John Taylor Gatto (The Underground History of American Education, 2006) wrote …

“Drawing an analogy between Rockefeller and the czar of Russia, [Walter] Lippman wrote that nobody believed the czar himself performed the many despotic acts he was accused of; everyone knew a bureaucracy did so in his name. But most failed to push the knowledge to its inevitable conclusion: If the czar tried to change what was customary he would be undermined by his subordinates. He had no defense against this happening because it was in the best interests of all the divisions of the bureaucracy, including the army, that it — not the czar — continue to be in charge of things. The czar was a prisoner of his own subjects.”

“If you obsess about conspiracy, what you’ll fail to see is that we are held fast by a form of highly abstract thinking fully concretized in human institutions which has grown beyond the power of the managers of these institutions to control. If there is a way out of the trap we’re in, it won’t be by removing some bad guys and replacing them with good guys.”

“Man has developed the frustrating power to demand anything because he cannot visualize anything which an institution cannot do for him. Surrounded by all-powerful tools, man is reduced to a tool of his tools. Each of the institutions meant to exorcise one of the primeval evils has become a fail-safe, self-sealing coffin for man. Man is trapped in the boxes he makes to contain the ills Pandora allowed to escape. The blackout of reality in the smog produced by our tools has enveloped us. Quite suddenly we find ourselves in the darkness of our own trap.”

“The poor in the United States are in a unique position to speak about the predicament which threatens all the poor in a modernizing world. They are making the discovery that no amount of dollars can remove the inherent destructiveness of welfare institutions, once the professional hierarchies of these institutions have convinced society that their ministrations are morally necessary. The poor in the U.S. inner city can demonstrate from their own experience the fallacy on which social legislation in a ‘schooled’ society is built.”

“In the context of education, ‘A1′ was mistakenly used by the US Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to refer to artificial intelligence (AI). She made the error during a panel discussion at the ASU+GSV Summit, confusing ‘AI’ with the brand name of the popular steak sauce, A1. This led to humorous comparisons and discussions about the growing role of AI in education.”