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Subject: SNET: The Nine Assumptions of Modern "Government" Schooling
Date: 23 Feb 2000 12:26:01 -0500
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Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:09:16 -0600
To: therepublican@ideasign.com
From: The Republican 
Subject: The Nine Assumptions of Modern Schooling
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[Note:  Here is another one from the archive vault, from
1996. - Tony]


The 9 Assumptions of Modern Schooling

by John Taylor Gatto

As Stephen Arons, the legal scholar from the University of Massachusetts,
told an audience at the Hawthorne Valley School a while back: "Centralized
control of government schools creates the appearance of a Unity which is
refuted by the growing mass of families who have removed their children
from public or private schooling and have begun to educate them at home.
Requests for homeschooling thus heighten public confusion about which
beliefs are really valid expressions of community sentiment. The ideology
of public schools is put into sharp relief by homeschooling conflicts."

At least 9 major assumptions describe the perimeter of the public schooling
ideology. Together they warrant a general distrust of parents and they
arise from a view that there is one system of values that is best for
everyone. The State will prescribe this value code for all. Taken together
the assumptions form a kind of civil gospel in which significant dissent is
pronounced unacceptable to the State, the political system and the national
culture as it is presented by the State.

The Nine Assumptions of Modern Schooling

1.Government school is the essential force for social cohesion. It cannot
happen any other way. A bureaucratized public order is our defense against
chaos and anarchy.

2.The socialization of children in groups monitored by state agents is
essential; without this, children cannot learn to get along with others in
a pluralistic society.

3.Children from different backgrounds and from families with different
beliefs must be mixed together. Robert Frost was wrong when he maintained
"good fences make good neighbors."

4.The certifiable expertise of official schoolteachers is superior to that
of lay people including parents. The protection of children from the
uncertified is a compelling public concern.

5.Coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power. Compelling
children to assemble in mandated groups for mandated intervals with
mandated texts and overseers does not interfere with academic learning.

6.Children will inevitably grow apart from their parents in beliefs as they
grow older and this process must be supported and encouraged. The best way
to do this is by diluting parental influence and discouraging the
children's attitudes that their own parents are sovereign in either mind or
morality.

7.The world is full of crazy parents who will ruin their children. An
overriding concern of schooling is to protect children from bad parenting.

8.It is not appropriate for any family to unduly concern itself with the
education of its own children, but it may expend unlimited effort on behalf
of the general education of everyone.

9.The State has the predominant responsibility for training, morals, and
beliefs. Children schooled outside government scrutiny frequently become
anti-social and poverty stricken.

John Taylor Gatto, 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, will be the
keynote speaker for SepCon 95, the first annual conference of the
Separation Alliance. This essay is reprinted from his book of essays Notes
on Education, Schooling and Curriculum.



[Forwarded For Information Purposes Only - Not
Necessarily Endorsed By The Sender - A.K. Pritchard]

------------------------------

A.K. Pritchard
http://www.ideasign.com/chiliast/
http://rosie.acmecity.com/songfest/189/

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"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism,
but under the name of Liberalism, they will adopt every fragment
of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist
nation without knowing how it happened"

 -- Norman Thomas - Socialist Party Presidential candidate
Civil Liberties Union," Houghton Mifflin, 1976.






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