As promised.

First, it's important to note this chapter, and the others in fact, were given as speeches. That's part of the reason I'm reading from the book as much as I am in the videos. It seems important to imagine this veteran teacher, with all the gravitas of his experience and perceived authority (especially in the eyes of his audience of peers, parents, union officials, politicians, etc...), standing there boldly telling them all what a horrible place public schools are.

We can sit at home and read his words, and not fully appreciate the guts that took, especially 25 years ago when very few people were openly criticizing public schools, never mind from within the system. Oh to have been in that audience that day, especially since I'd quit teaching the same year -- 1991 -- for the same reasons he cites in this chapter, and perhaps in the others as well.

But let's look at the particulars; what are the key takeaways of his indictment of this system we're told is essential for the well-being not just of our children, but of our "democracy:"

1. What he actually teaches is not what you imagine he teaches, and he's not speaking ironically, or just for himself; he's saying teaching is this way, period. Having been a classroom teacher, I would agree. At the very least, even those who think he's a bit harsh would have to agree the purported "subject" areas are not really what teachers "teach." They may teach those things ALSO, but the way they're doing it is what matters in the end. The students aren't going to leave school "knowing" those subjects, and most teachers understand, and are OK with that. At minimum, they've made their peace with it either by convincing themselves it's what parents or colleges want, or that it's the best they can do "under the circumstances," with the circumstances being the need to standardize and deliver an education "equally" to all.

2. What he really teaches, or what teachers really teach, can be summed up in 7 lessons:
1. Confusion
2. Class position
3. Indifference
4. Emotional Dependency
5. Intellectual Dependency
6. Provisional Self-esteem
7. One can't hide

All of these attack the individual.

First, by confusing the individual at an early age, so they don't even understand all knowledge is connected, that context is key to understanding the meaning of anything, and without understanding the meaning of things, we cannot understand where we fit in as individuals. When we are confused, we fell uncomfortable, unmoored, and it's a rational reaction to look around for mooring, or something or someone to tell us what it all means, where we fit, what we should do, to restore equilibrium. Enter the oh-so helpful "teacher."

Second, when numbering the individual, you rob him or her of his uniqueness, his or her perception of autonomy and agency. Numbers are either random, or attached to class. We have grade, level of achievement or ability (determined by standardized tests, and arbitrary measures of one facet of the individual's now disintegrated self. When teachers teach class position, they teach the child to "know its place" (and I use "its" intentionally here, because increasingly they are even trying to strip away gender as a mark of individuality).

It may seem as though schools are adding to the child's sense of self by assigning so many "identities" these days, but they're not. Quite the opposite. They are doubling-down on the disintegration and denial of agency. They are not suggesting one can really "choose" these identities, organically, as they go through live and the opportunity to choose presents itself, or after careful consideration and weighing of options, idiosyncratic desires, and life experiences. Oh no! These are ASSIGNED. The children must start self-classifying as early as Kindergarten! Before they have any concept of what the words even mean, they must do this. It's damaging, and it's dangerous. One of the hardest things to do is reintegrate your disintegrated self later in life. Life experience can do this to you unintentionally, and it can hold you back by forcing your brain to cope with a constant stream of contradictions in your own mind. It's exhausting, and saps motivation and creativity. Integration is the life goal of every healthy individual: Who am I? Where am I? What should I do? How do I know? Classifying people at a young age almost ensures they will not be able to answer these questions independently.

Indifference is what most of us probably felt when we were in school. Even I, who loved school once I made it to private high school, still felt pretty indifferent to the material itself, most of it anyway. Nothing was connected, and I didn't really care to dive deep into anything. The goal was to get into a good college; mastering the material to pass the tests and please the teacher was my goal, not learning, not really. We weren't "scholars," that's for sure, straight As and Dean's List aside. I now see that was inevitable, even at my "good" school. The structure itself doesn't allow for anything else. There's no TIME.

Emotional and Intellectual Dependency are flip sides of the same coin, and serve the same master: The State. Even in private school, the message is crystal clear: there are experts, and your aren't one, at anything. You must wait to be told most things you need to know to function in the environment successfully, and while initiative to find those answers is rewarded, initiative to change them is certainly NOT.

Fast-forward a generation to this past year. Is it any wonder we saw so many ready followers, willing and even eager to unquestioningly follow "the experts," most of whom were following THEIR experts, because let's face it, we were all educated the same way. These two are the most damaging to liberty, in my view. They are nearly impossible to reverse later in life.

Provisional Self-esteem is what he calls it, I call it surrendering to an external locus of control. If you have no love but the love given you by others, you have no love, period. I say that because people who don't love themselves don't find others who will truly love them, and are easily exploited by those who pretend to love them by showing them the same sorts of affection they were shown in school. Praise, awards, promotions (likes, thumbs-up, subscriptions), this is what they offer, but it's hollow. They don't offer time, empathy, curiosity and a desire to understand, the hallmarks of real affection, friendship and love. As a consequence, we have many people who grow up to be on a spectrum from self-loathing nihilists to co-dependent control-freaks, with the wholehearted self-loving people standing by looking on in horror and bewilderment, clinging to our freedoms while these groups of emotional cripples claw at us desperately, like a human black hole sucking away at our light.

Combine lessons 4, 5 and 6, and you get a society that won't let ANYONE hide, which is lesson 7.

And here we are, right? Lesson 7 teaches there is no "privacy," no private spaces and private time. It's no coincidence that the hallmark of any totalitarian state is lack of privacy, and the prerequisite for liberty is private property, because only when you can own your own spaces can you truly be FREE.

Censors and people eager to "cancel" us for wrong-think; NSA wiretapping, men like James Clapper back in power, and praised by our supposedly "free press." Politicians who swore oaths to uphold our Constitution, Bill of Rights included, eager to restrict our speech, take away our right to self-defense, and put us on "lists" if we refuse to fall in line and accept the "truth" as they define it. If we challenge their authority, we are now insurrectionists, traitors, "white supremacists" or at least "white adjacent."

Whiteness is the catchall, code for "REFUSES TO CONFORM." No wonder they're teaching it in school! What better way to make the job easier than to shame the children outright, or to tell those who are not white they are victims? They're just fast-tracking kids to serfdom now, and our government has put us all back in "school."

Key Quotes:
"I teach students how to accept confusion as their destiny."

"If I do my job well, the kids can't even imagine themselves somewhere else..."

"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."

"Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself...Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to all systems of classification."

"Good students wait for the teacher to tell them what to do....we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. Bad kids fight this, of course...."

"Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do."

"The ecology of "good" schooling depends on perpetuating dissatisfaction....People need to be told what they are worth."

"There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time."

"A family trained to 'snitch' on itself isn't likely to conceal any dangerous secrets."

"It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass schooling that along even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things."