{"id":261,"date":"2005-08-13T20:50:25","date_gmt":"2005-08-13T20:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/?p=261"},"modified":"2010-05-08T20:50:51","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T20:50:51","slug":"dumbing-us-down-creating-permanently-dissatisfied-consumers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/dumbing-us-down-creating-permanently-dissatisfied-consumers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumbing Us Down: Creating Permanently Dissatisfied Consumers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Monopoly schooling is the major cause of our loss of national and  individual identity. It has institutionalized the division of social  classes and acted as an agent of caste\u2014repugnant to our founding myths  and to the reality of our founding period. Its strength arises from many  quarters, the antichild, antifamily stream of history for one\u2014but it  draws its greatest power from being a natural adjunct to the kind of  commercial economy we have that requires permanently dissatisfied  consumers.&#8221; (John Taylor Gatto,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=mjtate-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/0865714487\/qid=1123213605\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1?v=glance%26s=books%26n=507846\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\">Dumbing Us Down<\/span><\/a>, pp. 100-101)<\/p>\n<p>This quote is the last of my notes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=mjtate-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/0865714487\/qid=1123213605\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1?v=glance%26s=books%26n=507846\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><em>Dumbing Us Down<\/em><\/span><\/a>. Nothing like going  out with a bang, eh?<\/p>\n<p>I suppose the connection between institutional school and creating  permanently dissatisfied consumers has to do with the typical nature of  such schooling as requiring consumption rather than production.\u00a0  Teachers dish out the Recommended Daily Allowance of information for the  consumption of passive students. Sure there&#8217;s the occasional term  paper, and I imagine and hope there are some exceptions to this sweeping  characterization, yet filling buckets rather than lighting fires (to  paraphrase Yeats) seems to be the usual modus operandi of insitutional  schooling.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to hear your comments on this connection.<\/p>\n<p>Mary Jo<\/p>\n<p>lighting my children&#8217;s fires at home in Mississippi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Monopoly schooling is the major cause of our loss of national and individual identity. It has institutionalized the division of social classes and acted as an agent of caste\u2014repugnant to our founding myths and to the reality of our founding period. Its strength arises from many quarters, the antichild, antifamily stream of history for one\u2014but &#8230; <a title=\"Dumbing Us Down: Creating Permanently Dissatisfied Consumers\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/dumbing-us-down-creating-permanently-dissatisfied-consumers\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Dumbing Us Down: Creating Permanently Dissatisfied Consumers\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}