Perhaps one ought to querry Mr. Gattto?
By John Taylor Gatto
The government began to compel us all to send our children to school in 1952 in the state of Massachusetts, and from that state the compulsion spread south, west, and north. But did you know that in 1818, 34 years before compulsion laws began, Noah Webster estimated that over 5 MILLION copies of his Spelling Book had been sold? That's pretty good in a population of under 20 million, don't you think? And every purchase decision was made freely, by an individual or a family, and there were no federal, state or city tabs to run bulk purchases on -- each decision was made privately, and in each somebody forked over some cash to buy a book.
That would seem to suggest that most folks don't have to be compelled to learn, they do it on their own, because they want to.
Here's another 5 million copy fact. Did you know that between 1813 and 1823, a fellow named Water Scott sold 5 million copies of his novels in the United States? That would be about equal to a writer selling 60 million books today, but we all know that could never happen. the puzzle becomes even denser when you pick up a Walter Scott novel and try to read it. Let me quote from the opening of Quentin Durward, published in 1823, and read by a lot of kids back then?
"The latter part of the fifteenth century prepared a train of future events that ended by raising France to that state of formidable power which has ever since been the principal object of jealousy to the other European nations. Before that period she had to struggle for her very existence with the English, already possessed of her fairest provinces, while the utmost exertions of the King, and the gallantry of her people, could scarcely protect the remainder from a foreign yoke. Nor was this her sole danger..."
That's pretty heady stuff, isn't it? I've never read an adequate explanation in John Dewey how an unschooled agricultural mob could manage such material, but I assure you the sales figures are accurate and drawn from the research of a well-respected American historian, Merle Curti. And remember, there was no compulsion then so the readers had to pretty much want to tackle stuff like that in between plowing and strangling the chicken.
It seems almost unfair to tell you that there was another writer beloved of common Americans before we had government compulsion schools, but there was; he was a man from upstate New York who sold millions and millions of books, and who currently has a box-office bonanza movie on the boards called "The Last of the Mohicans." His name was James Fenimore Cooper and he wrote material like this for ignorant, unschooled Americans:
The incidents of this tale occurred between the years 1740 and 1745, when the settled portions of the colony of New York were confined to the four Atlantic counties, a narrow belt of country on each side of the Hudson, extending from the mouth of the falls near its head, and to a few advanced "neighborhoods" on the Mohawk and the Schoharie...A birds eye view of the whole region east of the Mississippi must then have offered one vast expanse of woods, relieved by a comparatively narrow fringe of cultivation along the seas... In such a vast region of solemn solitude..."
Well, I'm sure you get the picture. Such attention to detail would take an ambitious college professor to attend to these days, a mere lecturer wouldn't have the span of attention for it. A transplanted Englishman, John Bristed, wrote in 1818 that the mass of Americans excelled every other people in the world in shrewdness of intellect, general intelligence, versatility and readiness to experiment with untried things. William Cobbett on his return to America in 1817 observed that every farmer was a reader, unlike the European peasant. How on earth did that come to pass and why isn't it true in our well-schooled era?
You and I are confronted with a great mystery: we had a perfectly literate country before 1852 when, for the first time, we got government schooling shoved down our throats. How we achieved this amazing literacy is wrapped up in the secret that reading, writing and numbers are very easy to learn -- in spite of what you hear from the reading, writing and number establishments. We aren't in the mess we're in today because we don't know how to do things right, but because "we" don't want to do them right. The incredibly profitable school enterprise has deliberately selected a procedure of literacy acquisition which is pedagogically bankrupt; thousands of years ago Socrates predicted this would happen if men were paid for teaching. He said they would make what is easy to learn seem difficult, and what is mastered rapidly they would stretch out over a long time.
The first thing that an effective system of school choice would demonstrate is that our children have been held captive by a method of literacy transmission that ignores reality -- and makes a very large fortune each year doing so. Eventually, with choice, the present system would run head-on into efficient competition that would destroy it. That would be inevitable because profitability would vanish once literacy is managed correctly.
----- Original Message -----
From: Reinhold Schlieper
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 12:54 PM
Subject: Re: IN ANSWER TO GRETCHEN'S QUESTION
I wonder whether there are not a few wrong assumptions here. While I'm
no historian and will readily run from having to memorize dates and
numbers, I am fairly certain nonetheless that at 1850 and earlier,
education was geared to the aristocratic and wealthy elite that had the
leisure to devote to studies and to furnishing the mind. Comparing a
modern broadly based educational system with that system of home tutors
and spoiled rich kids seems not quite fair, I'd think. Suppose you try
to figure in the relative literacy of slaves, indentured servants,
workers, folks just off the boat, etc. at that time.
==Reinhold
You and I are confronted with a great mystery: we had a perfectly
literate country before 1852 when, for the first time, we got government
schooling shoved down our throats. How we achieved this amazing literacy
is wrapped up in the secret that reading, writing and numbers are very
easy to learn-- in spite of what you hear from the reading, writing and
number establishments. We aren't in the mess we're in today because we
don't know how to do things right, but because "we" don't want to do
them right. The incredibly profitable school enterprise has deliberately
selected a procedure of literacy acquisition which is pedagogically
bankrupt; thousands of years ago Socrates predicted this would happen if
men were paid for teaching. He said they would make what is easy to
learn seem difficult, and what is mastered rapidly they would stretch
out over a long time.
http://www.oz.net/~baraka/jtg4.htm
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