Adolphe Ferrière Quote: The True Critique of the Traditional School System

"The well-known school critic and teacher John Taylor Gatto identifies seven lessons as the real teachings of school: Confusing the student Awakening class consciousness Teaching indifference Creating intellectual and emotional dependence Weakening self-confidence and Accustoming students to constant supervision. "School condemns most people to being lowly building blocks in a pyramidal social model. In collaboration with television, schooling robs children of the time they need to develop a unique personality, thereby preventing them from growing up. School has replaced the ‘family curriculum’ with the components of privacy, independence, and social life. In its place has come the factory school, a prison for children's souls that fragments social relationships into networks and cannot be survived without damage." "It replaces the intellectual growth of children with the violent creation of subjects. It kills the curiosity of its subjects, places them in a dense fog of confusion from which many will never be able to free themselves in their entire lives, it blocks their path to individual freedom and denies them the fulfillment that comes with a free spirit."" John Taylor Gatto

"Ideally, every child throughout their entire schooling should be repeatedly told: "You are being indoctrinated. We have yet to develop an education system that is not an indoctrination system. We are sorry, but this is the best we can do. What is taught here is a mixture of common prejudices and the decisions of this particular culture. The slightest glance at history shows how unstable these must be. You are taught by people who were able to fit into a thought pattern set by their predecessors. It is a self-sustaining system. Those among you who are more robust and individual than others are encouraged to leave the classroom and find ways to educate yourselves – to form your own judgments. Those who stay must constantly remember that they are being shaped and patterned to fit the narrow and special needs of this particular society."" Doris Lessing