Talents

The role of education, said [Adam] Smith, was needed to compensate for mutilations inflicted as by-products of those same processes which produce wealth. We need to understand that artificial environments produced by free trade and constant competition cause psychological damage in four ways: I) they make workers cowardly 2) stupid 3) sluggish 4) and indifferent to everything but animal needs. Only education (he called it "educational schooling") will heal the wounds to community and individuality caused by capitalism.

According to the father of capitalism, the only differences between children of philosophers and those of street sweepers lies in the training they receive. All children, he asserts, have the talents we associate with elite families, all, that is, until the majority of young are deliberately deprived of"subject(s) for thought and speculation:' Those so deprived become "deformed;' unable to bear hard thinking. They lose "power of judgment, even as regards ordinary matters:' He could have been describing public school kids in 2009.

--John Taylor Gatto, "Weapons Of Mass Instruction", p. 106