The Fourth Purpose
Mashed by Pat Darnell | July 18, 2013 | Bryan TX
While experts carry on about the "enigma of compulsory education" in the USA, John Taylor Gatto is making a documentary about it. Our education drama is a spoiler because Education is paid for by public funds, and free to all the children. If it were not "free," believe me, parents and children would fight in the streets for the chance to go to school.
Deciding on how to spend the mountain of money that is our public education system has become an accountant's trick. Our politicians who pose as school administrators parlay all day long on "problems of our school system in terms of engineering solutions—longer school days, Phonics vs. Whole Word, merit pay for teachers, metal detectors, bigger districts, smaller class size."
The article suggests that we have lost any real purpose of education: "if the first three purposes are to create good people, good citizens, and good lives, as history suggests, then why have we allowed the Managerial Fourth Purpose to dominate what is really occurring in our 100,000 school buildings?. (2000-2003 The Odysseus Group. LINK) ..." Sometimes it seems the purpose of education is to produce non-voting taxpayers, and that's all.
In 1991, Mr. Gatto resigned from teaching in New York because "He didn't want to harm children anymore." We think that those who have fought the good fight of American education, and lost battles, usually tend to their wounds by writing an expose on the system. One of these whistle-blowers should have by now produced the definitive rebuttal to our Public Education debacle.
(2000-2003 The Odysseus Group. LINK)John Taylor Gatto Biography: "Gatto's office is in New York City, his home in Oxford, New York, where he is currently at work on a documentary film about the nature of modern schooling entitled The Fourth Purpose, with his friend and former student, Roland Legiardi-Laura. For more information about this film, visit The Fourth Purpose.
" ... The Fourth Purpose, a 3-part, 6-hour documentary series will be the first film to ask this fundamental question. The series will tackle the American school system: present, past, and future—its anomalies, its history, and the alternatives. The idea is to throw a bucket of ice-cold water in the faces of pundits, experts, and bureaucrats. The intention is to radically shift the context within which people view schooling by offering a ‘unified field theory’ of how and why our school system is so deeply dysfunctional. And then, once we have everyone’s attention, to show what people might do about it. ... "
Gatto has been married for forty years to the same woman, and has two grown children and a cat. He hopes to build a rural retreat and library for the use of families pondering local and personal issues of school reform. John is available as a speaker. "
'via Blog this'
_______________________Reference
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/aboutus/john.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/fourthpurpose/short.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/fourthpurpose/index.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/fourthpurpose/1.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/fourthpurpose/gatto2.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/retreat/index.htm
http://www.empowernetwork.com/paris1971/blog/the-ultimate-history-lesson-an-interview-with-john-taylor-gatto/
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