Posthuman Blues

Dumbing Us Down: An Interview With John Taylor Gatto

Gatto:

The primary objective is to convert human raw material into human resources which can be employed efficiently by the managers of government and the economy. The original purposes of schooling were to make good people (the religious purpose), to make good citizens (the public purpose) and to make individuals their personal best (the private purpose). Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command.

I first encountered the work of John Taylor Gatto in "Meshuggah!," a New York zine that published some of my early stories. If you haven't read "Dumbing Us Down," I highly recommend it. It will make you mad. It will positively terrify you. But you'll be the better for it.