Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

— John Taylor Gatto Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992)

More quotes by John Taylor Gatto

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992)

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992)

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992)

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992)

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008)

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