Letters

Anthony Brandt offers a substantial argument for how we have become a society of followers, not thinkers [“Teaching Them To Think,” Out of Left Field, Opinion, February 4].

I attended Southampton public schools in the 1950s and 1960s. I remember questioning the science teacher in seventh grade on certain scientific laws that we were to patently believe. He was impatient with me injecting questions, taking time from the curriculum he needed to complete. He often responded impatiently with, “It is true.” End of subject.

Skipping forward to the early 1990s, a group of East End parents interested in homeschooling our young children invited John Gatto, New York State “Teacher of the Year,” to give a weekend workshop in education and to explore his recently published book “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.”

What piqued my attention from the conversation was the notion that public education was created to make good followers, not independent thinkers. My college degree and initial career was in early childhood education, and I had never heard of this. This “good” intention was designed in the early 20th century for immigrant populations to learn to read and have basic knowledge, but to stay as followers, not independent, creative thinkers.

In these last four years, I have become somewhat of a parrot repeating to bored ears that John Gatto’s book is playing itself out generations later in a rather frightening way. Those early goals of public education were a roaring success, considering the numbers of followers believing the deceitful rhetoric of our last president.

We live in a time that those titans of industry, hopefully, didn’t foresee.

Hilary Herrick Woodward

Southampton