THE BOOK EVERY PARENT NEEDS TO READ

By Laura Dawn Lewis

 

APRIL 15, 2007: After Katrina hit New Orleans and the South, I watched in horror as one after another peoples first reaction was, "Where is the US government?"

Rather than band together and work together, people waited to be told what to do. Where did that mindset come from? The United States built itself on self-sufficiency, communities and families working together.  Waiting for the government to 'save' us...'protect' us, a hundred and fifty years ago would have been unthinkable.  What happened? 

When did the American people trade independence in thought and deed for government solutions?  Where did we learn this? Each question, Gatto answers decisively his book, The Underground History of American Education.  If ever exists an eye-opener for parents and the American people, this is it.  Upon reading his book, many issues you've suspected become clear, and you'll know what to do about them.  This book fills in the blanks you suspected, but dared not question.

More importantly, blame lies with the system, a system larger than a district, parent or community.  A system created by outside circumstances such as the need for two income households (the direct result of unconstitutional income taxes and increased consumerism), corporate needs and channeled investments.  Private schools show only a slightly better track record.  Gatto demonstrates in The Underground History of American Education how this system evolved and why.

MY EXPERIENCE                                      

I went through school during the seventies and eighties and often remember sitting in class, bored out of my mind.  It wasn't until completing college and engaging people well beyond my level of knowledge, experience and global awareness that a nagging realization bubbled forth.  What exactly did I learn in school?

Basically I learned how to regurgitate information, memorize facts, take multiple choice tests, (which I always hated because each answer effectively may be right given a particular circumstance). I watched a lot of movies with men in horn-rimmed glasses and yes, I read.  But my passion for reading developed due to parental influence. My parents preferred to shut off the 'boob tube' and curl up with a good book. Back then we only had one television for the family (with a little black and white in mom and dad's room).  Family time allowed one hour a night.  Bedtime was 8:30 or 9:00PM.

My junior year of high school I spent overseas at a private Catholic High School, learning in another language, (which was tough for about four months.  By six months I was fluent in the new language because nobody spoke English, therefore I learned quickly). School overseas was much more scholastic and intense, very remedial and absent of fluff. Yes, I was a 'good student', scoring in the top ten percent for all the important tests and basically liked learning. No I'm not a genius.

But again, most of my learning came after hours, not at school through documentaries, magazines, books and historical series.  Yet with all this, a good student at some of the best public districts in the country, self-study fanatic, avid news consumer and curious, I didn't learn a lot.  Not the stuff that counts, like how to think, question, scrutinize and dig.  In the real world, once around really smart people, I realized how little I knew and how drastically unprepared I was.

I discovered later propaganda played an important role in my education. I actually thought the Civil War occurred to 'Free the Slaves', (It didn't.  That was a positive outcome).  Like most Americans I came out of school confusing the Constitution (a job description designating the separation of powers) with the Bill of Rights, (the first ten amendments added later to clarify basic rights).  That type of ignorance works well when as an adult you're surrounded by others with the same ignorance.  But it is deadly to your credibility once you step outside of the educational cocoon and begin speaking with those who didn't receive our conditioning and actually do know these things.  Things as an American I should.

USING SCHOOLS TO PRESS AGENDAS

Political agendas easily slipped in during my tour of duty in the American education system and increasingly corporations, special interests groups and even our military, any group wishing to 'get 'em while they're young' have altered today's curriculums to promote their causes whether homosexuality, various environmental issues (such as coal being a green fuel) or service in maintaining our overseas empire, (no matter how they spin it, any base overseas is offensive, not defensive in nature).

In my day, the big propaganda push was reproductive health from birth control to choice. Like all dutiful American girls culture taught me that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, represented the most courageous of all women, championing the rights of each to her own body, her own destiny and her own life.  A noble woman who empowered every American woman, we owed her our respect and our new found freedom. I believed this until the turn of the century.  Then I started dating a man who held the complete opposite view as me on this issue. After a rather heated argument I decided to ask a few questions and challenge my own position. 

In education, the ability to see both sides of an argument for its merits is referred to as critical thinking, if critical thinking were taught in school. Like many, I had to teach myself and at it wasn't always pretty.  I started reading through Sanger's speeches, articles and advocacy.  Sanger, by her own words and admissions was a white supremacist and a Zionist, two ideologies that place one type of people (due to faith or race) as superior to another, something I consider reprehensible.  Her concern and purpose for starting Planned Parenthood, again according to her own words, wasn't for women and reproductive health.  Her concern was to limit the number of as she saw them, less than desirable people: the poor, persons of color, average to low intelligence--in reality an agenda hidden under an opaque claim of helping the poor with true intentions of limiting the growth of certain classes of people she deemed inferior. That information gives a new twist to the whole pro-life, pro-choice debate, no doubt one reason for its suppression or omission. It also forced me to seriously re-examine everything I thought I believed and why. 

Fluoridated water is another example, this time using government and then the schools to push through something unhealthy as healthy for corporate gain by eliminating the need to dispose of a chemical in a costly manner.  Instead add it to the water supply and tell people it gets rid of cavities.

Soon I challenged other beliefs and positions I thought based upon pure fact. Political correctness, a euphemism for censorship, combined with fear of being outcast, ostracized or ridiculed contributes to our society’s fear of confrontation and it is taught in our schools through the stress of uniformity, conformity and obedience.

As I questioned, (and started a lot of arguments with people) several of my firmly held beliefs revealed themselves to be based upon less fact and more agenda with liberal doses of myth.  Lesson learned. And an easy lesson to teach in school but is not.  Perhaps because it is hard to start wars when people are conditioned to question your 'facts' rather than accept them?  No, that couldn't be it. Hmmm.

ELIMINATING SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Schools today function as hotbeds of misinformation, propaganda, censorship and conformity, thus failing to teach the tools necessary for a society to be informed, engaged, independent and self-sufficient. These skills don't meld well with a drone society of 'yes' men. Thinking people defy control. They're a bit difficult to rule.

Within our education system critical thinking, questioning, espousing, curiosity, the art of written or spoken communication increasingly fall to the margins.  Our children learn conditioning, how to follow rather than lead, how to depend upon the state rather than each other and how to limit their frontiers.  According to those who create our standards, elementary aged children can only learn 550 words a year? 

Poppycock!  Children are sponges, curious and eager to learn.  Rather than tap into that, today through institutionalization we place blinders, brakes and shackles on it.  By age ten, most children dutifully become state wards, mentally, dumbed down, bored and more interested in letting their video games, television and other distractions create their fantasy worlds, tell them how to think or how to act.  (The Federal Reserve and Tax System contribute to this; to my amazement Gatto goes into that too).

Before institutionalized schooling, Gatto shows how eight year olds in 1847 read at a senior college student level...eight year olds reading better than most senior executives today!  He also shows that the average person can learn to read by his or herself in just 30-hours.  In fact they did before forced schooling. Even African Americans in the 1840's who were kept out of the US society, 80% could read. That’s a higher percentage then, when many were slaves than today when all are free. Almost 100% of white children back then read exceptionally well too.  So what happened?

What happened is happening and parents today can change the system.  The growth of home-schooling owes itself to what Gatto reveals.  After reading it, thou lukewarm on the subject of home schooling, I personally decide if so blessed, my children will be home schooled, (at least through the sixth grade) so they learn to think critically, learn to love learning and never acquiesce simply due to authority.

WHERE TO GET IT

This book remains so thorough in its treatment of American education's past 200 years and what it has done to our society that I now give this book as a baby shower gift.  Each couple I've given it to thanks me profusely, stating upon its completion, it remains the most valuable gift they've ever received.

But isn't that what knowledge is supposed to be?

All 18 chapters are available online for free or you can purchase the book for $34.95. I first read the download version, making notes and then purchased the actual book. Below is an excerpt from the book. 

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