Prime training for permanent underclasses

Look again at [what I consider to be] the seven lessons of school teaching: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, and surveillance. All of these lessons are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius.

— John Taylor Gatto, 2005

From the book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, 10th Anniversary Edition