 Population reduction through Genocide, Why the elites lead Africa to disaster
| shiva_das |
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Deva
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I was just reading a blog by a political activist, he was writing about the current situation in The Sudan. Like many others, he expressed outrage at the lack of compassion for the plight of the tribal peoples who are undergoing an ethnic cleansing. He bemoaned the similar attitudes of western societal leaders whenever there is large scale human suffering in Africa. He wrote of the 3-5 million killed in The Congo, the 1-2 million in Rwanda, and the mess in West Africa as well as other killing fields on the African continent. He blames the hands off policy of the world powers, when it comes to intervention in Africa, on economic reasons. Rightly, he writes about the various oil and mineral concerns corportations have, and how their ambitions play their part in the African drama, playing out for the last few decades. There is no doubt a part played by corporate planners, in the violence and wars going on in Africa. But there is also another angle he is unaware of. Here are a bunch of articles by Professor Thomas D. Hall, PHD. He is a sociological historian who has written some very important histories about the 18th century on through modern times. These essays are about the transformation of society, based on the new "sciences" of Malthusian Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics. How the ideas of Malthus and Darwin became the driving force of the elites in their plans for Empire, and how today these same ideologies are still in effect, especially in Africa. Influence of Malthus and Darwin on the European EliteThe Rise of Materialistic Scientism in EnglandThe Rise of Materialistic Scientism in GermanyThe Rise of Materialistic Scientism in RussiaThe Rise of Materialistic Scientism in the United StatesUS & German Eugenics, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, and Population Control Neo-DarwinismDevelopment of Darwinian Thought in the WestMaterialism and the Concept of the Primacy of DNAThe "Species" Problem |
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| Rebecca |
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Jiva
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Ok, I have not yet read any of those articles, but when I read "Darwinism" and "Social Darwinism," etc., it reminded me of John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American EducationThe whole 18 chapter book is available for free online. Mr. Gatto, a former NYC teacher of the year, has made exposing the reality and questionable roots of American Public Education his life's work. I've only read about half the book so far, but its been a real eye opener for me.
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y/s Rebecca
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| shiva_das |
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Deva
Group: Admin
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Member No.: 3
Joined: 15-July 04
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Hi Rebecca. Before I write about Mr. Gatto's book, there is another important book that I have read that is amazing to say the least. It's called: War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/. Here is the introduction to the book. http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/intro.phpHere is an article by the author where he sums up the content of the book. | QUOTE | Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.
But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.
Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.
California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.
Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.
Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.
In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.
The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as Pasadena's Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations -- which functioned as part of a closely-knit network -- published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics,
and propagandized for the Nazis.
Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863,
Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people married only other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported to the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenics advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.
In a United States demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early 20th century. Elitists, utopians and so-called progressives fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: Populate the Earth with vastly more of their own socioeconomic and biological kind -- and less or none of everyone else.
The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the Earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark- haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.
How? By identifying so-called defective family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior -- the so-called unfit. The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.
Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point No. 8 was euthanasia.
The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in the United States was a "lethal chamber" or public, locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, "Applied Eugenics," which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution . . . Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." "Applied Eugenics" also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."
Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Ill., fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to 40 percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.
Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first 25 years of eugenics legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At the Sonoma State Home, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.
In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes' words in their own defense.
Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.
Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti- Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, but the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.
During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics leader Madison Grant, calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of the Great Race," his "bible."
Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.
During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe, upon returning from Germany, ebulliently bragged to a colleague, "You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."
That same year, 10 years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."
More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions.
By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in today's money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 toward creation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.
Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's complex of eugenics institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.
Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.
Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around ... the Germans were calling a spade a spade."
A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades,
American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity.
The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND
DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON
TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.
At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenics press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenics doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."
Verschuer had a longtime assistant. His name was Josef Mengele.
On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer (captain) and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer (Himmler)."
Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them,
he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.
Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenics studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the great institutions they helped found, and the science they helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.
After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity -- an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense -- to no avail. They were found guilty.
However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re- established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946, when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany . . . I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenics luminaries and then sent various eugenics publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.
Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."
Soon, Verschuer again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.
In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.
Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California, have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.
Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late 20th century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.
There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On Oct. 14,
the United States' first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.
Edwin Black is author of the award-winning "IBM and the Holocaust" and the recently released "War Against the Weak" (published by Four Walls Eight Windows), from which this article is adapted.
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Here is a link to another wesbite that gives more details: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/1920sp6.html---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I read Mr. Gattos's book a couple of years ago, it confirmed suspicions I had held about the american education system. For anyone who hasn't read it, it's a real eye opener. You wil find out that early american educators brought their new pedagogy from India. Then later a newer from of pedagogy was to overtake that, which was imported from Prussia. Prussia was a country that was created in the 13th century by the Order of the Teutonic Knights They were a close relation of the Knights Templar and many of the Knights Templar joined them when the Knights Templar were shut down by the King of France and the Pope over fear of the great wealth and power of the Templars. By destroying the Templars the large amounts of money owed them by various Royals and Church men could be forgotten. The Teutonic Knights were clones of the Knights Templars and absorbed many of them into their "order", which was really more like an international spy network/mafia/banking industry/mercenary force. They gained control over a large area of northern Europe after the crusades had been lost to the muslims. The order was looking for ways to make money and gain power. The Hapsburg Dynasty which ruled over the Austro Hungarian empire were all leaders of the Teutonic Knights Order, even today the order exists and the Hapsburgs are dominant members along with other royal families of Germany and that general area. Prussia no longer exists and is now part of Germany and Poland. In the 18th and 19th centuries Prussia had become a totalitarian militaristic society, the first of it's kind in Europe. Every aspect of it's society was designed and controlled for the furtherance of the goals of the militaristic and business leadership, it was the prototypical fascist state. Prussia became a major military power even though they were a small state in comparison to the traditional powers in Europe. That was because their entire country was forced into a militaristic mode. Their education system was designed to educate children not for the purpose of education in general, that was only for the topmost academically inclined students, the mass of students were taught how to become cogs in the machinery of the state, the military, and industry. That education system was brought into the Untied States and forced onto American children through compulsory education laws. All of this was done at the bidding of the infamous "Robber Barons" of the time. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan etc. What they had decided was that with the new "Industrial Revolution" which they controlled and profited from, a new education system was needed in order to make people maleable cogs to work in their machine. Here is a quote from the book: | QUOTE | Occasional Letter Number One
Between 1896 and 1920, a small group of industrialists and financiers, together with their private charitable foundations, subsidized university chairs, university researchers, and school administrators, spent more money on forced schooling than the government itself did. Carnegie and Rockefeller, as late as 1915, were spending more themselves. In this laissez-faire fashion a system of modern schooling was constructed without public participation. The motives for this are undoubtedly mixed, but it will be useful for you to hear a few excerpts from the first mission statement of Rockefeller’s General Education Board as they occur in a document called Occasional Letter Number One (1906):
In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. |
"The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."
What that means is that they wanted the children of the working class who toiled away in the factories and mines etc owned by the elites, to become better workers. The book goes into detail how the entire education system was designed for the explicit purpose of creating people who will be subservient, servile, and without any critical thinking abilties.
Here is a review of the book.
| QUOTE | Reviewed by David Harrison
“BIANCA, YOU ANIMAL, SHUT UP!” screamed an assistant principal at a six-year-old girl in front of a school assembly.
This quote from The Underground History of American Education is the visceral linchpin around which Mr. Gatto’s impressive narrative revolves, as he unfolds for us the complex development of what we now call “school.”
While History may appear to be the author’s focus, it is the fate of Bianca - and millions of compulsorily schooled children like her - that most concerns the author. He despises what he calls the “psychopathic” violence inflicted upon children by schools in this country. “Process kids like sardines,” he warns, “and don’t be surprised if they come out oily and dead.”
Don’t be fooled or discouraged by such bluntness. There is beauty, subtlety, complexity, and wisdom here, too. As you read through the introduction and start to absorb the gist of the author’s ideas, you quickly discover you are in the hands of a compassionate and skilled teacher. Mr. Gatto asks you to care. He warns you that it will not be easy. He freely states his biases and intentions. He asks you to trust him, to listen carefully, and then to draw your own conclusions.
I regret that this review can only briefly cover the many fascinating and important insights contained in what is one of the most frightening and revealing books I have ever read. As the title suggests, its main purpose is to reveal the little known details of the historical development of modern schooling.
Along the way, Mr. Gatto makes it increasingly clear that school’s primary goal is not the education of our children. The author builds his argument for this seemingly counter-intuitive claim with an incredible array of research that documents the interlocking development of big business and forced schooling. He painstakingly points out how the captains of industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - when the basic structures of the education system were being set down - influenced, guided, funded, and at times forced compulsory schooling into the mainstream of American society. Perhaps you’ll recognize their names: Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, to mention just a few.
Mr. Gatto argues that these emerging corporate titans knew they needed three things in order for their interests to thrive: 1) compliant employees; 2) a guaranteed and dependent population; and 3) a predictable business environment encompassed by a rigid, caste-like social hierarchy of haves and have-nots. It is toward these ends - and not education - that modern compulsory schooling was unleashed.
Mr. Gatto states that America at the time of the birth of modern schooling, however, was a place antithetical to the stated goals of big business. Business was largely conducted by individuals, on a small-scale, within the context of thriving villages or neighborhoods. Proprietors, employees, and customers shared their lives and fates, at least to some extent, with one another. There was no room for (nor inclination towards) the kind of manipulation and control imbedded in the intentions of big business outlined above.
The author places a strong emphasis in this equation on the individual, on the entrepreneur in control of himself and his livelihood. This is an important part of Mr. Gatto’s argument for why and how compulsory schooling was inflicted upon our society. By way of example, Mr. Gatto details the lives of archetypal Americans like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, who were independent, free-thinking leaders, none of whom spent more than two years in any kind of school, and yet all were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens. Mr. Gatto argues that big business knew that the development of these kinds of individuals needed to be hindered. They were too unpredictable and insufficiently pliable.
What better way to accomplish this shadowy goal than by removing children from the steadying influences of their families, and placing them instead in the hands of schools, where they could be easily molded into the kinds of people upon whom big business depended. Just in case parents were unwilling to comply, the powers that be committed school attendance into law.
The phenomenon we now call school did not unfold in a vacuum, however, or as neatly as described above. There were many other social and ideological influences that fed and accelerated the process of mandatory state schooling. For example, enforced government schooling represented the solution to another emerging impediment to the formation of a corporate consumer economy - the arrival of waves of immigrants who likewise needed to be cured of their unpredictable natures and homogenized into American life.
In addition, popular ideologies of the time such as Social Darwinism and the race-based science of eugenics were busy claiming that certain people were inherently better than others, thus providing an intellectual underpinning for the intervention into the lives of everyone. Such an intrusion like forced schooling could be justified because it was believed that the best should wield power over the rest, and lead the the caste-bound masses to happiness under the enlightened and benevolent guidance of the elite.
In unwinding the complex intricacies of issues such as these, Mr. Gatto shows us the gift of his unique intellect. He is adept throughout at making complex, well-argued connections, all the while warning against indulging in conspiracy thinking. Instead he shows us with a forceful diplomacy and unbending fairness that the founders of forced schooling were operating on false assumptions and incorrect theories of humanity and society. These social falsehoods by which we still live, knowingly or not, need to be exposed rationally and attacked head-on, tactics that would only be undermined by the resignation-tinged claims of conspiracy.
No review of this book would be complete without paying tribute to the ways in which we get to know Mr. Gatto through our reading. He tells us the wonderful success stories of some of his students, revealing how easily, with a little help and compassion, young people can overcome the worst circumstances. He also details the horrible ways he was persecuted for his creativity and ingenuity by the schools in which he taught. Finally, in one of the most touching sections, called “A Personal Interlude,” Mr. Gatto relives his childhood with us. Here the author’s storyline and characters are worthy of a first-rate novel, the writing at times bordering on poetry.
All of this reinforces the authenticity and integrity of Mr. Gatto. He is a living example of what he desires for all of our children. He asks only that they be given the opportunity to live and think freely, to grow organically and unhindered, and to thrive as powerful and eclectic examples of insight, knowledge, creativity, and fulfillment - goals that our modern government schools are actively working against and making increasingly less attainable.
In closing, Mr. Gatto leaves us with simple and practical options for weakening the hold schools have on our lives. First, he insists that we refuse to accept the idea of school reform - no amount of tinkering will get us out of this mess. Charter schools, higher standards, rigorous demands on teachers, and smaller class size are all diversions aimed at keeping us from striking at the real heart of the problem. In the end, he argues, the notion of school itself must be challenged.
Second, he urges us to “break the hold of fear” and resist the assumption that school is a necessary component in our lives. It isn’t. You can simply elect not to send your kids to school and join million of other American families that are practicing education at home. Or you can seek out one of the many truly alternative schools that are now in existence.
Thus Mr. Gatto arms us with the knowledge and the confidence to fight back. He shows us how, by staying close to their families, by having the freedom to find their own proficiency and purpose through meaningful play, honest interactions, and self-chosen activities, our children can develop the power to discover for themselves all that they could ever possibly need in order to lead happy, successful lives
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