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The Astounding Failure of the US Educational System
The below article titled “The Educational System Was
Designed to Keep Us Docile”, by John Taylor Gatto is a fine read as a complement
to my latest article “Inside the Illusory Empire of the Banking Commodities Con
Game.” Who is John Taylor Gatto?
Mr. Gatto was the NYC “Teacher of the Year” three times, and a teacher that
became highly disillusioned with the formal education system due to its
failures to stimulate critical thinking in children.
I find it odd that people that find value in the information
I provide to my clients as well as information that I provide publicly on my
blog often desire to know of me, “Where did you go to school?” I find it even odder
that many people find my attendance of an Ivy League university to be validating
of my knowledge base and thinking skill set, as if attending an expensive
university is responsible for the thought processes that have enabled many of my
big picture, long-term predictions of the global economy to be accurate. I
believe there is absolutely no correlation between the cost of an education and
intelligence or even between formal education and knowledge, although oddly
people believe this relationship to exist. If there is a provable relationship
between formal education and intelligence, it is probably an inverse one. The
more letters you have behind your name (MBA, PhD, JD, MFA, CPA) the greater
level of stupidity one likely possesses, as the attainment of a higher level of
education means that one has been exposed for a far longer time period than the
average citizen to the indoctrination process.
I find oddest of all, the expressions on people’s faces,
when I inform them that I sincerely believe that the knowledge I gained through
formal institutions of academia was detrimental to my understanding of how capital
markets operate. In fact, I explain to those that inquire of my educational
background that I had to rewire my brain and purge it of nearly all of the
false business concepts and stupidity I learned in school because I later found
the great majority of what I had learned in school to be not only downright
deceptive, but also in my opinion, deliberately erroneous. Many people express
genuine shock when I tell them that my formal education was, as was my
education on Wall Street, almost entirely useless to any of the investment
research and analysis I perform today and that my understanding of how capital
markets move is entirely the result of self-education.
"When we look at the information Gatto has uncovered regarding the purpose of the education system as designed by the men that funded and implemented the foundation of the American educational system in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, we discover, in fact, that the US educational system accomplishes exactly what it was designed to do – to dumb down people and suppress the natural inquisitiveness and critical thought processes of children."
In fact, an article I wrote titled “Delaying a College
Education in this Economy is the Right Choice” probably generated some of the
most perplexed responses I have ever witnessed up close and in person when
discussing the content of this article with others. Some of the responses I have
heard are as follows:
But isn’t this the BEST time to send my kid to college? The
economy is terrible now, so after he graduates, the economy will be much
better, right?
You don’t REALLY mean that, do you? Everyone needs a diploma
to fall back on. Who’s going to respect you without a college degree?
How is my child going to get ahead in life without a college
degree?
Even when someone saw eye to eye with my viewpoint and
generally understood the points I was trying to make in that article, in the
end, they still bowed down to societal norms because of the fact that he or she
has been conditioned to believe in the institutional system of education.
Yes, I understand what you’re saying, he or she would tell
me. But I still need to send my child to college. What other choice do I have?
And that’s exactly what the elite want you to believe – that
you have no choice but to indoctrinate your child through a formal institutionalized
process versus providing an alternate path of education and enlightenment for
your child. In the article below, Gatto states, “It’s no secret that the US
educational system doesn’t do a very good job.” But when we look at the
information Gatto has uncovered regarding the purpose of the education system
as designed by the men that funded and implemented the foundation of
the American educational system in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, we discover, in fact,
that the US educational system accomplishes exactly what it was designed to do
– to dumb down people and suppress the natural inquisitiveness and critical
thought processes of children.
Gatto reveals that Eldwood Cubberly, the future Dean of Education
of Stanford University, argued, in his 1905 dissertation for schools that
should be factory-like in production “in which raw products, children, are to
be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the
specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”
I have pointed out numerous times the banker-funded state of
business academia in America as my rationale for why business degrees are often
useless. I have often told those considering entering business school that I
could sit down and talk to them for three hours and probably grant them
knowledge that will be a thousand times more valuable than anything they will
learn during a two-year MBA program at Harvard Business School. I say this not out of
arrogance. I acknowledge that I still have a long road to travel in my
own educational journey. I say this only because I am 100% convinced that the
business school curricula of all traditional institutions of academia will
never provide the knowledge young adults need to succeed in today’s Empire of
Illusion.
Today, revered professors all across the US teach students the
nonsense that bankers want them to learn and that bankers want them to believe
is real, NOT the reality of how currency markets, stock markets and commodity
markets truly operate. Gatto confirms my thesis by pointing out a statement
from the Rockefeller Education Board, a key institution that was a critical
force in shaping modern education in America: “We shall not try to make
[students] into philosophers or men of learning or men of science…The task we
set before ourselves is simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do
in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect
way.”
The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Docile (John Taylor Gatto)
About the author: JS Kim, the founder and Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU,
a fiercely independent investment research & consulting firm, attributes
zero of his success as an entrepreneur to the formalized education process, his
four years of education at an Ivy League institution or the attainment of a
double masters in business administration and public policy. Instead, JS
attributes 100% of any success he has attained in any entrepreneurial endeavor
to critical thinking skills that were fostered from international travel,
exposure to independent media and artists, and self-education.
»
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Yes, but you've got Goethe. I've got Goethe, Tale of Two Cities, and on and on. We will need a lot of good reading when the internet goes down.:)
It's a great time to collect books right now. Brave New World, Farenheit 451, Animal Farm.
Before 1985? Missed that one.
Me, too! But here it is: http://www.examiner.com/civil-liberties-in-national/new-federal-law-bans-children-s-books-printed-before-1985
Right, the CPSIA (link in that article). There hasn't been a big test case yet but thrift shops, school rummage sales and libraries are pre-emptively throwing away old kids books and not handling them anymore. At the same time we are being forced to load up our houses with "green" light bulbs that are much more toxic and potentially dangerous to kids than old books.
The government is out of fucking control.
Well, the stuff after 85 is so much more politically correct. If the rest goes down the rabbit hole..., what a coincidinck.
not taught at m.i.t.:
http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk/
http://www.rexresearch.com/1index.htm
I resemble that remark,sir.
My experience is that a college education has ruined many good people because of the "attitude" problem. Someone who could be a productive blue collar worker and eventual shop manager making $120K a year instead gets a BS in Political Science and now is above a blue collar job. So the person takes a $29K job in government as some kind of high-titled administrative liaison in some faceless department and becomes a detriment to society.
Oddly, if you look carefully the only jobs that specify college degrees are government jobs. Private employers don't give a hooey about credentials, they just want to know you can do the work.
It ruins the susceptible, the rest it educates above the level of the average.
When push comes to shove, like in an economic crisis, it becomes the only criteria when sifting through hundreds of resumes for just one job!
Self-education is very important especially in the area of managing your own commercial affairs. See my post on the contributors page;
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/asymmetrical-warfare-mill-wars-based-ucc-practice
Correct, the only requirement at a tech company is a basic science diploma(from any school) and half the time they dont even check if u have it. It seems to me that tech companies are trying to snatch up people as early as possible even before they graduate and before they get corrupted by the system and waist their time learning things they'll never need at work
By way of example, my company hired two recent PhDs to work on video compression algorithms. All they could do is sit around and play with MatLab. No real work output but they wanted to publish papers. After six months we fired them and hired a High School dropout who was an incredible dynamo. He didn't fall back on his credentials he simply coded up a storm and helped us get a product to market. College grads today are mostly nothing more than highly political tool users with no aptitude, no creativity but lots of attitude.
How dare you fire them! They were ENTITLED to those jobs. It must have been a great privledge to have them on staff.
Actually I think this country could benefit from a system where elementary school children were treated more like factory products with an emphasis on core competencies. How exactly do you think all those kids in Asian and Finnish schools get to be world-best in grammar school mathematics?...not by watching classroom videos like Happy The Bunny Goes Recycling.
The real story here is that the US educational system has been progressively re-calibrated to lower and lower common denominators, overwhelmed by non-RRR curricula and diluted with Leftist/Postmodern gobbledygook....not some sinister corporate conspiracy from 100 years ago. Your average American CEO would probably jump at the chance to be able to field employees from the high school class of 1905 or 1920.
And bring back the voc-ed system too. Having recently produced millions of innumerate, functional illiterate, "college graduates" who barely know how to operate a sponge hasn't done anyone any favors. Maybe 10% of the population, not much more, is capable of doing real, college level work - and no that doesn't include "global studies."
Hey, Merc. this social engineering sickens me. this is not freedom. who are the ruling elite to decide in which direction someone else's children should be "educated"? What if they are wrong? "Public education" is a vulgar assault on liberty, nothing more.
The conspiracy is on in full force. They've got to hide the bacon before the serfs catch on.
Read my post on the contributors page:
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/asymmetrical-warfare-mill-wars-based-ucc-practice
+1 I've seen high school exams from the early twentieth century. Today's college students would puke their guts out trying to read them, much less respond.
I have seen earlier high school curricula as well. If you recall the infamous Central High School in Little Rock -- I owned a small apartment building just 2 blocks from the school. it was composed of 7 efficiency apts. and 1 apt. with 2 bedrooms (for apparently an on-site manager). The red brick building has a stone lentil over the front door: High School Apartments. The building is still there. My ownership and remodeling of the building was about 1985. In the early days of LRCH (Little Rock Central High as it's locally known), students were generally in their late teens and early 20s. It was the equivalent of today's late college education, or even higher. When remodeling the building we found early text books and papers in the attic and other nooks and crannies. I was dumbfounded at the high level of education required to attend high school. High School was exactly that, higher education. The 8th grade was considered "educated". And it WAS! College/university level education was for an entirely different strata of the population. There were no parking places for cars! Students walked to school and took the trolley to town. The neighborhood at the time of LRCH's early days was rather upper class. The school was a prestigious educational venue, admission was difficult, and its teachers the best available.
MISES UNIVERSITY BITCHEZ!
http://mises.org/events/110
An excellent resource to be sure. It takes self actualization, incentive, curiosity, and a certain degree of educational sophistication that one must obtain elsewhere. I'd say that a general public education was necessary to tackle the Mises subject matter. It is "advanced education", not for beginners. On the other hand, it could be a springboard for study in depth. If one encounters a term or phrase that is unfamiliar it would lead to further study. Sort of like following a link to another web page or -- even a BOOK!
Don't be so partial to mises.org!
Even that is some form of indoctrination in a strict sense
The whole point is to sustain a 6 billion 'household' we need some sort of discipline and common-ground; an assembly line of sorts
Can't imagine a world of 6 billion independant thinkers with unique opinions and values.
We are here becoz of such decisions that were made after WW2 which have made the world go around sustaining billions.Hind sight is always 20-20
Watched Life as a House with Kevin Klein recently. One line in the movie was about hindsight. It's like foresight except without a future.
The indoctrination is even worse in grade school & high school. The town fathers are bankers & petty burghers & worse. What they want is an economic & financial ignoramus who can be gulled into the credit card game, the cheap car with expensive financing & finally the crushing burden of a cheap tract house with a thirty year mortgage. Wage slaves, ignorant uncomplaining wage slaves is the 'product' desired by the bosses of your local school board.
We are done with the slave wage phenomenon. Here is what self-education brings to the forefront:
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/asymmetrical-warfare-mill-wars-based-ucc-practice
So. The American education system is all about turning out platoons of docile workers who look to authority for their ideas and decisions.
Wait a minute. You mean there are people who don't know this?
but what about learning to get laid?? if your kid doesn't get lucky in highschool you HAVE to send them to college!!
hahaha, great excuse for college nerds
I dropped out of architecture school over 10 years ago. The professors said stick with it you can do it. But really what would I have been doing now. Bathroom extensions for the rest of my life? The gravy of city redesigns if you give a big enough contribution to a politician, please I want to sleep well at night. The major stuff invented has always been from self taught, self schooled people.
I'm doomed. Too many letters.
But before I go to the retard table:
Let's give a teacher 20 students @ $10k per student and let them teach to pass a standard exam anyway they want, as long as the kids pass. Teacher keeps what is left after book expense, etc. = about $150,000.
If all students pass, they get two more the next year. Repeat, until they max out.
They jump in it.
You've just industrialized education. Isn't that the problem? You have not defined the "test" that must be passed. You've made the teaching motive into monetary gain. Where is the love of teaching or learning? I'm not criticizing your comment, but perhaps pointing out that this would not only perpetuate the existing system, strengthen it, and yield even more results of the advocates of education as hive maintenance.
I think that was the posters point...
Oh! Never mind...
Many teachers are incompetent & hiding behind tenure. The good teachers become increasingly frazzled & burnt out by the undisciplined, arrogant, violent wild animals that are the result of the modern two earner/no parent family. More authority to get rid of the incompetents would help. More authority of the teacher to eject disruptive students would go a long way too. It's too much to hope that today's greedy irresponsible model of two earners/no parent families will go away.
The Ploweden Report (google it) concluded that no amount of schooling could overcome the effects of a bad/poor home life. That conclusion was inconvient to politicians and has been largely ignored. The "throw more money at it" idea has been implemented long enough (and failed long enough) that some folks are beginning to revisit the Plowden Report's conclusion.
Anyone who knows biology and chemistry knows that the child is already behind the eight-ball if his neural development has been compromised by poor nutrition, etc. before he was born.
Not everything that works poorly is a freaking conspiracy! The educational system definitely sucks but it's not because "they" are trying to turn everyone into mindless robots.
And hey, the bears are exhibiting their own failure of education: the stock market does not function on logic...and contrary to popular belief, it never has, this is nothing new, and it never will.
But this one WAS (is) purposeful. Here are just a few quotes:
Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.
-- William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education, 1906
In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.
-- The General Education Board, 1906
Educating the individual is but a means to the true end of education, which is to create a viable social order to which individuals contribute and by which they are sustained. ‘Family choice’ is, therefore, basically selfish and anti-social in that it focuses on the ‘wants’ of a single family rather than the ‘needs’ of society.
-- Association of California School Administrators
And there are many others.
Oh, it's a conspiracy alright. I had to take the Ron Paul bumper stickers off the car so they wouldn't find me.
"The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve", by G. Edward Griffin
Amazon's description: "This book is about the most blatant scam of all history. It's all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Creature from Jekyll Island will change the way you view the world, politics, and money. Your world view will definitely change. You'll never trust a politician again — or a banker."
I really can't say enough about this book - IMO it should be required reading for all students worldwide
the book details how the American education system has been perverted by altruistic sounding foundations - it also details how the banking cartel initiates wars and funds both sides of the conflict (both of these topics have shown up on ZH lately)
the book is large (608 pgs) but don't be intimidated by its size - Mr. Griffin provides a quick reading guide that lets you get the gist of the book in just a few hours of reading - you can delve deeper into the subjects that catch your interest
if you haven't read this book you probably don't understand how the world actually operates
I think people do know how the world actually works. Here's a self-education project that I've been working on of late:
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/asymmetrical-warfare-mill-wars-based-ucc-practice
Also see the work of Samuel Blumenfeld. One of the first and best to address the subject.
We have a joke-saying over here:
Those who can, work.
Those who can't work, turn to teaching.
And those that can't teach become academicians.
become administrators
Those who can't administrate turn to politics.
Don't you mean USA Education Inc?
Learning is secondary in education, after funding.
I enjoyed reading your blog, however, I think you are selling short the value of a formal education. It is not fashionable to promote the value of a liberal arts education but this is the cornerstone of a well educated person. Any discipline that teaches to write well and think critically will yield lifelong benefits. The best professors are not teaching history, English, biology - they are teaching life skills, that is, the ability to question, to think critically, to express one's self clearly. The dialectic of a good professor questioning loose thinking, sloppy reasoning and poor expression is invaluable.
The problem is that society believes that this can be accomplished only at Ivy League institutions. That is not true. I went to a large state university and obtained the same skills that my Ivy League graduate children did. Unfortunately, the Ivy League Good Housekeeping seal of approval and network gets graduates of these institutions better jobs. It is also the safety blanket for lazy or insecure hiring managers who can tout that they hired a Harvard or Wharton grad.
As to self education, I think it is important and a lifelong quest. I do not think it as an “either or”, meaning a good professor, school or program can give you a solid foundation so that you have the skill set to embark upon a career of lifelong learning. Being totally self educated is difficult without have some of the fundamentals. Anybody who has succeeded beyond entry level positions recognizes that the substantive subject matter you learned in school is outdated and to succeed you must be on a daily quest to learn anew. The blend of a rigorous formal education with the best professors (not necessarily the name brand professors that schools tout) and a commitment to lifelong self education is optimal. A wise person said “learn from all men.”
I have written a blog praising the value of a liberal arts education, See
http://www.prophetwithoutprofit.com/2010/09/22/in-praise-of-a-liberal-ar...
aah.. good stuff Prophet.. I wish I had said that!
I was reading this post, top to bottom, and was thinking ..."this is the best thread I have read in several months". Of course, there was a little diversion there for a minute, but still a very good discussion.
My own take is that I decided a long time ago, before my son was of college age, that the only education that mattered was a liberal arts education.. learning to read and write and, hopefully, learning to think. Unless the purpose of the education was to obtain a professional education that resulted in employment as a Mechanical Engineer, or Medical Researcher, or Physicist, or Anthropoligist or a Brain Surgeon, etc… what matter most was the ability to think and communicate. So I encouraged my son to get himself one of those and he did.
Now I am older, and I am not certain that what I thought represented a successful life.. make money, have a good looking wife and pretty children, nice home, car and plenty of toys represents success. And I am not sure how education plays into what I now think might be a successful life.
I heard a guy say several years ago that the happiest people in this country were Forest Rangers, and his thought still echoes. What I am coming to understand is that children learn not what they are taught, rather they learn what they see and experience. I have generally supported formal education, but now I am not so sure that maybe home schooling is not a better experience for children. Of course, I know no one I know would inculcate religious intolerance of gays, ladies reproductive choices, or other belief systems.
I think now that children who live in a home that is safe, who are properly fed, who experience mostly love and support, acceptance and understanding instead of criticism and disapproval, and are not diminished in their efforts might just have the best chance of “Success”.
I guess the idea of “success” is what is sticking in my craw.
Bill
Bill: thanks for your comment. I think of success as a life well lived. Unfortunately, we measure life in quantitative ways: SAT scores, IQ tests, dollars in the bank, annual compensation, house price etc. I retired about a year ago and was quantitativeley successful but more importantly I was qualitatively succesful. I left my position with my good name intact, I gave value to my employer each and every deal, I trained the next generation of management, raised a family to be proud of (with no one becoming an investment banker) and I am now giving back to my community.
A liberal arts education can be an assist to a live well lived and a life of respect and honor. It is not a bad thing to know about art history, music, great literature and how to express yourself.
We need to think about success differently. I know that is not easy to say in hard times, but I graduated in the middle of a recession and never regreted a good grounding in liberal arts.
A wise person said “learn from all men.”
Don't remember the source: I've never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
PwP: IMO, you should consider the conditioning aspect of schooling, which (again, IMO) negates almost everything else.
Yes, an exceptional teacher can have good effects, but that person would produce good effects without a system, and at least as well.
If you have an interest, read the first 10 chapters of THE THIRD WAVE, by Alvin Toffler. Worth your time.
I agree with you and Gatto on every point. I think I've read some of your stuff before and found it to be somewhat radical, but on this particular topic, and even your response to the first poster, I not only agree, but have thought the same thing for at least the past five years. I will try as best I can to join you in spreading this sort of philosophy, but since I do not have a masters, companies are reluctant to give me a job that pays more than $20,000 a year, and therefore, I must work doubly hard to make it in this world on my own.
I'm sure it will all pay off eventually though.