It is an enormous work, nearly four hundred textbook-size pages that must amount to a quarter of a million words. He believes they were created as institutions of social control. It would be dangerous to the American elite to have too many people who can think for themselves. These monopolists did not want competition among schools any more than they wanted it in the oil, steel, automobile and banking industries. They wanted to re-create the class system of England in America and they rejected the idea that ordinary people could govern themselves.
Schools build national wealth by tearing down personal sovereignty, morality and family life.
This was not a conspiracy, Gatto sys. The real conspirators were ourselves when we sold our liberty for the promise of security. This provoked intense opposition from the start. Our schools are rendered inefficient by the apathy of parents. But, under the leadership of Horace Mann, the state continued to enlarge its school system.