[Karen]

John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

American Education History Tour
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm

Snippet from:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto
New Society Publishers, 1992

I. A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other
day:

"What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest
idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn't
idiosyncratic -- that this is some system to it all and it's not just
raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That's the task, to
understand, to make coherent."

Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion.
Everything I teach is out of context... I teach the unrelating of
everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of
planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural
drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests,
fire drills, computer languages, parent's nights, staff-development
days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers you may never see
again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the
outside world... what do any of these things have to do with each
other?