If You Want To Be Rich & Happy Don't Go To School: Insuring Lifetime Security for Yourself and Your Children Paperback – January 1, 1993

American Education in the Twentieth Century has been the product of four industrialists who set out to create the system of education in American that they wanted for their benefit. That is not a theory but is a well-documented fact we don't have to wonder about. To learn that information read the writings of John Taylor Gatto, Teacher of the Year for three years in a row in New York while teaching in Harlem! He lays it all out in his book, THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION, available here or at [...].He was named New York City Teacher of the year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled I Quit, I Think, to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living." He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received several awards, including the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Excellence in Advancement of Educational Freedom in 1997.He promotes homeschooling, and specifically unschooling, and inspite of his great wisdom and success as an educator, is generally unwelcome at so called schools of higher education, especially at colleges and universities who are supposed to be teaching teachers how to teach. From my view, government schools aren't really public and they don't really educate, instead they indoctrinate in certain cherished political, economic, philosophical and yes religious views which I think are largely flawed. Gatto would probably agree with this. One professor of education has called his books "scathing" and "one-sided and hyperbolic, [but] not inaccurate" but later agreed with him. Gatto is currently working on a 3-part documentary about compulsory schooling, titled The Fourth Purpose.His main thesis according to Wikepedia:What do government schools do with the children? In "Dumbing Us Down" Gatto makes these observations:1. It makes the children confused. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials that programming is similar to the television, it fills almost all the "free" time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.2. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.3. It makes them indifferent.4. It makes them emotionally dependent. And I would add controlled by peer pressure.5. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).6. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.I would add other points such as doesn't teach world and American history accurately or broadly enough, teaches reading in ways that are proven to cause problems in the students for a lifetime, teaches the religions of atheism and secular humanism, all the while pretending to be neutral on those subjects, does not present a balanced and objective view of origins at all. Not even close.Oh and yes, does not teach deep, reflective and independent and I would say inspired thought. Instead it teaches students to shelve their initiative and sit down and shut up and take orders from complete strangers rather than to think and speak and take action from one's thoughts. Government schooling does not teach entrepreneurship but teaches ideas which lead to dependency instead. Ever seen the clip of the adult dependents standing on the escalator that has stopped, sheepishly, crying out for someone to come save them, instead of just walking to top? Ya, that's the idea. No wonder some of the most accomplished people I've met have had limited public schooling. I once saw a list of the universities in America that offered courses in entrepreneurship. It was less than ten! That is not logical! Every school ought to teach that to some degree, because all of us are the entrepreneurs of our own lives, talents and ideas, even if we are employees. Salesmanship, persuasion, logic, applied physics, wise personal financial management, true economic (Austrian) instead of the lies of Keynes, and on and on of far more practical information should be taught, instead of all of this feel good, do nothing socialistic nonsense that leads to the election of similar airheads to political office.I think we should never elect anyone to public office unless they have successfully demonstrated their ability and wisdom to manage personnel and resources in productive endeavors. Electing college professor types who couldn't create a business or even manage a 7-11 is not wisdom. Our government school have set us up for failure, and Kiyosaki's book is a step in the right direction out of the isolation and insulation of the classroom into the reality of the real world.Gatto's Bibliography:Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992).The Exhausted School (1993).A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling (2000).The Underground History of American Education (2001). (Complete Text online)Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008).'Against School' (2001) (Complete Text Online) about him at: [...]Watch and listen to his lectures on YouTube.Then there are the writings of Charlotte Iserbyt. She worked in the Department of Education in Washington DC during the Reagan Administration. She made copies of the "Classified" documents that detailed how someone somewhere was working within out DOE to deliberatly dumb down American children so a future stupid America would fit into a global socialist slave empire. Then she published those documents for all to read in her telephone book sized THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA. She too can be seen relating her experiences on YouTube.It's not a theory. It's a well concocted plan that it's time for us to resist and avoid and remake into something better for our nation and for your young people.One more. John Stossel's segment from 20/20 STUPID IN AMERICA shows a lot of what is wrong too--monopolistic, tyrannical, self-centered TEACHER'S UNIONS. Anyone can watch it online.

Robert Kiyosaki argues passionately in favor of education (particularly financial education) in all of his books. The point of this early book is that the "education" that is imposed on most American school children is indoctrination rather than education. It is based upon the Prussian system and the purpose is to filter children into more and more refined categories that meet the various needs of the power structure. Kiyosaki is not the first person to write about the problems of our "educational" system nor will he be the last. He is one of the early promoters of FINANCIAL EDUCATION though as an alternative to being conditioned to become a wage slave of the power elite. Immediately after finishing this book, I read Dale Stephens' book, "Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will." The message in it is similar but it is aimed at a younger audience. I highly recommend reading both of these books.

We enjoyed the book a lot

Outstanding

This book puts a whole new twist on the way we view education. It made me rethink a lot of issues pertaining to my own child's education in a big way. I did find the last chapter of the book to be a little like a sales pitch for his courses, however. If you can look past that part there is a lot of interesting ideas on education that pertain to adults as well as children. I would recommend this book for a fresh perspective.

Well worth the read! Should be read by everyone!

soso

Great book that started it all for me...