Reddit mentions: The best history of education books

• The Great Indian Obsession: The Untold Story of India's Engineers
  
  this idea can be pretty much translated into any other colonized region
  
  REVIEW
  
  >The great Indian obsession portrays the journey of engineering in India right from its advent to the present time where engineering degree and IT jobs have become the biggest obsession among the Indians. For middle-class household, an engineering degree is a ticket to a better life and reputation in society.
  
  >Apart from its benefit, the author has highlighted many detrimental side effects of this obsession. There is undue pressure on young shoulders to be amongst toppers both from parents and society. Failure in doing so many times results in depression, the stigma of looser and in extreme situation suicide as well which is becoming increasingly common.
  >The obsession for engineering has led to the advent of flourishing coaching industry in India to crack the competitive exams. The author has written in detail about the beginning of coaching centers and its rise and rise.
  >The book also brings out the darker side of the Indian education system. Pathetic government school conditions, expensive private schools, and colleges, donations, the uselessness of primary education, flourishing tuition centers, reservation issue, the importance of caste over merit.
  It's a hard-hitting book and an eye-opener. The book does not dissuade from pursuing an engineering degree, but the author just wants from parents and society not to crush the dreams and aspirations of young ones only for better financial health.
  It's a must-read book.
  
  
• What is Education For article (long)
  
  >education has no clear purpose. That’s not a criticism; it’s just an observation that there are numerous conflicting visions of what education is “for.” What are we actually trying to do for kids by making them go to school, and why are we trying to do it? If it’s an attempt to help kids understand things they’ll need to know in their daily lives, much of contemporary education makes little sense: Very few of us will use chemistry or algebra or French. But it would be very helpful to know how to cook a good breakfast, negotiate a pay raise, or defuse an argument. If education is about making “model citizens,” well, we would probably expect civics to be treated in a little less cursory a fashion. Maybe education is about teaching job skills, providing abilities that will prove useful in making a living. Maybe it nourishes souls and expands horizons. Maybe it’s just a way to keep as many kids as possible in a room together and therefore out of trouble. Or maybe it doesn’t do much of anything at all.
  
  
• [The Case Against Education
  Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money]
  (https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste-ebook/dp/B076ZY8S8J)
  
  >Despite being immensely popular--and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity—in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As and casually forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for the average worker but instead in runaway credential inflation, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely if ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy.
  
  >Caplan draws on the latest social science to show how the labor market values grades over knowledge, and why the more education your rivals have, the more you need to impress employers. He explains why graduation is our society's top conformity signal, and why even the most useless degrees can certify employability. He advocates two major policy responses. The first is educational austerity. The government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race. The second is more vocational education because practical skills are more socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.
  
  >Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.
  
  
• Schooling In Capitalist America: Educational Reform And The Contradictions Of Economic Life
  
  >Noted radical economists point out that lack of equal opportunity in American education is a reflection of the weaknesses of capitalism and offer guidelines for the implementation of a more democratic, egalitarian system.
  
  
• savage inequalities
  
  >For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students.
  In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools.
  
  
• [Meritocracy in Our Society Is a Lie - Genes Reveal It's Better to Be Born Rich Than Talented](https://www.scien
  cealert.com/genetics-reveals-being-rich-gives-you-a-better-chance-at-graduating-uni-than-being-talented)
  
  >The least-gifted children of high-income parents graduate from college at higher rates than the most-gifted children of low-income parents.
  
  
• Eclipse of Reason because this book is very technical and has nothing to do with education straightforward
  
  I'm not gonna link it but, it mentions something in passing that relates to college students
  
  >“The idolization of progress leads to the opposite of progress,” this is his claim
  
  
  >The objective mind pervades social life in all its branches. We worship industry, technology, and nationality without making sense of these categories.
  
  the objective here means focusing on the ends, so it would make sense to pump out as much product as you can cheaply for max profit
  
  Subjective on the other hand focuses on the means, so the goal is mass production but is it a good idea to do it without thinking about the impact on the environment? this is where people would argue for green energy which is the subjective mind
  
  however, everyone is thinking with an objective mind, so green energy is off the table because earlier he mentions truth is reduced only as a tool of assessing (control of nature) bascially productivity and science (by science he means, by adding acid and a base we can get a salt and h2o if i remember chemistry correctly), so we are unable to argue about the truth of environmental care because our idea of truth cannot be used in that means. clear example is climate change, science proves climate change is real, but people in positions of power who can do the most about it (companies who mass produce) argue it will hamper productivity and profit (objective mind truth).
  
  he also mentions that this way of thinking led to an unoriginal lifestyle
  
  >The idea of happiness has been reduced to a banality to coincide with leading the kind of normal life that serious religious thought has often criticized.
  
  its also important to mention, the normal life, is sold to us by mass media and the culture industry, bascially people on TV and Ads, social media tell you what is the normal life of happiness one should pursue. the pursuit of this lifestyle is costly so you have to be able to make yourself a skilled worker in order to get enough money to live the happy life, this leads into the next quote
  
  >...Economic significance today is measured in usefulness to the structure of power, not the needs of all.
  The individual must prove their worth to one of the groups in engaged in the struggle for control of the economy.
  
  This bascially says that your value to people/society is based on how "useful" you are to current power structure, and you must compete with people to prove your worth to a company so that the company competes for you in the global scales of things to provide for you so that you can live that normal life that is critized heavily by religious thought, that is if you are deem worthy to them compared to all the other competiting individuals seeking that job
  
  
  Horkhiemer would argue at the end of the day the same mindset that students have, who compete with one another to display economic signifigance, are similar to those in position of power who deny climate change due to productivity issues. why? because your usefulness to society is how you can help prop up the existing power structures, not how you can fight climate change which is a needs of all people. you prove your worth to such power structures so you can live the happy normal life dictated by you mass media and social media.
  
  
  

My first thought was that is was a great idea, but then I thought about classifying students as slaves, it might be a bit of an issue.

One of my big things for student engagement was to design and build in game-like structures in class.

I hate, absolutely hated lecturing and if I needed to have a class lecture, I kept it to ten-fifteen minutes. Then students used the information from that to create a game, play a game, have a debate, something within the class. I found that games were the surefire way of holding student engagement.

Here is a good book about building in game structures into the classroom - http://www.amazon.com/The-Multiplayer-Classroom-Designing-Coursework/dp/1435458443. If you are a gamer, think about how games hold your attention, and your students' attention. Typically it's just a bit of work for a big payoff. You play for a while and you level up. If you can build your classroom along those lines. We learn/play for a bit, then we "level up" kids take pride in that.

Simulations are awesome for this as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Short-Role-playing-Simulations-History-Classrooms/dp/0983426732

Here is a good article on game-based classroom learning - http://www.edutopia.org/blog/short-happy-history-of-historia-rick-brennan

I had a lot of fun building and designing simulations and games for my students. Because I was having fun, they fed off of that energy and they had fun as well. Some games we built the rules together.

I think one of the most fun lessons was when we were studying the American West and Populism - High School. Students had to research a particular aspect of that time period and teach it to their classmates by playing a board game. So I had four board games where kids were playing in my room. They had four stations and one person from each team stayed each turn to teach their games to the other group members. At the end, we had board game designer awards. One won for Best Game Design. One won for "I learned the Most". Another won for Best Game Artwork, etc. Each game design team won something and each team learned something. It took about three-four days from start to finish in a one hour - fifteen minute class. Day 1 - Quick mini-lecture on the basics of the time period. Students chose their topics, etc. Day 2 - Build day. Day 3 - Play/Awards day.

When I gave them my end of year evaluation. How did Mr. NameIdeas do this year? Did you learn something? What lesson/activity did you like best/least? How can Mr. NameIdeas improve his teaching, his relationships with students, his music choice, etc? They all remembered the games and, more importantly, the information from the games.

Since you can't be bothered to listen for eleven minuets, I will sum up his points for you. The speaker is Charles Glenn. He says that religion is not just private, that it gets expressed in communities. There is a social aspect to religion, and religious liberty, must respect this. Religious liberty must also respect the right of the family to raise their children with their values. This is all important as religious liberty protects other freedoms because it means that the state's own power is less than ultimate.

He says that these rights can be protected through what he calls "structural pluralism." There is a diversity of values, so there can be no lowest common denominator. He mentions this book. He also mentions how some Islamic schools enable a place where Muslim students can discuss issues that matter to them in ways that they feel they can't do in a public school environment. The U.S. lags support for parent choice in faith-based schools. The freedom to schools a school for a child is meaningless if all schools are the same.

I think what he said was good. It makes sense to me if a society is to have religious freedom, then the freedom for parents to have school choice is very important as well.

I'm middle school teacher in Helsinki and I'm really happy doing my work as most of my colleagues.

Teachers are respected and trusted like doctors and other professionals. We have a lot of autonomy and freedom in our jobs and there's no need to talk about accountability, because the teachers are motivated to do the job as well as possible. Also we don't overwork the teachers. It's really important for teachers to have time off from work to be able to think, improve our skills and teach in a creative and effective way.

There are no standardised tests apart from the matriculation examination at the end of high school. This way we can focus on the important things like creativity, thinking, collaboration, problem solving, emotional intelligence and other skills needed in the future. We don't have to teach for the tests.

Yes, PISA scores of high performing Asian countries are better, but they spend way more time studying. We don't think that's healthy. Instead it's important for the students to have hobbies, social lives, passions and unstructued time.

I'd recommend two books, if you want to know more about education in Finland. Most of the methods and insights could be applied anywhere.

Teach Like Finland by Tim Walker: https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Like-Finland-Strategies-Classrooms-ebook/dp/B071CPJ9LP/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=

Finnish Lessons 2.0 by Pasi Sahlberg: https://www.amazon.com/Finnish-Lessons-2-0-Educational-Finland-ebook/dp/B00SZ7L8M4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1520342678&sr=1-1&keywords=finnish+lessons+2.0

My apologies for taking some time to get back to you. I do have a few book recommendations about the history of the Bronx (growing up in Yonkers I spent a ton of time there, and it is actually my favorite outer borough, shh)! I highly recommend Lloyd Ultan’s The Northern Borough: A History of the Bronx, which provides an excellent look at the settlement and growth of the borough. I also enjoyed used Twomey’s The Bronx in Bits and Pieces. If you’re interested in the origin of street and place names (which I most certainly am), then consider checking out John McNamara’s History in Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street & Place Names Encyclopedia.

I have yet to read this chapter in my book, but your question made me scan through it to see if there is a mention of something like this in it. Joel Spring, in "The American School: A Global Context from the Puritans to the Obama Era" says this on page 299 of the eighth edition:

>In the early twentieth century, the major participants in the politics of education and knowledge were school boards, teachers' unions, state governments, business, and special interest groups such as the American Legion joined with the National Education Association in an effort to weed out so-called radical ideas from public schools. Under the banner of "100% Americanism", the American Legion campaigned against what it called subversive teachers and radical ideas in the curriculum. In the 1930s, the National Association of Manufacturers launched the "American Way" campaign through schools and other organizations to try to create an automatic association in the public mind between democracy and capitalism.

If you are interested in the history of education in the US, this has been a great book so far. A little pricey, unfortunately.

My first point comes from this book- which describes the purposes of educating the public. The education system wasn't created to help people get jobs or prepare them for the workplace. It was created based on an idea that if everyone can read and write then they can participate in governance and politics. That is the major difference between a democracy and a republic. But yes the better educated the public is the more benefits our society as a whole will reap.

On your second paragraph, you are completely on point. There are a few exceptions, like Elizabeth Warren in MA, but overall many states are misusing their education funding. I also meant that many people that are researching things like brain-based learning have better ways to educate but we can't implement them because we don't have the funding. I'm a teacher- as you might have been able to guess- and I matriculated from a great university for teaching. While I was in school I learned about a ton of great ways to create curriculum but now that I'm actually in the thick of it teaching it's really difficult to get supplies and school boards can be difficult to deal with. So the main problems facing education are politics and money- the ideas about education are there but people are unable to embrace and fund them.

>How would you define a good vs bad school, or is it just about movement of students?

>How would you assess if a teacher is good or bad?

The parents decide, just like they do for everything else for their kids.

>Should private and/or charter schools be required to go through some sort of process to certify their merit before being allowed to enter the educational system

No.

>Presumably you would support private and/or charter schools, how would you make access to them affordable for poor students?

Every kid gets a voucher, to be used at any school they wish.

>being pointed to a good resource would be appreciated.

This book.

And this book.

But to be honest, imo, the best way to educate your own kids is this way.

Great! I completely agree.

Another great book is http://www.amazon.com/Underground-History-American-Education-Investigation/dp/0945700040/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260548679&sr=1-2

and anything by Bastiat.

So, I'm actually in the middle of Seymour Sarason's book The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform. Just some light reading...;0). But fascinating. In there, he writes this:

"The classroom, and the school and school system generally, are not comprehensible unless you flush out the power relationships that inform and control the behavior of everyone in these settings. Ignore those relationships, leave unexamined their rationale, and the existing "system" will defeat efforts at reform...The first step, recognition of the problem, is the most difficult, especially in regard to schools, because we all have been socialized most effectively to accept the power relationships characteristic of our schools as right, natural, and proper, outcomes to the contrary nonwithstanding (7)."

That makes sense to me. We try to fix the parts but not the whole. We try to do "the wrong thing right" when in our heart of hearts we know better.

Not a high schooler anymore but read Dumbing us down by John Taylor Gatto (a multiple winner of "Teacher of the year" for NY city and one time winner of "Teacher of the year" for NY state).

I would say that Gatto's Underground History got me thinking about modern public education. He is kind of a wingnut, but he has lots of good history, and points about our modern industrial education system. That led me to learn about the history of education, and I realized that when we abandoned the classical liberal arts tradition, we lost a lot. So basically, I thought that by using the Core Knowledge Curriculum, combined with Latin and Singapore Math, we could provide a better education than our local public schools.

Sadly, there's as much variation in the quality of homeschooling as there is in the quality of public schools, apparently, but from what I've seen in our homeschooling community, an involved, caring parent will do just as well as, if not better than the average public school.

As to the reasons for going back to school, a few of her friends decided to go to high school, which means the end of her reading and writing groups. We were prepared to go all the way, but she decided to try high school. I don't have many worries, other than the normal parent-of-teenager worries. She's got a good head on her shoulders.

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Check this book out by Walter Parker - https://www.amazon.com/Social-Studies-Today-Research-Practice/dp/0415992877

Its divided into 5 sections that address some of your questions about social studies - Purpose Matters, Perspective Matters, Subject Matters, Global Matters, and Puzzles

To me the debate is more of social studies skills (developing the skills to find meaning in varied contexts) vs social studies content, and on top of that you still have language objectives

Good luck with school!

I published it here on Amazon. Have a good day :)

​

https://www.amazon.com/Voynich-Morse-Code-Steganography-Cipher/dp/169014629X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

It's a good question, and the honest answer is I don't entirely know. I've only been alive for about thirty years, and most of this occurred long before I was born.

I think I can tell you why, though, and I think the same answer would apply to the question of why leftists dominate other arenas like education.

The power of politics is not who occupies the office. Not in a democracy or in a republic. Every person in power is one election away from losing that power. The only way to build enduring power is to control the culture.

There's a wonderful book I would recommend anybody to read, called The Underground History of American Education which discusses the strategy which I believe is in play: if you control the levers of public consciousness, you passively control that populace.

It would be a bit difficult to believe that our diverse media climate could be coordinated, except that just six corporations collectively control 90% of the American media market. We have the illusion of diverse opinion, but not the reality of it.

let me see if I can explain. The public school system in America was not designed to help literacy for poor immigrants, although that would be noble. And it wasn't really designed to make us #1 in math or whatever (it would be failing at both of those goals).

It was designed to break children from their parent's culture and to help them integrate into the melting pot.
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/086571231X

Any number of videos by John Grotto on this. He's kinda crazy on a lot of things, but his education experience is quite sound.

My wife firmly believes the school system is corrupt. I can see how the church, under David O. McKay (or at least when he was an apostle) incorporated Correlation and the public school system to revise how kids are taught in order to pull them away from previous religions and cultures in order to assimilate them into the new culture of the church.

We talk about it as brainwashing, but a lot of it is culture-washing. You're no longer a mexican/Brazillian/swede/russian. You're a Mormon, here is your jell-o salad and please bring funeral potatoes.

Your parents might pray to the previous God once in a while (such as the pentacostal who still speaks in tongues once in a while, even after having been to the temple) but the kids... they know better. They roll their eyes at their parents and try to be more righteous, more godly, like they're supposed to be.

Does that make sense?

There's a compelling and well-supported theory that the American public education system is based on the Prussian education system of the late 1800's, which was engineered to turn ignorant rural farm children into functioning industrial workers.

It stresses things like repetition, recitation, strict unquestioning obedience, showing up on time, leaving on time, eating on time, standing in lines, sitting in assigned positions, going through an assembly line of grades indifferent to each child's abilities, reading and following basic instructions, etc.

It is a system expressly designed to remove the instincts for discovery, independence, self-driven growth, etc.

"The Underground History of American Education" is a good book on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0945700040/ref=cm_cr_othr_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

I also strongly recommend Lockhart's Lament:

http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

>How much of the increase in overall pricing is due to the sharp jump in oil and housing?

Likely not much since fuel and housing are not regularly included in the CPI measure. If they were the fed could not maintain their 2-4% inflation illusion.


>Sources, Please

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanlewis/2013/01/03/the-1870-1914-gold-standard-the-most-perfect-one-ever-created/

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Gold-History-Lewis-Lehrman-ebook/dp/B00DQG5QL8/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410015930&sr=1-2&keywords=lehrman

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Destruction-Dollar-Threatens-Economy-ebook/dp/B00JFG7080/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410016056&sr=1-1&keywords=money

http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Edward-Griffin-ebook/dp/B00ARFNQ54/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410016087&sr=1-1&keywords=creature+from+jekyll+island

its been brewing like this for decades,

my friends dad used to be a principal and later a superintendent, he would tell me stories about how poor performing and neglectful teachers were nearly unfireable if they were protected by the union.

the political climate has pushed this beyond its extreme,

He wrote a book about it a few years back called

The Gated Society

>The public education system has the capacity to slowly and quietly resist all attempts at systemic change or reform; this resistance has become even more tangible and definable over the past fifteen years as reforms to bring schools up-to-date are attempted and blocked by Industrial Age understandings driven by corporate, political, and financial needs. Surgenor identifies the intellectual, emotional, and organizational factors that keep North American education locked within the Industrial Age paradigm. Exploring the differences between the Industrial Age and Information Age paradigms, The Gated Society demonstrates how those differences would impact the practice, form, and function of education systems

I know just what you need. This entire book takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The main characters are the perfect age, middle school, and there is a great companion guide for teachers to go along with it. There are historical writeups and assignments to accompany them, including one about President Kennedy. The companion guide has pieces about school life during the 1960s, music of the era, and activities for students, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Ryans-Crossing-Jake-A-Henderson/dp/1479195901/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1348992709&sr=8-3&keywords=ryan%27s+crossing

http://www.amazon.com/Ryans-Crossing-Historical-Companion-Guide/dp/1479239704/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348992779&sr=1-1&keywords=ryan%27s+crossing+companion

My views of American school is that privatization hurts the current 'public' system. It further separates the classes, but that is what the public system was designed to do. It was scientifically designed to create malleable workers for the industrial revolution. The system strives to keep people dumb. But don't believe me, believe a teacher

I think the responsibility needs to get back into the home. I believe a better system would be to let parents decide when their children are schooled and where. More public like a library. Where I am from being dumb is almost a badge of honor.

Also, we should privatize sports programs. Take them out of the "public" institutions we call schools. They seem to be quite a distraction and lend more to being popular then becoming a self learner.

I apologize as this is not a historical analysis of the education system. However, I believe the assertion, "The US school system was designed to churn out factory workers," is most likely referencing John Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. If I recall correctly (and it has been a long while), Gatto looks at the Prussian systems, as well as the relationships between the Indian and British school systems. I have not seen Gatto referenced in conversations about the historical development of the US education system, however; his arguments seem to be a part of a conversation about the state of contemporary education, concerns about standardized testing versus ingenuity, etc. To be sure, Gatto tries to develop a historical explanation for the contemporary issues in education, but I have not seen how his work fits in to a broader historical narrative, which poses problems for the viability of his conclusions, I think. Similar arguments about education include [Ken Robinson's Ted Talk] (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html) on Creativity, for example, which are part of a more current discourse regarding education philosophies like unschooling (in Gatto's case) and inquiry-based programs like Montessori, Reggio Emilia, etc.

I also recommend John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education in which he argues that the apparent failures of modern education are in fact successes: the system was deliberately set up to prevent learning.

Availble online here: mhkeehn.tripod.com/ughoae.pdf but I also recommend the hard copy available from Amazo here: http://www.amazon.com/Underground-History-American-Education-Investigation/dp/0945700040

As an international Kindle-user, after looking through 106 (of 359) pages, I have found just 3 freebies.

Stupid Amazon doesn't understand how to sort the price by low to high.

But these three books I have found, that are actually free for me:

• https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Wrong-World-Gilbert-Chesterton-ebook/dp/B0082SS5LS/ref=sr_1_24?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1482107427&sr=1-24&keywords=open+road+media
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Common-Core-Standards-World-War-ebook/dp/B00O8A0ASA/ref=sr_1_752?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1482107749&sr=1-752&keywords=open+road+media
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Vile-Desire-Scream-Novella-Wildenstern-ebook/dp/B0141UPA1S/ref=sr_1_865?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1482107798&sr=1-865&keywords=open+road+media
  
  I give up looking through those pages now.

Read this book, and then consider that it's been going on for generations. Also the culture of immediate gratification. And things...

That's an excellent video, and one I watch often. The ideas there I first came across in Henry Perkinson's The Imperfect Panacea back in my undergrad days.

I took this course, too. He essentially read from his book the whole time if you're curious as to what he taught:
https://www.amazon.ca/Failing-Our-Kids-Ruining-Schools/dp/0771086822

Please read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Underground-History-American-Education-Investigation/dp/0945700040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303747880&sr=1-1

You seem to be very fixated on and quote a book about the education thing that as far as I understand is currently not a big aspect of the work the Gates Foundation is doing.

All I gather is that he is in favour of standardized test and evaluations, which I get is not popular.

The Wikipedia article about the criticism you appear to be talking about cites three sources. A hence deleted article in "Dissent Magazine" the book you quoted from earlier and another book that is available from amazon for $121.41 (18% of list price) or as a kindle edition for $35.67.

Would you care to explain your problem with the foundation a bit more in depth or point to some actually accessible sources about it. It sounds interesting, but there doesn't seem to be anything anywhere accessible.

(number of people with "bad" jobs) >>> (number of people with "good" jobs)

This is what the public ed system should be doing. Its not a secret.

http://www.amazon.com/Underground-History-American-Education-Investigation/dp/0945700040/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1395705212&sr=8-2&keywords=public+education+system+john+taylor+gatto

Oh, it's so much worse than you libs imagine.

Louis Hartz: The Liberal Tradition in America

Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (both volumes)

Eric Fromm's Escape from Freedom

Chalmers Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic


Hanah Arendt: Origins of Totalitarianism and On Violence

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Capitalism and Slavery

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

INSIDE THE COMPANY: CIA DIARY

Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism

The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling

• The Underground History of American Education [Video Playlist]
  
  
• The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling [Book]
  
  Required watching/reading for all people interested in the Root Cause for why schools are soo fucked

I'm sorry, but the one time I'll agree with a public school teacher when they complain is when they are complaining about teaching to the test.

Are you familiar with the Prussian education model? If you want to research what went wrong with our system, I would recommend reading The Underground History of American Education or, for a quicker version, read an article by the author, called Six-Lesson Schoolteacher.

The problem with our system is almost entirely due to the basis for the system itself, not the teachers. Please let me know if this helps.

Though if we look at what concentration of the population buts what books we will see that these people can read but they are still dopes. During the civil war nearly everybody in the country minus black slaves bought books by Paine, while today rarely anybody buys books that in depth.


In fact Gatto's book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling even goes as far as saying people during the civil war were more literate than today.


I have look for citations and have not been impressed with anything. Some say people are smarter today other say they are not and standards have just been lowered.

You are certainly correct that the quality of public education can vary widely, however no matter how well performing a public school may be they all suffer from the same fundamental issues. As references to this brief diatribe I will point you to (as in my other comment) the school sucks project, a book called Illiberal Reformers which details the frightening truth of the early progressive movement, and finally The Underground History of American Education which is a book by a decorated public school teacher who had a terrifying realization after a his long career. Note, that nothing I say here is an attack on any educators or teachers who might read this. I truly believe most teachers and the like get into the field for the right reasons, but the structure that they are faced with is the problem.

The problem with public school in the US, and many other countries (especially Western), is that learning/education is really only a secondary purpose. It is at all times subordinate, and therefore often undermined, to further the actual goal of creating a subordinate citizenry. The early progressives (Who as an aside were just awful, for example it was they who inspired the Nazis to eugenics. Once you go down this rabbit hole you'll never look at Woodrow Wilson the same again.) who championed the introduction of the American public school system were quite plain about where the idea for the modern public school came from. Namely, the Prussian aristocracy who inflicted it upon the populace in the 1800s for the express purpose of making them easy to rule. They made no attempt to hide this fact. The early progressives were somewhat more cautious in their language, dressing up the idea in Utopian language but their intentions are pretty clear if you go look at the academic papers and such they published at the times (which the two books I linked do).

So as to not get too long winded, let me just as a few rhetorical questions. How do you forcefully educate someone? How do you force someone to learn? How does mandating children show up at a building on pain of confinement for them or their parents further either of those goals? The Athenians are turning in their graves. The system forces children to show up at an arbitrary time, irrespective of their individual circumstances, and divides them into arbitrary groups. They are then forced to respect and defer to a person (i.e. Teacher/Adminstrators) arbitrarily. They have to seek permission to perform normal bodily functions (i.e. ask to use the restroom), trained not unlike you would a dog (not that I have anything against dogs!). They are trained to shuffle from one room to another at the sound of a bell, and to fill out meaningless paperwork and to perform meaningless tasks within an arbitrary involuntary hierarchy. It erodes at the mind and soul, creating an obedient populace that is used to dealing with a convoluted bureaucracy, and sometimes you learn something. To top it off, the curriculum is controlled via a political apparatus subject to all the corruption that accompanies politics. You can school, indoctrinate, and train people, but you can't force them to think critically and to really learn.