Institutional education offers as its main purpose, economic success. Good education = good job, good money, good things, i.e., more "stuff."

The absurdity... is clear if we ask ourselves what is gained by perceiving education as a way to enhance even further the runaway consumption that threatens the earth, air, and water of our planet. Should we continue to teach people that they can buy happiness in face of tidal wave of evidence that they cannot?

...if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found--in families, friends, the passage of the seasons... in generosity, compassion... in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, friends, and communities are built--then we would be so self-sufficient we would not need the material "sufficiency" our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about. —John Taylor Gatto

The crisis we are facing in our schools--the apathy, cruelty, violence, and behavioral and learning disorders--are to be expected, given the lessons our schools are teaching. The United States ranks at the very bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Our teen suicide rate is the highest in the world.

Given the tremendous vested interests in maintaining the status quo, and the very nature of bureaucracies, the government's monopoly on the schools will not disappear in the near future. Those changes that do occur will emerge from grass-roots movements, spurred by parents and teachers initiating change. Despite the entrenched archaic practices that predominate in most public and private schools, efforts are being made here and there across the country to effect change� so we know it is possible. Meanwhile, thousands of alternative schools around the country today provide rich learning environments and respect individual learning styles. Best known are the Montessori and Waldorf schools. While they are not accessible to all families, and tend to be expensive, parents may consider joining with others to begin their own alternative schools as another possibility. This requires a major commitment of time and energy, but it can be tremendously exciting (as well as frustrating) to the parent who is so inclined, and there are a growing number of other models today to offer a framework to build on. Other parents will choose to work to effect change within the schools, still others will choose to home school.

� many children in our culture have abilities that put them at a disadvantage in the classroom but may be just what we need if our planet is to survive. I'm not just talking here about the gifted, the dyslexic, the ADHD, or the learning disabled, but ultimately about each and every child who has something to contribute to society--if only someone would recognize their ability and help them develop it. With schools focusing so much of their attention on the good test-taker, the expert fill-in-the-blanker, and the hand-raiser who always has the right answer," we're left with a situation in which 99.9 percent of the country's natural human resources could go undeveloped. A greater national tragedy could scarcely be envisioned. —Thomas Armstrong, PhD

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