still reading...

...Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto.

William Torrey Harris was America's Commissioner of Education for almost 20 years in the late 19th century; he was not some random crank, but someone who had a great deal of influence over our national education standards. That's why I find this comment of his so very interesting:
"The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places..It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world."

How depressing is that?!

I'm more than a little leery of having someone at the national level discuss the "great purpose of school," beyond the purpose of education - or the resources to gain an education.

If school teaches us to "withdraw from the external world" it should NOT be how to withdraw into an alien and airless atmosphere, that's another external world. It is a substitution alone, and a bad one to boot.