I hesitate to write what I am writing, but this is what I feel in my heart, and I can not deny it.
I have been sad lately-or saddened.... My faith in what I thought our country--the America--represented, has been shaken. And this shattering of my youthful naivity has wounded me to the core of my soul. Maybe it is late in coming. I suppose I should be grateful to have awoken at all, as so many others are still unaware they are lost to the system. Much like Neo in The Matrix, I have learned the truth, and I can not go back to the unknowing. Not ever.
Eight years ago, when my husband and I decided that homeschooling was the right choice for our family, I could not have guessed where my research would lead me. It started with the homeschooling books. Then a series of life-events led me to research autism, sensory-processing, and other neurological disorders (and with a mother-in-law in college who did her senior thesis on the Autism Spectrum, I had a chance to look at and study research papers written by doctors from all over the world). After that I began studying learning styles and how the memory receives information, and so forth. I even studied the history of homeschooling, the 'revolutionists', like John Holt, and Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Then I got my hands on John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. He goes into great detail to explain how the whole school and economic system came to exist. And oh what a tangled web it is! So many different threads weaving together the society of a mangled Utopia.
I created a Lens at Squidoo just for this research, it's still a work in progress, as I'm still researching, verifying facts, and such, but it's so fascinating! Here's the link:
Now I see the truth everywhere. And the truth is they created the system to suit what they believed a modern industrial Utopian-society would need. They wanted an army of workers (they call us human resources!) which they could manipulate to suit the needs of the economy. In fact, they prefer us stupid and illiterate, simply because we pose less of a threat to the system-and them (the wealthy elite).
I see it in the people that surround me in every day life. I see it in the news, in the country, in the city. I can't tell you the sorrow I feel for our country. When America was first settled people were thrilled to be free to do as they pleased, to read, to pursue knowledge that had been forbidden or just out-of-reach for them in the old homelands. And so they did. There was a 98% Literacy-rate in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and not just the fourth-grade reading level that is considered literate today. But the 'elite', those of power and wealth, and influence, devised the system (though they did so out of a misguided intention for good), sought to dull-down the American, and today, as we look around, we know they have succeeded.
Anyway, if you want to know more of the details you can read more about it on my squid-lens, also this lens possesses a link to John Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education, which is online in its entirety for free.
I don't know that there's much to be done today to undo this travesty. It seems like a herd of mad elephants running wild, this system. It would take a complete dismantling of this bureaucratic system that has taken on the guise of democracy, and I even feel sad for saying so, because I truly loved my country. Now, how can I?
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