[xoxoxoBruce]

Gatto is full of shit.

But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who reads, writes or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of talkers, we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most, and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and schoolteachers. It is very difficult to teach the "basics" anymore because they really aren't basic to the society we've made.

What? To be able to read, write and cipher are not the very basics of a good education? Bullshit, everything you do will be based on those abilities.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880's when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

While he may be technically right he distorts the picture.
Prior to this, the town owned schools taught the three Rs and about life, both good and evil, by teaching Protestant Christian Bible lessons. Why not, that's what the all were.

In 1848, the city marshall of Boston was ordered to find out how many truants and vagrants there were in Boston. He found 1,066 children between the ages of 6 and 16 who were either vagrant or truant Considering the fact that in 1849 the total enrollment in Boston's public schools was 20,589, the truants amounted to about 5%. In other words, without compulsory attendance laws, 95% of the city's children were attending school.

That 5% were the influx(1840s) of Irish Catholic kids whose families didn't want the kids subject to protestant schools even after the religious part had been removed. They also, being poor immigrants, wanted the kids out hustling to help the family survive. The rest of the state was more like the immigrants, in they expected by their work ethic, every member of the family to be contributing. Life wasn't easy for the majority of the New England rock farmers, and spending money for a school and teacher to take the kids away from their chores didn't settle well....even for 90 days a year.

The idea that every kid be given a free education regardless of social/financial status, is one of the best things that happened in America.

Over the years the school year has doubled, the mandatory attendance age has climbed and the schools have become daycare until you can ship the off to college...or war. Why? How did this happen?

The parents, in pursuit of the American dream, lost interest in raising their children. They sub-contracted to teachers, in place of wet nurses and nannies, and pretended their lives were enriched.... pretended they were rich.

But they were really poorer.