Samuel L. Blumenfeld – Lew Rockwell
John Gatto has talked about his new book – in progress for years. And we’ve all waited for it patiently. It was delayed by the original publisher. But finally, it’s done and about to hit American culture with an incredible wallop. John sent me a pre-publication edition, and it has taken me weeks to read all of it. And you have to read it all, because you just don’t want to miss a word. That’s the way John writes, as if he’s standing next to you and talking into your ear. And then, I shall probably read it over and over again. It’s a breathtaking, sweeping view of what compulsory schooling has done to America.
And it’s more. John Taylor Gatto is much more than New York State’s Former Teacher of the Year. He is a philosopher who is probing into the depths of our American civilization and finding answers that no one else could have possibly dreamed of. And it is obvious that he loves America because he writes with such passion and humor, especially when he writes about growing up in western Pennsylvania on the banks of the Monongahela or about his adventures in the classrooms of Manhattan. The title of his book is The Underground History of American Education. A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into The Problem of Modern Schooling.
What makes the occasion of this book so special is the knowledge that only an American could have written it. George Santayana wrote in 1920, “To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.” John is so thoroughly American in his ability to analyze and understand what has happened to this country. His knowledge is intimate, profound, and accurate. He understands fully the anatomy of our educational-industrial complex, which is far more dangerous than the military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned us about. After all, what does the military-industrial complex produce? Guns, tanks, airplanes, battleships, bombs – inanimate objects which the government is supposed to use only when we are threatened. Most Americans are quite content to have all of this stuff as insurance against our enemies but not have to use it. But Madeline Albright, eager to bomb Belgrade, told the generals: “What good is having all this stuff if you never use it?” What she didn’t understand is that not using it is the whole point about having it. So she and her NATO colleagues invented a war so that they could use it.
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