Mass School is Normal - not!

Abnormality, Thy Name is Homeschool
by Steve Kellmeyer

For most Americans, homeschooling seems rather odd. Why bother with it? We have had public and private schools with us all of our lives, as have our parents before us and their parents before them from time immemorial. Why not stick with what works? The thought would be touching, if it were historically accurate. It isn’t.

The concept of compulsory schools with mass attendance is a radically new idea to Western civilization, no older than industrialization. Indeed, industrialization arguably could not have taken place without the mass school, and therein lies a tale.

As John Taylor Gatto points out in his impressive work, The Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm) , America’s schools were not very much used prior to 1870. The reason is simple.

The printing press was invented less than 50 years before America was discovered. The press enabled the Protestant Reformation. Because Protestant Faith argues that Scripture alone is authoritative, Protestants have a strong drive to be literate. The religious wars in Europe also drove many Protestants to find safe haven. The discovery of America was fortuitous in that it gave Protestants, that is, literate men, a place to flee.

As a result, the United States had a uniquely literate population (http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=166) . As numerous commentators of the time noted and US Census figures confirm, white men in America were essentially 100% literate prior to 1870. While schools existed, they were not much used. Like children from time immemorial, American children were educated at home and self-educated, not schooled.

The first compulsory school law was passed in Massachusetts in 1852. The second law would not be passed until 1864, in Washington D.C. The great wave of compulsory school laws were passed between 1870, with the last falling into place in 1917.

In 1860, one-third of the 300 high schools in the country were located in Massachusetts, where the school year was twelve weeks long, and only six of those weeks were consecutive. Even by 1890, the school year was only twelve to twenty weeks. Even by 1900, only six percent of American teenagers had graduated high school, only two percent of Americans 18 through 24 were enrolled in a college.

While most Americans had attended an elementary school of some sort prior to 1900, they spent no more than two to three years in it, if that – perhaps forty weeks total. While in school, they were generally not learning to read. They learned that at home.

Instead, they were reading. Fifth grade basal readers included works from William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The late-nineteenth century mass school system was America’s response to two enormous driving changes in American society: industrialization and massive immigration. Waves of Irish and German immigrants broke upon American shores between 1830 and 1860, with another massive wave entering from the Southern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe between 1890 and 1910. These immigrants tended to be poor, illiterate and Catholic.

As I noted in a previous essay (http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/article_info.php?articles_id=151) , the agrarian model of instruction required apprenticeships. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, Protestant American industrialization had to destroy that agrarian apprenticeship system. It did.

First, the states passed child labor laws, throwing young immigrant men and women out of apprenticeships and out of work. Once the streets were flooded with these legally invented delinquents, compulsory school laws were passed, requiring these same young men and women to attend school. These schools were consciously modeled on insane asylums. (http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/pedro31.html) The youth who were to be housed in them were, after all, immigrants, poor illiterate wastrels, often swarthy non-whites (Italians, Greeks and their neighbors can take a bow here), and worst of all, Catholic. They had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.

While compulsory school laws were passed, compulsory attendance was not popular. Armed troops were required to pacify the Massachusetts countryside as nearly eighty percent of the population fought the state government. As late as 1882, thirty years after the state had passed the compulsory attendance law, the militia had to march children to school. (http://anti-politics.net/school/) New York City parents rioted in 1917. The examples could be multiplied. The literacy rate began a steady decline that has reached its nadir today.

The school system is so effective at passing on knowledge and forming young minds that this entire history is lost to most of the Americans who pass through its gates. We no longer remember how or why today’s school system came to be what it is. The modern college student is radically less well-read and radically less moral than the average twelve-year old was in colonial America.

So, yes, homeschooling does seem a little odd to many. It seems unnecessary, not a good fit for most families. And in a certain sense, that assessment is correct. Homeschooling is not a good fit for the modern family, if only because the family has, in modern times, ceased to exist. Family cohesion has been obliterated by the mass school.

Our society requires massive consumption. Needy, ignorant people consume more goods and services than educated, emotionally stable people do. The quickest way to create needy people is to obliterate the family. The quickest way to create ignorant people is to divorce them from their parents. (http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,12803677%255E950,00.html) The mass school is an excellent exercise in creating a market for your goods, whatever they might be. Unfortunately, what counts as goods for the market does not count as goods for the family.

This essay is based in large part on the soon-to-be-released book Deception: Catholic Education in America" (http://bridegroompress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=60) and John Taylor Gatto’s "Underground History of American Education." (http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm)

About the Writer: Steve Kellmeyer is a nationally recognized author and lecturer who integrates today's headlines with the Catholic Faith. His work is available through http://www.bridegroompress.com. He can be contacted at skellmeyer@bridegroompress.com.

Huge lesson here for me. You have to have both connections and resources if you're serious about launching new producs. This guy was very close to winning the day. I found the meme "Patent Troll"....which I do not like. Can't we just innovate? Why involve the lawyers all the time? Using the system against the system pisses me off.

"The man who nearly invented the iPod two decades ago let it slip through his fingers along with a fortune worth millions.

British inventor Kane Kramer came up with the world's first MP3 player in 1979, a device remarkably similar in appearance to the now ubiquitous music players.

A staggering 42 million iPods have been sold since it was launched in 2001, bringing its maker, Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple, an estimated US$9.2 billion (Pounds 5.2 billion). Every minute another 100 are snapped up worldwide. There is no doubt that had Kramer hung on to his invention, he would now be a millionaire several times over. Instead, he runs a furniture shop in Hertfordshire, England.
Click Here
Constant Reminders

Now Kramer is consulting lawyers to see whether he has any claim to the design and technology behind the MP3 player.

"I don't just get reminded once or twice that I didn't get any benefit out of my creative thinking," he said. "Every time I walk down the street I see people with the headphones, or adverts for iPods."

Kramer was 23 when he quit his job running a music industry trade exhibition in 1979 to begin work on a device that would store music in digital form on a computer chip Latest News about computer chips -- a radical idea at a time when music was recorded onto tape and played back on cassettes or vinyl records.

Working with friend and technical wizard James Campbell, he came up with the IXI, a device that would now be known as an MP3 player.

His sketches from 1979 show a credit card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks using arrows for left, right, up and down.

Volume is controlled by keys on the left-hand side.

The iPod is a similar size with a display in the same place and a central dial to select and play songs.

The only catch was the amount of memory; the IXI only stored 3 1/2 minutes of music, but the team rightly believed that chip storage capacity would improve.

Kramer took out a patent for the technology in 1981 and set up a company to develop the idea.
Beatle Connection

In its first year, the firm nearly folded after Kramer was only able to raise half the $27,000 (Pounds 15,000) needed to renew the patents. Then Paul McCartney stepped in and paid the rest -- the cost of a detached house at the time -- in return for shares.

By 1986, the IXI could store 5 minutes of music and was described as "the most radical system yet -- a music recorder on a chip."

In 1988, on the brink of commercial success, the company was split by a boardroom coup.

Distracted and unable to raise money in time to renew patents across 120 countries, Kramer watched as the technology became public property.

"I was heartbroken," he said. "I'd put in a tremendous mental and physical effort. It was eight years of intense work." The recording industry began using digital technology in the early Nineties, and the first MP3 player was launched in 1999.

Two years later, the iPod became a design icon of the 21st Century.

"The iPod is the world's fastest selling electrical equipment ever," said Kramer, "and I suppose, in a way, I am the world's biggest failure."
Five More Who Came So Close ...

The literary agent. The first agent to whom J.K. Rowling sent Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone rejected her in little more than a day. Her second agent, Christopher Little, was turned down by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury said yes a year later.

Decca Records and the Beatles. In January 1962, The Beatles were turned down by Decca Records because they were considered too similar to the Shadows. They signed with Parlophone and became the world's most famous band.

Windscreen wipe-out. In 1967, Robert Kearns invented the intermittent car windscreen wiper. He took the idea to Ford but after several years of talks, the company began offering the wipers without paying Kearns, who sued. The legal battles dragged on for more than 20 years. Although Kearns eventually won $10.7 million (Pounds 6 million) from Ford, he lost his case against General Motors.

The forgotten genius. Nikola Tesla,a Serbian immigrant to America, invented the modern electric power system, the fluorescent bulb, neon lights, the speedometer and the basics behind radio, radar and the microwave oven. Others made millions from his inventions but he was paid a flat $216,000 fee.

The other Bill Gates. Software genius Gary Kildall invented the first operating system operating system for PCs in the early Seventies but missed out on supplying IBM because he went flying instead of meeting company bosses. Bill Gates later sold IBM the MS-DOS system. "

http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/50019.html

Experts ponder a future of new sex gizmos, robots�|�Reuters.com

Experts ponder a future of new sex gizmos, robots�|�Reuters.com