A Good Read.

This author has some very thought provoking things to say about public schooling. I really enjoyed the entire book but will make a small note on chapter 2 titled The Psychopathic School. He states how "our nation ranks at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations of reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the very bottom!" (pg. 20, p. 2). John states how "two institutions control" modern day children's lives: television and schooling and how these two institutions diminish "real world wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a never-ending, nonstop abstraction" (pg. 25, p. 1). He then brakes down a typical public school students week into hours concluding that by the time all the demands of compulsory schooling are subtracted from the 168 hours they have also taking into consideration the time spent on those things to sustain life such as eating and sleep, the child is left with an whopping nine hours a week for private time. He states that we are creating a people dependent, "unable to fill their own hour, unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure to their existence. It's a national disease, this dependency and aimlessness (pg. 26, p.1). He then goes on to discuss the effect he has witnessed in his students over his 20 plus years of teaching that forcing the children to spend their time on the above such abstractions. Very enlightening.