“The little red schoolhouse proffers its little drab values, its lies, its false patriotism, its ridiculous heroes, its worship of the state, its reverence for government, and all the moppets sit in the benign goo, aware from the first grade on — through notice of other, more current and popular values — that most of this is stuff and rubbish, and so undoing through their incompetent skepticisms what slight good school might perform. The young brains wither and rot into what is called good American citizenship by the method, hating afterward most learning, work, discipline, fact, morality, common sense, honor, and dignity.

“The university insists upon its great value — the scientific method — and, in the flash and sizzle of high-tension laboratories, proves the merit of inductive reasoning while it denies the existence of inner evaluations upon which the same method might fruitfully be applied. By this means scientists are produced — anti-everything-but-test-tube-contents — agnostic — atheistic — pragmatic — empirical — convulsed with passions of negation — brilliant legions of the half-conscious.”

“Under the authoritative eye of the teacher, several orders of value collapse into one. The distinctions between morality, legality, and personal worth are blurred and eventually eliminated. Each transgression is made to be felt as a multiple offense. The offender is expected to feel that he has broken a rule, that he has behaved immorally, and that he has let himself down. A pupil who adroitly obtains assistance on an exam is told that he is an outlaw, morally corrupt, and personally worthless.”

“To deschool means to abolish the power of one person to oblige another person to attend a meeting. It also means recognizing the right of any person, of any age or sex, to call a meeting. This right has been drastically diminished by the institutionalization of meetings. ‘Meeting’ originally referred to the result of an individual’s act of gathering. Now it refers to the institutional product of some agency.

“The ability of service institutions to acquire clients has far outgrown the ability of individuals to be heard independently of institutionalized media, which respond to individuals only if they are salable news.”

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Deschooling Society was once so popular, it had three reprintings in a single year (1972).

Today almost no one has even heard of it, much less read it.

He’s the eugenicist who said “society need not wait for perfection of the infant science of eugenics before proceeding upon a course which will prevent the renewal of defective protoplasm contaminating the stream of life.”

Professor Gesell advocated a policy of “eugenic violence” to deal with U.S. “inferiors” …

“We must do as with the feebleminded, organize the extinction of the tribe.”

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B. Harris (“Arnold Gesell’s progressive vision: child hygiene, socialism and eugenics,” History of Psychology, Aug. 2011) wrote …

“In October 1913, The American Magazine published an article by Arnold Gesell that portrayed Alma, Wisconsin (his hometown) as overflowing with the mentally and morally unfit. In ‘The Village of a Thousand Souls’, Gesell called for the observation and segregation of the unfit as a eugenic measure. This article explores the reasons behind this infamous article by someone who became a famous developmental psychologist and pediatrician. Gesell’s papers at the Library of Congress reveal his socialist views of poverty, injustice, and human development. The archives of his father’s photography studio at the Wisconsin Historical Society reveal his manipulation of the photographic record to fit his negative view of Alma. Typical of the era, Gesell’s Progressive vision combined social control and negative eugenics with egalitarianism and the benevolent engineering of the environment.”