John Taylor Gatto - What is the Purpose of Education?

Lets start five centuries ago when John Calvin, who seemed to me the most influential theologian of the last fifteen hundred years. Calvin says clearly that the damned are many times larger in number than the saved. The ratio is about twenty to one. There are too many damned to overwhelm with force. So you have to cloud their minds and set them into meaningless competitions with one another in ways that will eat up that energy.


Jump from Calvin to a thoroughly secular philosopher in Amsterdam, Benedict Spinoza who published a book in 1670 that had a huge influence on the leadership classes of Europe, the United States and Asia. Its called Tractate Religico Politicu.


In it he said it was nonsense to think people were damned or evil because there was no supernatural world. He also said there's an enormous disproportion between permanently irrational people who are absolutely dangerous and the people who have good sense. The ratio is about twenty to one.


Spinoza actually says that an institutional school system should be set up as a civil religion. Its a term you find common in early colonial writing because everyone read Spinoza, all over the planet.


He said we need a civil religion for two reasons. One, to eliminate official religion, which he says is completely irrational and dangerous. And two, to bind up the energies of these irrational twenty to one and to destroy their imagination.


In all but words said the same thing as Calvin, but Spinoza said it flatly. We have to destroy the imagination because its only through the imagination that the maximum damage is unleashed. Otherwise people can struggle against the chains, maybe even cause local damage, but they cant do much harm to the fundamental structure because they cant think outside of the box.


Jump from Spinoza in 1670 to Johann Fichte in Northern Germany in 1807, 1808, 1809, where the very first successful institutional schooling in the history of the planet, was established.


Ficthe says in his famous Addresses to the German Nation, that the reason Prussia suffered a catastrophic defeat against Napoleon at Jena was because order was turned on its head by ordinary solders taking decisions into their hands.


He called for a national system of training that would make it impossible for underlings to imagine any other way to do things. A decade later Prussia had the first institutional form of mass schooling on the planet.


In 1820 we have Darwin saying that people are biologically fixed in classes and there's nothing you can do about it. Every one of these people, in a sense, is saying that what we call education isn't even possible. What we call education is romantic nonsense.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• John Taylor Gatto
• Education
• Dumbing Down
• Spinoza
• John Calvin
• Immanuel Kant
• Johann Fichte

[khaadimone]

Excellent. Your view count here should be in the tens of thousands.

Peace!

[globalbeehive]

@khaadimone - I think we'll get there, eventually. Thanks for stopping by.

[asubjectiveopinion]

@regresseur

TLDR

[regresseur]

@asubjectiveopinion You've called dubious behavior on a guy who by any measure would seem about as virtuous and well-meaning as anyone here and now in the 21st century. As to plagiarism, you were aware that he's done over 2 decades of intense research on the relevant issues, yes? You also neglected to name these leftist thinkers, as well as the specific ideas you claimed he plagiarized. The insinuation about dubious behavior is in itself conspiracy theory, so nice irony there

[cybersphere]

@asubjectiveopinion He gives his books and interviews away for free. Not everyone is motivated by money

[kozychik]

Oh, God! He's describing me! This is so upsetting. I guess I was the perfect student. (poor me)

Not any more. I'm done with blaming, leaving the pity party, and learning some problem solving skills! I can do it.

[Games4Dummies]

@asubjectiveopinion oh, sorry then :)

[asubjectiveopinion]

@Games4Dummies

Sorry, you misunderstand, I'm not saying that what he says about the educational system is wrong, I'm very much in favour of deschooling.

What I was trying to say, clumsily, was that he has taken the ideas of two left-wing thinkers and repackaged them for sale to a more right-leaning audience which consists of a great many conspiracy theorists if one judges by the comments his videos receive.

I agree with the facts, but find his political perspective troubling.

[Games4Dummies]

@asubjectiveopinion its not conspiracy, its todays modern education flaws

[asubjectiveopinion]

So this guy is a conspiracy theorist who has plagarised Ivan Illych and John Holt in order to sell their ideas to the right?

That's a really clever idea, I bet he's made a packet.