On Wed, February 10, 1999 at 21:34:25 (-0500) Michael Yates writes:
>the problem is that many of my students do seem interested. and i do
>agree that the quiz is pretty pathetic. but i used to read 2000 papers
>a term, with rewrites and lots more interest on my part. it did not
>seem to make much difference, and i just cannot physically do this
>anymore. beleive me over the years i have used films, games, speakers,
>you name it.
You never know how you affect people. I was totally uninterested in
school, save for a few courses like Fourier analysis and my French
Surrealist Lit. course, and then I took a class given by Bob Vitalis
(friend of Noam Chomsky's) and it blew my mind. I've read 20x more
per day out of school (at the very least) than I did in school. Maybe
you should keep tabs on these folks when they get out...
Anyway, have you read *Dumbing Us Down* by John Taylor Gatto*? He won
the New York State Teacher of the Year award and according to the
bookjacket blurb, "has just resigned after 26 years of award-winning
teaching in Manhattan's public schools". If he doesn't offer you
solutions, he perhaps can offer solace ("Our kids have no time left to
grow up fully human and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in"
[p. 21]; "According to Lord Russell, mass-schooling produced a
recognizably *American* student: anti-intellectual, superstitious,
lacking self-confidence, and with less of what Russell called 'inner
freedom' than his or her counterpart in any other nation he kew of,
past or present." [p. 78]; "some disturbing evidence exists that the
income of working *couples* in 1990 has only slightly more purchasing
power than the income of the average working man did in 1910."
[p. 93, I'd be curious to know the validity of this claim]; however,
"Let anybody who wants to, teach; give families back their tax money
to pick and choose.... Restore the congregation system by encouraging
competition after a truly unmanipulated free-market model..."
[p. 103]).
I have heard that our schooling system was based on that developed in
Prussia in the mid 1800s, which was designed to break the will of the
student and direct allegiance to the state. I was told this claim was
made in Gatto's book, not every page of which have I read (nor is
there an index), but I can't find it... Anyone know anything about
this?
Bill
