kin to be taken in by what I call, "A distraction, of an enormous proportion."
Just a few months before this report was released, an executive director of the National Education Association announced that his organization expected "to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force." You can’t get much clearer than that. WWII drove the project underground, but hardly retarded its momentum. Following cessation of global hostilities, school became a major domestic battleground for the scientific rationalization of social affairs through compulsory indoctrination. Great private corporate foundations led the way.
Joined: Feb 14, 2006 Posts: 9 Location: Southwest Missouri
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:55 am Post subject: Re: 'Underground History of American Education' John T. Gatt
Gatto's exposé of the ideology behind America's public school system makes for worthy reading in a peak oil context, I think. Thanks for mentioning him here. I'm presently in my fourth year of teaching English language arts at a small rural Missouri high school, and from time to time I've explained a few of Gatto's ideas to my students to see how they react. Many of them truly seem interested, and a few of them troubled, when I explain that the very form of the school experience itself, with its isolation of groups of people in separate rooms, its rigid schedule with time divions governed by the omnipresent Pavlovian bell, and all that, is actually the brainchild of social engineers who wanted to design the most effective system for teaching young people to obey authority and tolerate extreme boredom and social regimentation.
I've found it a useful experiment to bring these things up just a few minutes before the bell at the end of the class period is scheduled to ring. Then when it does and the students display the customary response of jumping like they'd heard a starter pistol, I ask them to notice how deeply that mindless fight-or-flight, "Time to go!"-flavored Pavlovian response has been conditioned into their unconscious minds. A few of them truly seem to understand what I'm talking about, and they respond with nervous laughter.
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