Have I already asked you about your opinion on John Taylor Gatto?

This is pretty good:

-Baruch

As for John Taylor Gatto, from this forwarded material I have the following impressions:

1. I recall reading a slim book of his about dumbing down of American school children in the early 1990s. Speaking of this to family and friends brought scorn and still does. Most Americans I know have a religious belief in the universal good of public schooling. I also believe that Gatto is naïve in his belief that public education could ever by good for the cultivation of a quality individual—I find public education to be pro-democratic and anti aristocratic, as Gatto and I have opposite views of aristocracy, with his view based in materialism as is the general view and mine based in heroism. In my mind, democracy is a universal evil and aristocracy is soon consumed by oligarchy which is the natural steering mechanism of democracy. At 42 minutes of the 2nd video, Gatto says something about front-loading and risk that I absolutely agree with.

2. Despite my view of liberalism as toxically domesticating and emasculating, I largely agree with Gatto’s views as to the use of educational systems for human domestication and cognitive and creative suppression, rather than enlightenment, as expressed in these interviews. In fact, I regard education as mind control and deny that such systems can be maintained for the good, only for the bad. This was not arrived at on my part by thinking or reasoning, but rather as an outgrowth of my irrational and extreme antisocial antipathy toward such systems. It is a relief sometimes, to plough through the muck of the low road and find oneself arriving at the same destination as one who took the high road. So, my views here are subjective.

At 45 minutes of the 2nd video Gatto gets going on a higher level with his discussion of engineering giving way to finance in business, with creation giving over to parasitism.

The third hour, right off the bat, with the discussion of justified sin and truth, literacy, plantation era publishing verses postmodern publishing is my favorite.

Thanks, Baruch