"The secret of commerce, that kids drive purchases, meant that schools had to become psychological laboratories where training in consumerism was the central pursuit."

"Since bored people are the best consumers, school had to be a boring place, and since childish people are the easiest customers to convince, the manufacture of childishness, extended into adulthood, had to be the first priority of factory schools."

The real makers of modern schooling weren't at all who we think.
The Makers of Modern Schooling
at John Taylor Gatto's somewhat aggrandizing site