Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you’ll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level. The continuing cry for ‘basic skills’ practice is a smoke screen

— 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)

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Taylor Gatto (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.