JTG: It's in Weapons of Mass Instruction, and it'll be a centerpiece in the next book, which is about a year away. Weapons of Mass Instruction can be purchased on the website and I think it will very, very usefully illuminate what's in underground history, which is available free on the website or you can purchase it through the website -- your choice on that.
Rob: Okay. I just want to wrap. You have a project that you announced at Harvard about ending testing -- the Bartelby Project?
JTG: Oh yeah.
Rob: If you could just briefly describe that then we can wrap this...
JTG: If you unthread this thing from the bottom, you need to know where its axis point of greatest weakness is. It's the standardized tests, which even the people employed by the system despise and which has abundantly been shown not to correlate with anything at all. So the proper way to upset standardized testing is absolutely not to put a rational argument in front of the legislature because that's been put in front of the legislature by bigtime people for 20 or 30 years....so they're immune to it because standardized testing is an important part of the glue that justifies institutional schooling -- you can rank every kid in America from brightest to dumbest...I mean all 70 or 80 million of them through this weapon.
Now, so in trying to figure out the best way to upset standardized testing, about 3 years ago -- and those of you with Google capacity will be able to discover this -- maybe 4 years ago, the mothers of Scarsdale, New York made front pages all over the United States by refusing to allow their kids to take standardized test. And you have to drive up to Scarsdale High School and see the Cadillacs and Rolls Royces' in the parking lot to know that Scarsdale isn't just another rich community -- it's one of the power centers on the face of the planet and school people...mere school people do not argue with mothers of school kids in Scarsdale because the biggest school man or woman is a flunky compared to one of these people. So that was front page news for about 3 days, and suddenly the story vanished; and instantly because my people are from the newspaper business, I knew what had happened.
Newspapers live for a story that can be dragged out for weeks and weeks, months and months....and here was a story that surely could have been dragged out -- it was a dagger at the throat of the standardized test business -- how come the story vanished? There could be only one explanation -- the parents causing the trouble were approached privately and given assurances that their kids would not have to take the standardized test and there'd be no penalty, but in exchange, they would stop leading a vanguard of unwashed people. So not being boat-rockers -- you don't get in that position -- they agreed to it. But it struck me instantly that the short story I had read and gone crazy about in high school, in college, and after college -- Bartleby, the Scrivener -- where a low down office clerk, refuses to do perfectly reasonably tasks like going to the post office and getting the mail, or proofreading a document...but he doesn't say I refuse to do it; he simply says "I would prefer not to," and that's all he said; and after he gets fired the boss tells him to leave the office -- that takes weeks because the boss is a nice guy -- he says, "I would prefer not to,"...leave the office that is -- he sleeps there to save rent. And then he's sent to debtors prison in the tombs in lower Manhattan and the boss feels terribly guilty and brings him food and pays the guards to give him good food, and he prefers not to eat and he starves himself to death. And that story was written in 1850, and I could never...I went crazy and so did the guy teaching it at Cornell -- nobody could figure out what on earth that story was about. And suddenly when I hit my 70s I knew what it was about. Unless you have full sovereignty over refusing your cooperation, you are a slave; you may be stupid enough to think you're free, man or woman -- you're a slave. And Bartelby was hopeless where opportunity was concerned, but at least he retained sovereignty over himself. All your kids have to do -- and spread the word even if you don't do it yourself -- simply write on the face of the test, 'I would prefer not to take this test.' Don't say 'I won't take this test' -- use the old fashioned locution, 'I would prefer not to...' that a gentleman would use. It'll only take 5% of the country to bring this 50, 60 billion dollar testing empire crashing down. As it is, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford....they don't look at standardized test scores -- your admission does not depend on that; it depends on whether you have a record of accomplishment. And how on earth if you're a good school kid can you ever show a record of accomplishment? Starting your own business, publishing your own book...
Rob: But you know, the other side of this is...and we've got to really wrap...is that you also talk a lot about community and about how one of the things that compulsory schooling does is it eats up almost all of the time that children have to participate in community and in family, and that basically...
JTG: The truth is it's a divide and conquer principle carried to a scientific tentacle. It's divide and conquer. That's why you're not allowed to talk with people or work cooperatively unless the teacher allows you in the classroom because learning to aggregate in common cause is a danger to leadership.
Rob: There you go. Now we've got to wrap it up now. I've been talking with John Taylor Gatto, a brilliant teacher who has different ideas that we need to really look at. And we're going to have to have you back because there's a lot more to talk about, and it's been great to have you one here...I'm reluctant to end this but we need to. So I'm going to thank you and say goodnight.
JTG: Thank you.
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