Beware the True Believers

As a follow-up to the two disturbing intrusions of governments into family affairs that we blogged about recently (the jailing of a homeless Connecticut woman for lying about her place of residence in order to get her son into a better school and the forced enrollment in state daycare of two Quebec preschoolers), I offer the perspective of John Taylor Gatto as laid out in his magnum opus Underground History of American Education: An intimate investigation into the prison of modern schooling.

Mr. Gatto, former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year, explains that the concept of universal public schooling arose from a utopian strain of thought that was dominant about 150 years ago. Pointing out that America was susceptible to utopian thought from early on, he writes “The very thinness of constituted authority, the high percentage of males as colonists - homeless, orphaned, discareded, marginally attached, uprooted males - encouraged dreams of a better time to come.” As Mr. Gatto points out, “the overwhelming number of prominent social reformers since Plato have been childless, usually childless men”.

Between 1830 and 1900, there were more than 1000 utopian colonies in the US, all of which sought to break with the past by isolating their children and inculcating in them the correct new way of things. None of these utopian colonies succeeded, by the way, which says something.

Anyway, Mr. Gatto goes on to warn of true believers who, he writes, “are all around the history of schooling, thick as gulls at a garbage dump.” Quoting an Atlanta elementary school principal who said, “I’m not sure you ever get to the point you have enough technology; we just believe so fervently in it”, he warns “It’s that panting excitement you want to keep an eye out for, that exaggerated belief in human perfectibility”. 

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