John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down..

“In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.”

“I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic -- it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.” -- John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.

John Taylor Gatto is an American school teacher with nearly 30 years of experience in the classroom. He devoted much of his energy to his extraordinary teaching career, then, following retirement, authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences.
-- go to John's website