Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables — and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways — network school steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism. No on survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.

Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables — and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways — network school steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism. No on survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.

Multiple prohibitions of choice in the matter of education are now enforced by law, enshrining an exclusive bureaucracy of certified teachers and administrators, and literally hundreds of invisible agencies necessary to maintain the institution of government monopoly schooling. Defying the lessons of the market, this psychopathic megalith has grown more and more powerful in spite of colossal failures to education throughout its history. It succeeds in surviving only because it employs the police power of the State to fill its hollow classrooms. It prohibits local choice and variety and, because of this prohibition, has had a hideous effect on our national moral fabric.

Multiple prohibitions of choice in the matter of education are now enforced by law, enshrining an exclusive bureaucracy of certified teachers and administrators, and literally hundreds of invisible agencies necessary to maintain the institution of government monopoly schooling. Defying the lessons of the market, this psychopathic megalith has grown more and more powerful in spite of colossal failures to education throughout its history. It succeeds in surviving only because it employs the police power of the State to fill its hollow classrooms. It prohibits local choice and variety and, because of this prohibition, has had a hideous effect on our national moral fabric.

By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers, backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling — teacher colleges, textbook publishers, material suppliers, and others — has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.

By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers, backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling — teacher colleges, textbook publishers, material suppliers, and others — has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.

[Institutional schooling] does brilliantly precisely what it was originally designed to do, that is, to be the "educational" component of a centralized mass production economy directed from a handful of command centers. Such an economy has desperate needs: in order to work, it requires a particular kind of "human resource," specifically one driven to define itself by purchasing things, by owning "stuff," by evaluating everything from the perspective of comfort, physical security, and status.

[Institutional schooling] does brilliantly precisely what it was originally designed to do, that is, to be the "educational" component of a centralized mass production economy directed from a handful of command centers. Such an economy has desperate needs: in order to work, it requires a particular kind of "human resource," specifically one driven to define itself by purchasing things, by owning "stuff," by evaluating everything from the perspective of comfort, physical security, and status.

That has always been the dark side of the American dream, the search for an easy way out, a belief in magic. The endless parade of promises that constitutes the heart of American advertising, one of the largest of our national enterprises, testifies to the deep well of superstition in our national foundation, which has been institutionalized in the advertising business. Easy money, easy health, easy beauty, easy education — if only the right incantation can be found.

That has always been the dark side of the American dream, the search for an easy way out, a belief in magic. The endless parade of promises that constitutes the heart of American advertising, one of the largest of our national enterprises, testifies to the deep well of superstition in our national foundation, which has been institutionalized in the advertising business. Easy money, easy health, easy beauty, easy education — if only the right incantation can be found.

[Institutional schooling] does brilliantly precisely what it was originally designed to do, that is, to be the "educational" component of a centralized mass production economy directed from a handful of command centers. Such an economy has desperate needs: in order to work, it requires a particular kind of "human resource," specifically one driven to define itself by purchasing things, by owning "stuff," by evaluating everything from the perspective of comfort, physical security, and status.

[Institutional schooling] does brilliantly precisely what it was originally designed to do, that is, to be the "educational" component of a centralized mass production economy directed from a handful of command centers. Such an economy has desperate needs: in order to work, it requires a particular kind of "human resource," specifically one driven to define itself by purchasing things, by owning "stuff," by evaluating everything from the perspective of comfort, physical security, and status.

That has always been the dark side of the American dream, the search for an easy way out, a belief in magic. The endless parade of promises that constitutes the heart of American advertising, one of the largest of our national enterprises, testifies to the deep well of superstition in our national foundation, which has been institutionalized in the advertising business. Easy money, easy health, easy beauty, easy education — if only the right incantation can be found.

That has always been the dark side of the American dream, the search for an easy way out, a belief in magic. The endless parade of promises that constitutes the heart of American advertising, one of the largest of our national enterprises, testifies to the deep well of superstition in our national foundation, which has been institutionalized in the advertising business. Easy money, easy health, easy beauty, easy education — if only the right incantation can be found.

By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers, backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling — teacher colleges, textbook publishers, material suppliers, and others — has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.

By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers, backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling — teacher colleges, textbook publishers, material suppliers, and others — has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.

Multiple prohibitions of choice in the matter of education are now enforced by law, enshrining an exclusive bureaucracy of certified teachers and administrators, and literally hundreds of invisible agencies necessary to maintain the institution of government monopoly schooling. Defying the lessons of the market, this psychopathic megalith has grown more and more powerful in spite of colossal failures to education throughout its history. It succeeds in surviving only because it employs the police power of the State to fill its hollow classrooms. It prohibits local choice and variety and, because of this prohibition, has had a hideous effect on our national moral fabric.

Multiple prohibitions of choice in the matter of education are now enforced by law, enshrining an exclusive bureaucracy of certified teachers and administrators, and literally hundreds of invisible agencies necessary to maintain the institution of government monopoly schooling. Defying the lessons of the market, this psychopathic megalith has grown more and more powerful in spite of colossal failures to education throughout its history. It succeeds in surviving only because it employs the police power of the State to fill its hollow classrooms. It prohibits local choice and variety and, because of this prohibition, has had a hideous effect on our national moral fabric.

One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn't cost very much, doesn't depend on expensive toys or gadgets.

Official favor, grades, or other trinkets of subordination have no connection with education; they are the paraphernalia of servitude, not of freedom.

Nearly a century ago a French sociologist wrote that every institution's unstated first goal is to survive and grow, not to undertake the mission it has nominally staked out for itself. Thus the first goal of a government postal service is not to delivery the mail; it is to provide protection for its employees and perhaps a modest status ladder for the more ambitious ones. The first goal of a permanent military organization is not to defend national security but to secure, in perpetuity, a fraction of the national wealth to distribute to its personnel.

It was this philistine potential — that teaching the young for pay would inevitably expand into an institute for the protection of teachers, not students — that made Socrates condemn the Sophists so strongly long ago in ancient Greece.

[T]he United States has become a nation of institutions, whereas it used to be a nation of communities.

The feeding frenzy of formal schooling has already wounded us seriously in our ability to form families and communities, by bleeding away time we need with our children and our children need with us.

Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables — and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways — network school steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism. No on survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.

Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education. By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the way we grade vegetables — and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways — network school steal the vitality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism. No on survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.

Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

That is the iron law of institutional schooling — it is a business, subject neither to normal accounting procedures nor to the rational scalpel of competition.

Global economics does not speak to the public need for meaningful work, affordable housing, fulfilling education, adequate medical care, a clean environment, honest and accountable government, social and cultural renewal, or simple justice. All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality that I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found — in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends, and real communities are built — then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material "sufficiency" which our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about.

School, as it was built, is an essential support system for a model of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control.

Bells destroy the past and future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

People have to be allowed to make their own mistakes and to try again, or they will never master themselves, although they may well seem to be competent when they have in fact only memorized or imitated someone else's performance.