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“Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.”
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
“The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks
“This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.”
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”
― Mere Christianity
― Mere Christianity
“Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships — the one-day variety or longer — these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of “school” to include family as the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents — and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 — we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now.”
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
― Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
Kira’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kira’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Kira
Lists liked by Kira
