Thank You John Taylor Gatto
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John Taylor Gatto: [00:00:00] School was intended on this continent to be, as it had been in Northern Germany, a fifth column into the burgeoning libertarian condition where disenfranchised and oppressed groups were clamoring for some kind of seat at the bargaining table. School was to be a surgical incision into which the class based management theories of England were to be inserted to interdict the Liberty traditions.

England's multilayered social class. Is simply a modern day representation of Julius. Caesar's advice that when you're overwhelmed by the enemy, you divide them [00:01:00] and conquer them that way. By setting them against the trial, the method was to be by infiltration, into the minds of children, out of sight of their parents.

The well-read here will, won't be shocked. Theorist from Plato to Russo to Frederick of Prussia knew and taught explicitly that if children could be kept childish beyond its term in nature. If they could be cloistered in a society of children without any real responsibility, except a BDM. If their inner lives could be attenuated by removing the insights of history, literature, philosophy, economics, religion, if the imminence of death and the certainty of pain and law.

It can be removed from daily consciousness. If the profound reflections on one's own death could be replaced with the [00:02:00] trivializing emotions, read envy, jealousy, and fear. Young people would grow older, but they would never grow up and a great enduring problem of supervision. Would be solved for who can argue against the truth.

The childish and childlike people are far easier to manage and critically trained self-reliant once. And now you're ready to hear the six purposes of modern schooling taken directly. From Dr. Inglis's book. The first function of schooling is a justice schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to a third party.

That's fixed habits area. Notice that this precludes critical judgment, complete. Notice too, that requiring a BDO once too stupid orders is a much [00:03:00] better test the function one than following sensible orders ever could be. You don't know whether people are reflectively a BDN unless they'll March right off the cliff.

Second is the diagnostic function. School is to determine each student's. Social role logging the evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records, you probably thought that that the kid, parents or neighbors or the region circumstances, no school is to determine your proper social role in there to fix you in that role.

Mathematically. On their cumulative records. Next comes the sorting function. School sorts children by training individuals only so far is their likely [00:04:00] destination in the social machine. Not one step beyond. Keep them on your. Listening to John Gatto. You're listening to the man for whom we honor lecture in education at Harvard.

His name, the fourth function is conformity as much as possible. Kids who to be made alike, whatever the background they come from there to be made of. This is not done from any passion for a Galatarian ideals, but so that their future behavior will be mathematically predictable in service to market research and government research.

Next. The hygienic function. This one's my faith. This has nothing to do with individual health, but it has a lot to do [00:05:00] with the health of the race. At least his English or Darwin, or his first cousin golden saw it. Hygiene is a polite way of saying that school is expected to accelerate. Natural selection by tagging the unfit.

So clearly that's what all those little humiliations from first grade on that's what all the posted list of ranked grades are about. So clearly that the unfit will drop from the reproduction sweepstakes either in despair or because they're likely mates. Have accepted the school's judgment of them as terminally inferior.

And last last comes a fancy Latin word. The probe by duty function. That's a fancy word. That a small fraction of lucky kids will quietly be taught [00:06:00] how to take over management of this continuing project guardians of a population deliberately dumbed down and rendered childlike in order that government and economic life can be managed with a minimum of half.

It's that low down nitty gritty common purpose, not marks is Gran warfare between classes and greedy captains of industry. It's simply so that management will have a minimum of hassle.

I could say where we're heading based on an engineer's read of where we are now, and it's not pleasant on the other hand. I have noticed over the [00:07:00] course of what's now a long life, I have noticed no system of management in human history. No matter how dominant, or how insightful, about controlling other people has managed to survive every single one of them disintegrates

Brett Veinotte: How many teachers reluctantly acknowledged the failure of mass compulsory schooling? How many become disheartened, but then relegate themselves to a quiet conformity? How many hunt for villains, but simply wind up sniffling behind the closed doors of the teacher's lounge, choosing to blame students and parents? [00:08:00] If you've ever worked in or around the public schools, or even if you've simply endured 15,000 hours, you're likely able to form some rough estimates for these questions yet. How powerful is the voice of a teacher with the conviction to take action and speak out in 1991 at the Dawn of the information age, John Taylor Gatto was named New York state teacher of the year. And within months of receiving that recognition, he resigned quite publicly in the op-ed section of the wall street journal.

At this time, John was in his mid fifties. He had a family. You had little savings and he resided on the notoriously, not affordable island of Manhattan. It was a bold move to say the least, but it marked the beginning of a beautiful new career in education. His public resignation letter titled "I Quit, I Think" identified the box in which schooling had been perpetually stuck, and then [00:09:00] outlined his reasons for stepping out of that box after 30 often trying, but ultimately successful years, it was a particularly noteworthy set of revelations from a voice that spoke from deep inside the system.

In addition to receiving the state's highest recognition for an educator, John was a three decade veteran, and a graduate of the prestigious Columbia teachers college. Fortunately for us, he managed to escape Columbia with his respect for humanity, still intact, a little research on some of the figures and ideas that emerged from Columbia Teachers College reveals that such a survival is a feat in itself. And that respect for humanity was present throughout John's letter. As he expressed his concerns about a system that consistently harmed children by teaching them to merely adjust and conform to the corrupt and confused world that existed beyond the school walls.

He recounted his role as a servant of the religious idea that [00:10:00] schools perpetuate that human genius, talent and personal power are all incredibly scarce. Take a moment to ponder how such an idea might impact a national pedagogy. And there was no happy ending. According to John, there would be no meaningful revolution or even reform.

But intense school reform debate had raged through the previous decade. Some of it instigated by the Reagan administration's investigation into eliminating the federal department of education. So by 1991, many wall street journal readers must have been asking themselves with so many apparent failures.

Why is there so little change? John continued his examination of what he boldly referred to as government school, by confronting readers with a brief Chronicle of what he called the most radical adventure in human history and adventure, ultimately resulting in a system tailored to maintain equilibrium for the powerful interests it had come to benefit.[00:11:00] Readers then face the troubling conclusion that the existing structure had not been set up maintained or expanded with the thoughtful, caring or courageous educator in mind. Even if they manage to overlook the moral questions John had raised about schooling, they still had to accept the inference that resigning was preferable to enduring the frustration and disgust it surely would have followed any further attempts at disruption or reform. The title.

I quit, period, I think is easily interpreted as I quit, because I think which is a clever play on words, but don't all educators think? Don't we all engage in evaluation. Ask questions about what we see and contemplate a better path? Indeed. So why don't more of us speak or act?. John provided the answer to the last question throughout the op-ed.

After surviving 12 years inside the schools he described too many of us are left feeling like we're incapable of bold and meaningful action. We've [00:12:00] been subjected to subtle, but relentless lessons in deference to authority, dependence, conformity, and obedience lessons that aggregate into an intellectual and moral apathy.

As the finished products of this schooling process, we've gone on to staff, the professions, social services, law enforcement, the corporate world. And of course the schools themselves, most of us who choose to teach are quite comfortable commiserating with coworkers about the burdens of our jobs. But few will confront our discomforts about the nature and purpose of our work.

We have been trained to simply go along to get along. Consequently making anyone who doesn't acquiesce appear dangerously maladjusted by comparison, we are capable of identifying problems and desiring solutions, but it's usually a quiet and personal process, often interrupted and terminated by denial or rationalization.

We resign ourselves to working or surviving within the system. Thus, the schools are a world of quiet suffering for [00:13:00] children and adults alike. Through demoralizing training and experience. Most teachers become safe and manageable, and we work often unconsciously to render our students in a similar fashion.

Fortunately, Mr. Gatto would prove to be an exception and he inspired many others to cut their own divergent path. As a once aspiring public school teacher, I wish I could have benefited from John's hard, won wisdom sooner. Unfortunately, I missed my first opportunity. My initial encounter with his written work occurred purely by accident about 14 years ago.

As a progressive minded graduate student at a teacher's college in Western Massachusetts, I found myself struggling one evening through the beginning stages of a research project. I forget the exact keywords I entered into ask jeeves.com, but I do recall one of the results seemingly jumped off the screen at me.

The title of the entry: "schools are dumbing us down." Hey, I went to school, I said to myself [00:14:00] also recognizing that I didn't feel incredibly smart and that moment. So I clicked. As the page slowly opened. I hastily scanned it for keywords quickly. Realizing why Mr. Gatto, his insights were certainly not going to appear anywhere in the required reading for my master's degree in education, the webpage provided information about a book, dumbing us down, the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling, which John had published the year after his resignation.

I can't recall most of the details, but I still remember the feeling they create. Discomfort having read the book years later, I know that my idealistic young mind was rattled by his arguments. Schools transform us from curious, creative, confident children into a different dependent, confused approval addicted young adults, a decade long journey from energetic optimism to frustrated resignation after a couple of disquieting minutes of skimming and scanning, I hastily concluded that this [00:15:00] radical and almost incomprehensible webpage wasn't.

So I closed the tab and moved along. It was a chance encounter. And one, I wish I had greeted with more time, curiosity, contextual knowledge and critical thinking. But like I said, I was a progressive minded college student. What I didn't realize was that this brief encounter with John's iconic classic message was the arming of a kind of time bomb in my mind for years.

At bomb ticked away in close proximity to my ideological comfort zone. All my visions about society's need for benevolent overseers. My dreams of the reforms, those forward-looking managers could manifest, and my enthusiasm for earning my way into the machinery of 21st century public schooling in the end graduate school taught me almost no.

Experience taught me a lot. Over the next four years, I taught in two semi-private institutions in Vermont, then moved on to work as a public school [00:16:00] enforcement agent in the greater Boston area. My official job title was tutor, but my job function was to extend the corrosive school attitudes beyond the final afternoon.

And into the home, I'd spend my evenings and weekends traveling from the home of one well-off overachieving high school student to another, my very presence implying the message I am here because something is wrong with you. I had a terrible revelation during this process that I despised school. I've become accustomed to being greeted at the door by melancholy stress, warm faces.

I become aware that the most rewarding and meaningful connected moments with students occurred when we'd straight away from the school dictated task. At hand, I often found myself biting my tongue with students when they complained about their mundane assignments, uninspiring teachers, and toxic school environments.

The regularity. Of those unrewarding experiences left me questioning the nature of my work and my frustrations would soon return me to [00:17:00] that radical, but increasingly intriguing dumbing down argument. I had accidentally encountered years earlier. The time bond continued to tick in 2007 in the midst of my independent search for answers to the school problem, the bomb exploded.

I was sitting in a public library, waiting for a student, reading an article called against. By John Taylor Gatto after years of field experience, my second encounter with his writing came with more appreciation and understanding the first two sentences of the fifth paragraph produced a final shift in my thinking that lasts to this moment.

Quote, do we really need school? I don't mean education just for schooling unquote. Now I had always assumed those were synonym. But if schooling is not education, which one had I been doing? The unfortunate answer was unavoidable. I realized I never felt [00:18:00] that school was educational. Both my experience as a student and feedback from students as a teacher had proven this to me.

John followed up this provocative question with a rapid fire roll call of accomplished figures that had never spent a day in compulsory government school. Unschooled perhaps, but not uneducated. He explained my confusion turned to understanding. I spent through the remainder of the article. John swiftly moved beyond the distinction between schooling and education to present a trail of breadcrumbs that led me away from notions of a nebulous dumbing down suspicion and towards the understanding of a series of very real, very detailed plans.

Before I finished the article, I accepted that mass public school was no. It was perhaps the most successful government program that had ever existed. So what is school really? What is its actual purpose? The short answer might sound like a bizarre conspiracy theory [00:19:00] spun by right wing radical types.

_*Conspiracy theory*_ is such a convenient means of dismissal for a complacent mind, especially when confronted with the seemingly incomprehensible. After all, how could people like us possibly grasp the elaborate agendas and designs behind mass compulsion schooling?

We're not 19th century Prussian aristocrats looking to expand our kingdom. We've never looked out at the world from the ivory towers of academia. We've probably never even dabbled in social engineering or eugenics. But when you add motive, historical context and primary sources, that conspiracy theory rapidly becomes the only historical narrative that makes any sense at all. These additions represent one of John's greatest contributions as a writer.

Although "Against School" is a brief 3,500 words. It lays out many of the essential whos, whats, wheres, whys, and whens of [00:20:00] public school's dark and largely unknown history. I remember sitting frozen in my seat, reading his interpretation of a 1918 book that outlined the six essential functions secondary school would deliver into the future - training in reflexive obedience, training in conformity, assignment of a social role, assignment of labels and stations. Diminishment and indoctrination. 

I contemplated these nefarious designs on the minds of youth, fully aware that 89 years later, I was sitting in a public library planning to meet three secondary school students that afternoon, all three struggled with school due to an apparent lack of ambition. All three believed the college was the only way to move their lives forward. And two of these students have been diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD. 

At this point, I had already spent a couple of years making a mental collage of school problems. [00:21:00] Now thanks to John and a series of philosophical influences, I began to form a coherent mind map. Through my experiences with John's writing.

I was able to fully grasp that religious idea that schools perpetuate as a result of that perceived scarcity of human genius, talent and personal power American schooling hadn't been developed to encourage children to self-direct. It instead prepared children to accept lifelong management and supervision.

It was a revelation that fit perfectly within my understanding of the history of our civilization as an ongoing story of a small group of people controlling a large group of people by fear, fraud, or force that control achieved by keeping most of the large group ignorant and dependent on the leadership of the smaller group.

Actual religion had proven to be a successful means of management for thousands of years. But eventually it failed to deliver results. And science had to take over John's written works are relentless in the teaching of this lesson with [00:22:00] one historical example after another. And once this has been made explicit, it's impossible to look away.

The affirmation breadcrumb trail might eventually lead the curious mind to another book, the underground history of American education. A book that is continuously proven to be the most valuable resource. In my new educational career, a friend gave me a copy of the underground history of American education.

In 2009. After I had gained some recognition for my anti school pro-education podcast and website, after a quick skim, I prioritize the projection of John's work to a new audience. And fortunately I would not be alone in this continued pursuit. Just two years later. John was featured in the tragedy and hope documentary called the ultimate history lesson a weekend with John Taylor Gatto.

It's a kind of living, breathing version of the underground history book. The presentation stretches five hours strangely, a [00:23:00] seemingly ideal length and features a series of clever questions that invite a stream of consciousness, but highly educational dialogue. Many others have joined in, in the work we do to spread John's message.

Is both an act of appreciation and the payment of a debt. We raise awareness through media and reach new audiences because we can stand on his shoulders during one segment and the ultimate history lesson, John recounts his research into two significant yet enigmatic public school pioneers at Harvard university, Alexander Inglis and James Bryant.

He describes an arduous process of gathering information about something called the English lecture as a series of phone calls, inquisitive, but friendly letters and extensive exercises in patients add this to a seemingly endless hours, spent combing through dry disconnected. Yet self-congratulatory writing penned by progressive academics in the early 20th century [00:24:00] books and essays.

Never intended for an audience beyond the responsible men with the self-assigned task of scientifically managing the rest of us. John not only uncovers their veiled agendas, but he also manages to make their bland and unbearable writing into a form of entertainment for the rest of us, his investment of years of inquiry analysis, and argumentation now results in my ability to find the answers to many of my esoteric school history questions in 15 minutes or less.

Ideology translates to pedagogy imagined mass dumbness and helplessness at the beginning of the 20th century had arguably become a self fulfilling prophecy by the beginning of the 21st century. What John ultimately uncovered and elucidated was, what many of us had suspected since seventh or eighth?

The work we do in schools, isn't meaningful, purposeful, intrinsically motivated action. It takes us away from [00:25:00] ourselves while stifling, our innate curiosity and our desire for independence. In the end, we are rendered safe and predictable, ready to be led, but never to truly assume command of ourselves.

This new knowledge about schooling might leave many of us with a very pertinent question. What would real education look like? For the answer, we can start by moving from John Taylor Gatto, the school historian to John Taylor Gatto. The educator YouTube offers us a great introduction where you'll find a beautiful local television feature story from 25 years ago called classrooms of the.

The peace intersperses classroom and after-school footage between interviews with John and his students. For me, it was somewhat surreal to watch these interactions already knowing much of John's story. His coming resignation becomes increasingly inevitable as the video progresses. And I quit. I think John had suggested that the creation of the most [00:26:00] meaningful educational experiences would often require his ignoring school rules, limitations, and procedures.

In this 27 minute video, you'll see exactly what he meant. Long time. Eighth grade teacher, John Gatto is outside the classroom today because that's where he'd rather be. It's where he says the best teaching takes place. Right now he's preparing Francisco for a day of apprenticeship. So keep your eyes and ears open, lend him a willing pair of hands.

Let him see that, uh, you know, you're ready to work in exchange for, for Wednesday to teach your ask questions. Okay. Ghetto apprentices students to professionals regularly because he says firsthand experience is the only way a student can really learn. That was about programming. It's the lessons making coverages, someone just call them the Intercom.

Okay. Did you hear that buzz? The first three lines on the left, uh, [00:27:00] outside calls for the school numbers, but those are picked up by the secretary. The last line is called the principal's private line. That's a really big shot, right? They don't really know what the world of work is. And I don't think we've ever had a generation so remote and alienated from making the world work.

I apprenticed them to. We're doing real things. And I tell the people don't be nice to the kid. Tell the kid how you think now, how many of you ever been in an 18 Wheeler or a big tractor trailer crop anymore? You have Ron hitch on owner of a trucking company in Secaucus. New Jersey has four apprentices from Mr.

Ghetto's class today. Some of our customers that they shipped to our Sears Roebuck. Have you ever heard of Sears? Yeah. How about a wallet? This is the second year hitch on is taken John Gadoes apprentices. And you're going to go down to the court in Elizabeth New Jersey and see how [00:28:00] we pick up merchandise to ship to other parts of the country.

John asked me if I would get interested in his concepts of education and. I agree with them. I think they're sound. I think that the best way to learn is to have these life experiences and the more you have, and the more constructive ones you have, the better able you'll be able to become a independent person in society.

What are you going to do when you get older? You saying it was an air force. That's good. Of course they need the basis. We all need them. And the basics are generally compressed into reading, writing, and arithmetic. They need to test the basics on reality. They can't test the basics in endless abstraction and endless Blackboard world.

We're told at the beginning that this [00:29:00] man is a teacher in a public school, but the events and conversations that followed don't seem consistent with that setting middle school students are spoken to like self-respecting professionals, not like children. There are no tests. There are no traditional homework assignments.

There are no rows of desks. Most of John's interactions with students don't even take place in a classroom. Furthermore, he invites students to ponder what it means to be self teachers. And to question all that surrounds. Including school itself. 20 years later in the ultimate history lesson, Richard Grove begins our five of the interview with a tongue in cheek question.

Richard Grove: We've all I heard about the hard way to learn John. Is there an easy way to learn

John Taylor Gatto: if you begin and understand yourself thoroughly and you have a lot of raw experience? I think natural. Powers are released. [00:30:00] And I do believe that all the graceful easy learning comes from people who are comfortable inside their own skin, because they understand.

And people who've had a lot of early experience and I operated on those principles, even though it was illegal in a public school setting. I set aside one full day, a week. I, I won't get into the politics of how this was pulled off, but it was never easy where the kids could follow their own instincts anywhere in New York city, they wanted to go one full day, a week.

Where I took them on group projects, different parts of the five boroughs in New York city that [00:31:00] would group projects that would end up with a tangible goal, such as testing. Uh, I remember, uh, this one, my, uh, uh, amuse your, the people watching this, uh, the New York times. And announce on the front page by three weeks before the ed Kotch, Dave Dinkins election of let me say, 1980, somewhere around there, the Dinkins was hopelessly behind by 17 points and I had a.

Black, can the clients come up and ask me why the city was so prejudice and as there, why do you say that? And he said, well, look at this. And I said, well, why do you believe that's true? Maybe that's to get you not go and vote. I [00:32:00] don't know. I said, but I do know that it says here in small print that they only interviewed 300.

Hey, Paul was a man of us. I said, there's 120 people. My five classes, if each one, you do 20 interviews and we do it according to the way you get a random distribution. And that that's easy enough to find that we can have many times larger sample. Then, so that happened. We gathered the data, we processed it, and we discovered about a week after the time setter, hopefully behind that, he actually was a had by a fraction of one point it's quite as skewed.

Uh, legation came Hey one and the [00:33:00] closest rice and New York history. But notice that a random group of 120 13 year olds had produced more accurate information. The math in the statistical processing is hardly daunting for a fifth grader. You know, so why aren't the 70 may in captive school children involved in, if nothing else, data gathering, since obviously it's a crucial part of a calmer.

Yeah. You know, Pena, well, there must be a reason they're not used that. Why nor did they hear about statistical sampling until they're in college? For the most part? Why not? According to Alfred north Whitehead, [00:34:00] one of the major mathematicians of the 20th century, other than. Addition, subtraction, multiplication division.

The only crucial piece of math for everyone to learn the statistical sampling predictions because the society, the economy is organized around those things. The politics is organized around those things said that in aims of education, which I think was published in the mid 1940, well, you know, 60 year, so five.

And where is it? He's hardly a radical, 

Brett Veinotte: We recognize there might not be an easy way to accomplish anything of great value. We certainly do know what makes learning hard - operating under compulsion, sitting still and waiting for instructions, letting authorities determine your intellectual [00:35:00] value. School encourages us to seek easy ways, shortcuts, and half measures all as means of circumventing pain and boredom.

However, we don't need an easy way to learn. John swaps the word easy for the word graceful. He explains that learning becomes increasingly graceful with the accumulation of self knowledge, meaningful experience, and comfort with oneself. Back in 1991, John explained it as, "I'm really trying to hand them back their lives and make myself available to them as a resource." His revolutionary curriculum - largely built around independent study and out-of-school apprenticeships - encouraged students to create real life experiences where they could teach and test themselves.

It challenged these young people to discover unguided settings with novel problems to solve. It fostered motivation, perseverance, courage, and dignity. So to fully answer the question about real education, we ultimately have to move beyond John Taylor Gatto, the educator; [00:36:00] we have to look at his students. Real education is intrinsically motivated, self directed learning and living. Classrooms of the heart is filled with examples of increasingly confident self-reliant and self-directed young adults who all seemed eager to turn around and teach that lesson to.

For me, there's still something bittersweet about that video of John and his eighth grade students, when it was shot, edited and released. I was in eighth grade myself. At that point, I was still more than 15 years away from learning many of the important truths about my schooling from discovering the essentials of self knowledge and personal growth.

And from having any conception of the difference between compulsory schooling and a meaningful education. I wrote a bus and filled out worksheets and there wasn't a John Taylor Gatto insight and with his purposeful and courageous life in mind, I have pledged to help more young people encounter and embrace his message as soon as [00:37:00] possible.

And I'm endlessly grateful for that opportunity, which John Taylor Gatto also helped.

Before we wrap up. I just want to say that video at the very beginning of the show ran about six and a half minutes is from a YouTube channel called 44 connected. And it's called John Taylor got of the purpose of schooling. And I saw, I mean, I've seen that video before. But it came back to my attention because a school sucks listener and a young man, man in his early twenties, who I had the pleasure of meeting last year.

And I've hung out with him a few times since his name's Danny McCarthy, Danny posted that video on Facebook with the following message. We're one dies. A thousand are allowed to rise, tagged rich frat soul, true sample Brett, but not fattiest Russell aligning Marie Lisa Arbor, Chesky filtered them. Seth Sebastian Allen, Baylor, Ilana Cornell, Kevin Cole, and CJ Kilmer.

So to be. With Lisa and [00:38:00] Kevin Cole, who've done so much for John Taylor Gatto. I mean, I never got to meet John Taylor Gatto, Lisa Rich, Kevin. They were all involved in his life and they've done so much great work to preserve and amplify his message. So the fact that Danny, this young man who, as you might've realized from hearing him has a kind of genius and it's one that.

School seldom recognizes and never appreciates that. He discovered this work and he put my name with names like Lisa and Kevin. Uh, that means a lot to me. So I thought I would put that video at the beginning of the show because out of everything that Danny could have shared, he chose that. So that was impactful for him.

So I thought I would include it here. The other kind of production note, before we wrap up. I searched for a long time, an abnormally long time, even for me [00:39:00] for the right music for a Memorial like this. And I never found it. But when I was like, I dunno, 11 degrees of separation away from what I started looking for, I came across the song that you're going to hear.

And even though it wasn't the right song in its lyrics or its themes, the performance itself. Was the perfect piece of music. The group is called the Barton Hills choir. It's an elementary school choir comprised of third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. And the choir director, Gavin Tibone creates opportunities for these youngsters who have this passion for music to collaborate.

With professional musicians. And I found this video of the choir doing this really moving performance that made me very sentimental for a number of reasons. One reason it was the first song I ever heard by a band that would go on to become one of my favorites, [00:40:00] a band that I was actually introduced to by my favorite secondary school teacher.

Interestingly enough, who actually used to lend me bootlegged tapes of their concert. And I knew it was the right choice for two reasons. Number one, giving kids access to people in the real world who are already successful, doing things that these kids are interested in and they're collaborating and producing something together.

And number two, it can be really encouraging and even quite heartwarming to see young people celebrating and carrying on. The great works of people who have passed and finding new ways to project that work into the future. Thanks for listening everybody and take care.

What gives me hope? Via this repressive system is that I see the green shoots of [00:41:00] human possibility coming up everywhere in Huntington, West Virginia, where no one ever ate off a table clock or in Palo Alto and people are taking back the direction of their own laws. And what, after all, do you have it's to write your own script?

It's just the highest, it's gotta be the highest goal of a human life. Writing your own script.[00:42:00] [00:43:00] [00:44:00] [00:45:00] 

Education beyond the immediate low locale you're in, unless you know yourself, you will have proclivities, you'll have lenses. [00:46:00] Some of them are built in biologically, many of them by your early training and no major philosopher in human history. There are no exceptions who think, uh, think about the training of the young don't come to this conclusion.

Way back probably way before Plato, but he's very clear on it and Aristotle's clear on it. And, and haggles clear on itself, knowledge is where it's at, know what you're capable of, know what your boundaries are, and then your education comes in enlarging those boundaries. And as you do, you get freer and freer.

Uh,