If you don’t eat your meat…
“After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt.”
Interesting essay from John Gatto, a retired NYC high-school teacher. The tone is a little Floydian, but he gives a point-by-point breakdown of the 19th-century “Prussian Model” of lower-class education, on which the modern American public school system is modelled:
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project…
I’ve started to think a lot about this after meeting the products of real elite private schools out here. It’s awe-inspiring to talk to 18-year-olds with the vocabulary and breadth of experience of somebody half again as old. But it’s also kind of frightening to realize that they’re indeed being groomed to rule us all.
Well, not these kids particularly, ’cause we’re all in art school. But you know what I mean.