In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. And certainly a contributing cause can be found in the revulsion with which these same families regarded the free movement of Africans through the society after the Civil War. Look again at the six lessons of school. This is training for permanent underclasses, people who are to be deprived forever of finding the center of their own apecial genius. Since the 1920s the growth of the well-articulated school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, have enlarged schooling's original grasp to seize the sons and daughters of the middle class.
Professional teaching tends to another serious error.
Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, whose hidden curriculum prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher. It certainly will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year without being torn to pieces.