"Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history"

This just knocked me out.  I was stunned.

Citing the 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey, Gatto in his book "Underground History of American Education," reports only 3.5 percent of Americans are literate enough today "to do traditional college study, a level 30 percent of all U.S. high school students reached in 1940, and which 30 percent of secondary students in other developed countries can reach today."

Locking a nation into permanent childhood by Vin Suprynowicz  via phi beta cons

When New York's Teacher of the Year resigned in 1991, John Taylor Gatto  sat down and wrote an essay for  the Wall St Journal saying he was "tired of working for an institution that crippled the ability of children to learn"

"Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history," Mr. Gatto begins. "It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.
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"David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can't tell which one learned first -- the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel 'learning disabled' and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won't outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, 'special education' fodder. She'll be locked in her place forever.

If there any wonder why  home-schooling is so popular and effective when public schools are a "Prussian system of coercive schooling ill-suited to a free people".

"Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be 're-formed.'