There’s a scene from that marvelous film, The Dead Poets Society, in which Robin Williams playing teacher John Keating has a brief conversation with Mr. Nolan, the headmaster of the school played by Norman Lloyd, about the purpose of his job.
“I thought my job was to teach them to think,” says Keating.
“Not on your life,” Mr. Nolan snaps back. “They can learn that in college.”
Or something like that. You get the point, anyway.
I just finished reading John Taylor Gatto’s thick, data-packed screed on American public schools, The Underground History of American Education. Gatto taught in New York City for 30 years and the year he achieved teacher-of-the-year status, both citywide and statewide, he resigned, fed up finally with fighting a losing battle against a system he declares page after page in this book to be fundamentally malign.…