Gatto did a lot of research to support the thesis that schools are designed to dumb down the populace.
This may simply be jumping on an issue of semantics, but I’m concerned that this is really what he did, rather than doing a lot of research to find out whether the thesis was correct, or, more ideally, doing a lot of research before promoting the hypothesis to attention at all.
Well you can make wild speculations based off of my semantics or you can read for yourself. You seem to have chosen the former. Please return and clarify if you find his research faulty after you have read his work.
Well, the first link I get when I do the google search you suggested is this, and I’ve read that, but I’m not clear on what research of his you’re expecting me to read. The only work of his that appears to be available online is this, which contains assertions, but does not appear to support them with research as such.
It’s true that I haven’t read John Taylor Gatto’s work beyond that essay and the page you suggested reading yourself, but I was not wildly speculating based on semantics, I was making an educated guess considering that this is how people ordinarily behave. I assign a much higher prior to someone, say, hearing that the American school system is inspired by the Prussian system, which was largely concerned with producing good citizen-soldiers, and concluding that the American system must be deliberately designed to stymy creative thought, and looking for more evidence to back up that assertion, than I do to someone deciding to find out what the intentions behind the American school system are, doing extensive research, and concluding that its programs are actually purpose-designed to dumb down the populace.
What little work of his that I’ve found accessible online certainly doesn’t shift me away from that assessment.
This may simply be jumping on an issue of semantics, but I’m concerned that this is really what he did, rather than doing a lot of research to find out whether the thesis was correct, or, more ideally, doing a lot of research before promoting the hypothesis to attention at all.
Well you can make wild speculations based off of my semantics or you can read for yourself. You seem to have chosen the former. Please return and clarify if you find his research faulty after you have read his work.
Well, the first link I get when I do the google search you suggested is this, and I’ve read that, but I’m not clear on what research of his you’re expecting me to read. The only work of his that appears to be available online is this, which contains assertions, but does not appear to support them with research as such.
It’s true that I haven’t read John Taylor Gatto’s work beyond that essay and the page you suggested reading yourself, but I was not wildly speculating based on semantics, I was making an educated guess considering that this is how people ordinarily behave. I assign a much higher prior to someone, say, hearing that the American school system is inspired by the Prussian system, which was largely concerned with producing good citizen-soldiers, and concluding that the American system must be deliberately designed to stymy creative thought, and looking for more evidence to back up that assertion, than I do to someone deciding to find out what the intentions behind the American school system are, doing extensive research, and concluding that its programs are actually purpose-designed to dumb down the populace.
What little work of his that I’ve found accessible online certainly doesn’t shift me away from that assessment.