Learning To Be An Actor

"His fellow educators was local farmers that immigrated in from Germany after they tried to make Germany an republic. In Germany they were some of the most greates and smartest educators with the same belief as Harris" (Wikipedia entry on American educator William Torrey Harris)

I couldn't stop laughing! Sometimes, Wikipedia entries are spiced with wandering crudity and stray fouls of mouth, but the entry on William Torrey Harris was tops.

William Torrey Harris (1835-1909) was the United States Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906. Harris, along with a few others helped create the country as it is now, compulsory, segregated, and extending into young adulthood, i.e. high school. When the copper barons, petroleum people, and big guys on Wall Street grew tired of mining and sapping the earth, they decided to mine people. Harris helped them implement their progressive plan of growing German-style potatoes--I mean, people to consume more, think less, and be useless.

Now, before I proceed, I must put this next quote forth. This also was in the William Torrey Harris article on Wikipedia:

"He was responsible for introducing reindeer into Alaska so that the native whalers and trappers would have another livelihood, before they brought other species to extinction."

It makes me laugh so much I nearly snort snot. Personally, I believe, that the person writing the entry knew exactly what they were doing, and must have spent quite awhile trapped in the system Harris created, becoming quite bitter. Or this is proof positive of the successful outcome the philanthropic misanthropes sought for.

But it gets better, or worse. These are quotes from William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education (1889-1906), Editor in Chief of Webster's Dictionary, Simplified Speller, receiver of the Carnegie's Advancement of Teaching award, etc, etc.

"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual" (William Torrey Harris, The Philosophy of Education, qtd. in John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education)

"The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places....It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world" (Harris qtd. in Gatto)

"[Education] must make the individual obedient to the requirements of the social institutions under which he lives" (William Torrey Harris The History and Philosophy of Education)