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Entry: Taking Back Our Children Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/taking_back_our_children#4485 Post contents: You all need to read John Taylor Gatto, NY State Public School Teacher of the Year, and NYC Public School Teacher of the Year. The information at this man's fingertips is virtually indisputable. He quotes Helen Todd: <i>In 1909 a factory inspector did an informal survey of 500 working children in 20 factories. She found that 412 of them would rather work in the terrible conditions of the factories than return to school.</i> He quotes David Tyack: <i>In one experiment in Milwaukee, for example, 8,000 youth... were asked if they would return full-time to school if they were paid about the same wages as they earned at work; only 16 said they would.</i> Public school separates children into specific age groups, grading and categorizing them at early ages -- unnatural. Public school separates children from the outside world, especially the natural world, for long periods of time -- unnatural. Public school separates children from the surrounding community -- unnatural. Public school separates children from their parents -- unnatural. Public school conditions children to respond to bells, certification for all work, permission to <i>use the toilet</i>, grading systems, and whatever orders they are given -- unnatural. Public school fails to recognize the critical role played by religion throughout human history. Public school ensures that children will fail to learn numerous trades that might be useful later in life. Children are guaranteed to be exposed, if not the victims themselves, to bullying, intimidation, unquestioning conformity, violence, sexual situations, boredom, rigidity of schedules, cliques, isolation, persecution, and any other number of maladjustments brought into the closed world of public schools by groups of their immediate peers. The whole institution needs to be scrapped. As far as Germans being grateful for forced public schooling in Prussia, Gatto also points out that immigrants in NYC rioted when their children were first forced to go to public school, because they remembered what public schooling in the "old country" meant. Finally, Gatto points out that when <i>Last of the Mohicans</i> was first published in 1826, it was a best-seller. Remember that this was a time when most people lived in small towns and on small farms, doing all their own work. There were no suburbs, little industry compared to today, no Cliff Notes, no dumbed-down TV of movie versions, few universities and <i>few public schools</i>. The few schools that did exist were one-room schoolhouses run mostly by the parents. Gatto is tireless in pointing out that the public school system is designed to dumb down the children who attend. They are succeeding. Sent at: 2008 09 07