Every month, I do a newsletter for The Adult Learning Center. Part of the newsletter is a thing I do called "Quote Corner." In my search on school/teacher for the month of September I found this: "Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American should be content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role." William Torrey Harris, American philospher, editor, educator, established 1st public kindergarten. How horrible and frightening.

Surely it was tongue in cheek?

Don't think so. I went back to look the guy up. On one hand, I found a site that gave some quotes that made him look pretty liberal for his time (1835-1909), talking about equal education for all, etc., then I found this on a home schooling site: "By 1889, a little more than 100 years ago, the crop was ready for harvest. In that year the US Commissioner of Education,William Torrey Harris, assured a railroad magnate, Collis Huntington, that American schools were "scientifically designed" to prevent "over-education" from happening. The average American would be content with his humble role in life, said the commissioner, because he would not be tempted to think about any other role. My guess is that Harris meant he would not be able to think about any other role. In 1896 the famous John Dewey, then at the University of Chicago, said that independent, self-reliant people were a counter-productive anachronism in the collective society of the future. In modern society, said Dewey, people would be defined by their associations--not by their own individual accomplishments." EEK! Don't get me started on the public school system. It's the only one we have, and it's better than nothing, but it is far from good.

I hear ya

for more info, check out Stephen Jay Gould's "The mismeasure of man"

Great book. Entertaining as hell: p. 136, 137 -- "In 1879 Gustave Le Bon, chief misogynist of Broca's school, used these data to publish what must be the most vicious attack upon women in modern scientific literature.....[he writes,] 'Without doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely.'" and my favorite: p. 154 -- "Lombroso devoted the first part of his major work...to what must be the most ludicrous excursion into anthropomorphism ever published -- an analysis of the criminal behavior of animals. He cites, for example, an ant driven by rage to kill and dismember an aphid; an adulterous stork who, with her lover, murdered her husband; [and] a criminal association of beavers who ganged up to murder a solitary compatriot..." People were crazy. And to think that these "scientists" and their followers were the ones responsible for denying Jews entrance into the US before and during WWII because of their supposedly inherited low IQs, and responsible for the forced sterilization of the mentally retarded *in this country* in the early part of the 1900s. Christ.

Jesus was a Jew.I think they really are God,s chosen people.I think the only real part of the Bible is the begining,I think we were cloned from spacemen and I know I,m right.I just know I,m alien spawn.I,m too fucked up to remember now,but I remember some part of the bible,when they came down,and said we were fair,so they mated with us,and tat was before woman.

I,m sober now.

or are you? (cue dark and mysterious music)

i just saw on craig kilborn that morrissey is going to be on his show to perform a song every night next week.