Unsolicited Testimonial

"Let me tell you something, don't ever think that I am just flattering you. I have joined in various schemes of very famous Internet gurus, but did not find a genius like you in Internet marketing. I have memberships with: Goldquest, Internation, Amway, Graham Hammer, Big Dog Secrets, Felix Ibay, TheRichJerk, etc., but you are far superior to everyone else I came across so far. Your best quality is your compassion... Your compassion towards others to become successful like you is a good virtue. Another thing is that your vision towards life is quite different... You are a visionary... I wish you all the best. Keep up this good work..."-- T.V. (12/29/05)

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Stop "Dinging" Yourself!

"Thank you for your website -- #TL12A: Dinging and Dedinging -- Subtle Suppression -- Self-Sabotage! It made me believe that there is indeed a guiding force that leads you to understanding when you sincerely seek understanding. I would like to tell you of a recent experience that revealed to me the severe damaging effects of dinging in our personal lives. I was my own dinger and the result was a battle that in the past undermined my whole life.

I am extremely talented in many areas but in my own eyes it has in the past never been good enough. My energy level has usually been low. I used to feel somewhat depressed daily.

Recently my nephew and niece from Europe visited the US and I was invited to join them at the beach. One of them is 19 and I had not seen him in years. My niece is 16. I spent a great day with them. The next day, I sprang out of bed at 6am and started working with unusual energy to the music of the Beatles. At one point I was dancing in front of a mirror. I accomplished so many things that day and my life was hopeful. After reading in your website I realized what had happened to me. That day at the beach, my nephew gave me an incredible amount of attention. He wanted to know about my life and he insisted that I tell him about the screenplays I was writing. I asked him, "Are you really interested?" He said it was great and he wanted to know the end of the story. My niece gave me big smiles and she was interested in my explanation of the world through the eyes of quantum mechanics, which is my interest. All of a sudden, I found myself interesting, funny, entertaining. I felt accepted, admired and respected. No dinging whatsoever, on the contrary, only gratitude. It was as if my nephew and niece were grateful that they had un uncle like me. My sudden life explosion was directly caused by that day. I am grateful that the light led me to your website -- #TL12A: Dinging and Dedinging -- Subtle Suppression -- Self-Sabotage because I feel excited and full of hope all of a sudden. I have realized that I, myself, have been a big time dinger in the past and now I will set about the task of stopping that.

Thank you again!!!" -- J.V. (8/23/07)

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How Someone with a "Core-Power Mentality" (CPM) Can Thrive

"I discovered your websites two years ago. At that point I was almost $20,000 in debt (my girlfriend was minus $50,000). I was convinced I had been effectively converted to slave status... Within two months I stopped all collection action on my girlfriend's debt. Within a year my own debt was completely eliminated and no longer did I view myself as a slave. As I approach the two-year anniversary [of my discovery of your websites], I can report that I now have $50,000 working for me, primarily offshore. My debt is zero! ...I'm not going to pretend that I owe it all to Frederick Mann or his websites, but at the same time... I can only encourage everyone to study diligently BuildFreedom.com, BigBooster.com, and their recommended readings." -- S.C. (9/28/2000)

Unfortunately, I (Frederick Mann) don't know the specifics of "S.C.'s" Core-Power Mentality. Nevertheless, we can safely assume that SC did become Someone Who Can Succeed. We can also assume with reasonable certainty that S.C. learned from his experiences and became more capable over time.

More recently, another correspondent emailed me:

"I took your advice a few years ago and signed up for YMMSS. I earned $18,000 with that program. Thanks! I also signed up with 12DailyPro and made $3,000 and signed up with 12by12Daily and made $4,000..." -- I.S. (7/31/07)

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Become A 10X Performing Person!

In your head you most likely have a "program" about how fast your earnings and/or business can grow. "10% per year" is a typical "growth program." If you have such a program in your brain, it almost forces you you to think and act in ways that limit you to "10%-per-year" growth. It's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy!

Would you like to earn ten times as much as you are now earning?

If you could become ten times as effective and efficient as you now are, would you be able to earn 10 times as much?

You most likely have a "rate-of-growth" program in your brain that limits your thinking and actions, holding you back.

In 1984, Jack Welch who was then Chairman of General Electric Corporation, was introduced to the "ten-times-growth" (10X) program. Over a period of 18 months, starting in 1985 when GE was a $30 billion company, the "10X-growth" program was introduced to thousands of GE managers. By 1988, GE had grown into a $300 billion company, and as a result GE's shareholder value had grown ten times!

If you are not yet utilizing the "ten-times-growth" (10X) program, we're happy to tell you that FREE TRAINING (via email) is available.

There's also a book you can read online on the subject: Software For Your Brain by Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

Do you want the FREE "ten-times-growth" (10X) training?

The training consists of 35 interactive lessons. There are no fees of any kind. The success of the 10X approach is based on a few basic principles:

1. Your current results in life are a direct consequence of your general thinking skills, the way you think about yourself, what you do, and how you do it.

2. Your future results in life can be much better than they have been in the past.

3. Your current thinking skills and/or brain software can be upgraded.

4. The most powerful way to do this is through daily training.

5. You are able to find around 20 minutes a day to do this, most days.

6. Self-expression and feedback are very important aspects of learning and improvement and should not be underestimated or neglected.

More good news! FREE Sales X 10 training (called NewSell and consisting of 15 interactive lessons) is now also available.

To receive the FREE 10X training enter your email address and name below.

First name:

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(Your name and email address will never be sold, shared, or revealed to any outsiders.)

Some ISPs filter out a lot of email. If you don't receive the 10X training details within 5-10 minutes, we suggest you open a free Yahoo or Gmail email account and use that to order the 10X training details, above.

However, there are potential obstacles. You may not be able to install the 10X brain software. You may be a victim of Helplessness and other Negative Override Programs that prevent you from installing the 10X brain software -- see The Helplessness Context and Core-Helplessness Mentality (CHM).

Imagine what would happen if you could combine the 10X brain software with the 8/20 Principle!

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LEARN TO THINK RIGHT!

TO SUCCEED YOU HAVE TO THINK RIGHT!
For a long time I've looked for some hidden reasons why people succeed or fail. I've found the answer! ELEVEN CORE THOUGHT PATTERNS! If you don't "fix" these 11 core thought patterns, no matter what else you try to do to succeed, these 11 HIDDEN core thought patterns will sabotage your success. FIX THEM OR FAIL!!!

"Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."
-- Frank Outlaw

I now (August 07) think that the ThinkRightNow! products will work much better for people who've never suffered from CHM, or who have overcome their CHM.

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BEGIN ACQUIRING A
CHAMPION MENTALITY IN 6 DAYS! (Provided CHM doesn't prevent it!)

"You'll learn how even radical change can be totally effortless, in the FREE Think Right Now! Accelerated Success Course!"

In 6 bite-sized email classes over 6 days, you'll learn:

• What mental patterns really are and how yours control absolutely everything you do
  
  
• What the 11 mental patterns of failure are, and how to effortlessly eliminate them, making reaching any goal simple, predictable and fun
  
  
• How to install 11 new empowering mental patterns so you can easily think, feel and act exactly like the people who are already the best in the world  at exactly what you want to do
  
  
• Why the effortless Think Right Now! process creates changes so fast, even if you've never been able to make the change before
  
  
• How thousands of people all over the world are using Think Right Now! audio programs to eliminate worry, anxiety, depression, anger and even a total lack of motivation
  
  
• How these incredible tools were developed by meshing 3 proven methods for change, making TRN! unmatched in speed and simplicity in the personal development field

...And a whole lot more!

To get your FREE course on the easiest most predictable way to make massive, radical changes in your emotions and habits, subscribe to it right now. 

In less than 3 minutes your first class will be waiting for you in your in-box.  5 more will follow over the next 5 days.

Get your FREE course right now!

To receive more details on the FREE 6 Day Course, and where you can get it, click here or enter your email address and name below.

First name:

Last name:

Email address:

(Your name and email address will never be sold, shared, or revealed to any outsiders.)

Some ISPs filter out a lot of email. If you don't receive the 10X training details within 5-10 minutes, we suggest you open a free Yahoo or Gmail email account and use that to order the ThinkRightNow! training details, above.

---

How Someone with a
"Core-Helplessness Mentality" (CHM) Can Suffer

Another correspondent, (let's call him "CHM") who had been receiving my promotional emails for about 5-6 years, sent me an email in July, 2005 (edited):

"I do get your regular messages on Internet business. Thanks for that, even if I seem to miss the good opportunities! The simple reason I joined some of your recommended programs is to make money. Yes, I have spent a fortune in MLMs and HYIPs and I have now to recover about $30,000 of losses, before I start to make a profit again!

I don't like MLMs and I see a passive program like ETX [E-TradeXchange, a program I (Frederick Mann) made a few thousand with, but which effectively became defunct as a moneymaker a month or so after it launched] as very interesting for me. Would you believe me if I told you that I don't have any extra money left after investing in HYIPs and that I am waiting for THE program that will make me recover?

I don't want to blame you that you made referral money from people like me who have put $50 or up to several thousands of dollars in a program that pretends you earn money even if you don't want or know how to recruit. That is my scenario. Every time I tried this it failed. I don't blame you I am taking the decision to get in on my own and no one but me is held responsible.

For example, some previous programs you recommended have not performed as promised, or paid nothing. I also lost a lot of money with a financial club you promoted earlier.

I am not a recruiter, but in none of the programs where you don't recruit have I seen people put in my downline?

I think there are a lot of people like me who having lost so much, but are still interested to know what new programs are launched, hoping to see an interesting and honest opportunity arise. But either have no more extra, non-living money to jump in or prefer to wait for a few months to see if it stays around paying before getting in..." -- CHM (July, 2005)

Frederick's comments: CHM claims to have suffered losses of $30,000 over a period of 5-6 years. Then he suddenly discovered that something might be wrong and he sent me an email to complain. Why didn't he send an email after a month or two and losing maybe a few hundred or a thousand? Does this point to a Core-Helplessness Mentality? Even a compulsive loser? Could this be like a heartburn victim who waits 5-6 years before he does anything about it?

If my recommendations were so bad, why didn't CHM discover that within a few months? Why didn't he find someone else who provides more profitable advice?

How come CHM "missed the good opportunities?" How come "everything he tried failed?" Some others -- like S.C. and I.S. above -- did very well following my recommendations.

The central issue revealed by CHM's email is that through his own actions he lost $30,000 -- he victimized himself to the tune of $30,000 over 5-6 years. I suspect that during this period he never asked himself, "What am I doing?" or, "How can I improve what I'm doing?"

CHM says he doesn't blame me and then he proceeds to effectively blame me for my recommendations. He also blames programs that didn't perform as promised. But CHM says nothing about learning to succeed or improving his own performance. Many of my recommendations covered this. I suspect he ignored my recommendations in this respect. His focus seems to be mostly on factors outside himself.

CHM says, "I'm not a recruiter" (the only indication of "focus on self" in his email.) Some of my advice has been on how to recruit. The "I'm not a recruiter" almost certainly points to a Core-Helplessness Mentality with Helplessness Imprints along the lines "I'm useless; nobody will ever listen to me; nobody will ever become part of my team."

When I promote a program that later proves to become a good opportunity -- enabling participants to earn $10,000 or more (what I call a "killing") -- only a very small percentage (1-2% at best), of those I promote to, end up joining. Typically, of those who join, only 1-2% tend to make a serious attempt to succeed with the program. Sometimes maybe 3-4% make a half-hearted attempt to succeed. Typically, about 95% of those who join make no attempt whatsoever to succeed with the program they joined.

I surmise that about 98% of people trying to make money online suffer from Core-Helplessness Mentality to the extent that they don't learn to make money even with the best of programs. At the time of writing his email above, CHM most likely was among the 98%.

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How Someone with an
"Incompetent Mentality" Can Suffer

Another correspondent, (PWS) who has been receiving my promotional emails for about 5 years, sent me an email in September, 2007 (edited):

"Why should I take advice from a loser? For in my eyes, you're a loser. 35 programs I've joined under you in the last 5 years and lost money with! And when I tried to show you a winner program, you didn't even respond. Look at GPP (www.GlobalPensionPlan.net/)! They have an ingenious idea: You sign up for life insurance of Euro 200,000, set on the 67th year of age (so the health and death risk is deleted), surrender it to the program owners, so that you don't have to pay a single cent. They pay a single payment to the insurance company, raise a loan on it and from that you'll get Euro 55,000 (if you aren't yet 67 years old). I am older than that, but I've earned till now the lump sum of Euro 504,000 (that is about $685,440)!!! 'Cause they're paying for each referral Euro 2,000, and that 12 levels deep. I'm really not a good referrer, but I've built a downline of 252 members within just 5 months. Calculate, what you possibly could have earned! And than kick yourself in the... somewhere for having lost more than a million!! And I guess, that lots of your subscribers have joined GPP (but not under you). You could have gotten the referral bonuses for them. And what is the entrance fee of $40 (€30) compared to the possible gain? I don't think that they're running with our €30, 'cause they would give away a real big succes. Even for handling over the 100,000 insurance applications they would get the lump sum of €900 million (equals about $1,224,000,000!!!). And they earn lots more, for not each member can or will build a downline of 12 levels, so they are saving those €2,000 for these members. As I said, my downline has 252 members, I've gotten only 8 members in my 12th level, and even the best recruiter of my downline has reached only level 11. Calculate how much the company is saving on referral bonuses they don't have to pay. No, I'm pretty sure, this program will work.

I've done quite a lot of business with Chinese people and know their business attitude. Each and everybody of them has checked me, sometimes 3 - 4 month, before doing the first business with me. When talking with them I found out that they did know more about me, than my banks and the fiscal authorities together. They even knew my secret bank data, which not even my wife knows! In my discussions with them they told me that the worst thing for a Chinese is, to "lose his face," as they call it. In July 2006 a Chinese businessman with about 12,000 employees was interested in the program, in order to provide retirement benefits for all his employees. He checked the program and the owners for half a year and joined with all his employees at the end of January 2007!! That is another reason why I trust this program.

By the way, GPP is still accepting new members, though they've already reached their aim of 100,000 members. But the Insurance Company detected about 20,000 members who didn't provide their birth dates, or didn't give either first or last name, or are over 67 years old, and rejected these applications. But 'cause of the contract between the program owners and the Insurance Company, they have to offer 100,000! So they've reopened the program. If you're very fast, you can jump on the rolling train!" -- PWS

Frederick's comments: PWS replied to an email in which I promoted WealthTekk, with which I'd earned over $30,000 by early September, 2007, and with every penny due to me having been paid. (If you take WealthTekk's free tour and log into your account, you'll find me at or near the top of the Leaderboard.) By contrast, PWS has lost money in 35 programs over 5 years. Isn't it a sign of incompetence to call me the "loser?" What's going on in PWS's head?

Why does he insult me and then suggest that I join a program under him? More incompetence?

GPP (www.GlobalPensionPlan.net/) looks like a common form of "insurance scam." There's a program, originally called "E65," that works the same way. (I must confess that I originally promoted E65 because I'd known the webmaster for several years and thought he was trustworthy. He said he knew the principal very well and assured me that E65 wasn't a scam. Believing him reflected my own incompetence at that time. "Common reasoning" for joining such a program is that it costs "just $40 one-time"; if it works out, you get paid tens of thousands; if it doesn't pay out, you've lost an insignificant amount that won't hurt you.)

The way this common scam (a form of the more general "advance-fee scam") works is that "some clever people make an arrangement with an insurance company." For the "insurance policies" to be activated, there must be a large number of members -- like 100,000. Members pay a nominal amount of $25-$50. Somewhere down the line, the company announces that because of some pretext, more members can be accepted. Later, the company announces that they're ready to activate the "insurance policies," but all members need to send in "$50 to get debit cards" so they can receive their money. After that, there's usually a never-ending series of excuses for delays.

An important part of the scam is promising high referral bonuses -- like E65's "$1,000 per referral, 5 levels deep" and GPP's "€2,000, 12 levels deep" to attract major promoters.

The company collects several million and also builds a large "customer" base. They may create and promote other "investment programs" (usually also scams) to their "customers." In the case of E65, it was a program called ComShares that supposedly had some "expert traders" who "knew how to make money in the Asian markets."

PWS claims that he's "earned the lump sum of €504,000 (about $685,440)," but he's almost certainly been paid nothing, because payments only start after the "insurance policies" have been activated.

Psychologically, for most people, once they get involved in such a program, it becomes part of their life. It becomes very difficult to consider the possibility that it might be a scam and walk away from it -- particularly if you're hoping to receive "€504,000" and you've been imagining how your life will change once you get all that money. (E65 was launched in 1999 and is still stringing along their "customers," sending them regular "updates" with new promises and "explanations" for the never-ending delays.)

The "Chinese argument" seems just plain silly! The argument that the company "saves" by not having to pay certain referral bonuses seems misguided to me.

Here's a Review of GPP, I found in about 5 minutes!

It seems that in PWS's mind I'm a loser and he's a winner, because he lost money in 35 programs I recommended over 5 years (making me a loser!), while he's in the GPP "winner program" which is going to pay him at least €504,000. Presumably I'm also a loser because had I listened to him and promoted GPP, I would have earned a million or more!

That PWS lost money in 35 programs over 5 years and now thinks GPP is a "winner program" could make you suspect that he's been operating well below the "success threshold."

It also seems very likely that PWS overestimates his level of competence dramatically -- particularly seeing that he regards GPP as a "winner program" -- see Discover Where You Are.

Furthermore, it seems that during the past 5 years, PWS has learned little or nothing. In fact, his latest email indicates that he has been "dyslearning" and becoming less competent over time -- see "98%er Characteristics." For 5 years, it seems, he was "competent" enough to join 35 programs I recommended, but not competent enough to follow my advice on how to make money with the programs. Then, suddenly after 5 years, he falsely concluded that I was a loser and he should no longer follow my advice at all. It also seems that PWS has now falsely concluded that he's a winner because he's in the GPP "winner program" which is going to pay him at least €504,000 -- a classic example of the "Regression/Dyslearning Loop?"

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Edited from an email from "R.T." to Frederick Mann":

"In all I've tried, I haven't made anything work. I'm not worth s_ _t for anything.

I cannot...

• Find qualifed leads/prospects;
• Sponsor/recruit anyone into anything;
• Market, locate, refer, sign-up, teach, mentor, or anything.

I've been searching, reading, and studying. I've seen sooooooooooo much, but I still know nothing!

I'm sad, depressed, obsessed, and fruitless...

I respectfully ask for your help. Can you help me... make more money? If you can, show me, I will do my part." -- R.T.

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The following has been compiled and edited from an email exchange between Frederick Mann (F.M.) and "H.H." F.M.'s comments have been added.

H.H.: I will not give up until I secure a good living on the Internet in spite of the plethora of BS out there.

F.M.: In order to succeed you may have to become someone who can succeed. You may also have to acquire knowledge and skills that enable you to move above the "success threshold." Furthermore, you may have to remove any BS in your own head that might be lowering your level of success.

H.H.: I'm not sure what BS (specifically) you were referring to in my own head... I was a little offended by that comment.

F.M.: Getting "offended" is most likely part of the BS in your head.

H.H.: I realize that in order to succeed I have to become someone who can succeed and that requires obtaining knowledge.

F.M.: Most likely, you don't sufficiently understand what's involved in becoming someone who can succeed.

H.H.: I feel I do understand what it takes to be successful. It doesn't have anything to do with the "so-called BS" in my head. I've studied NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming], I participated in and facilitated positive thinking in relationship building, etc. I've read most of the material and was successful! [in the "job world"]

F.M.'s Comments: I've been communicating with H.H. for more than 7 months, basically on how to succeed at making money online. Many of his emails seemed to reflect victimization. It seems to me that, given the degree of his CHM ("Core-Helplessness Mentality"), his chances of succeeding online are small -- no matter how "determined" he might be.

The chances are overwhelming that in the area of making money online, some of the "knowledge" in H.H.'s head is BS. It's also possible that he's been "dyslearning" from some of his online experiences -- getting emotional, blaming others and factors outside himself ("the plethora of BS out there"), and making false conclusions -- adding more BS to the BS already in his head -- and becoming less competent over time. This may apply to many people who've been victimized.

As long as H.H.'s "mentality" is configured so he gets "offended" when someone suggests that he might have BS in his head, he cannot remove the BS that prevents him from learning and becoming sufficiently competent to succeed ("rising above the success threshold").

On 7/13/07, H.H. emailed me:

H.H.: I've been a strong supporter of wellness products and systems for a long time. It's a little disappointing to find out that you are promoting "THC." This is a scam of the highest proportions. This is simply another parasite preying on the sick who are full of hope. Think about it, if this guy cured someone of ALS the papers would be all over it.

F.M.: Sometimes when someone responds to something, their response is 100% about the thing they respond to and 0% about themselves. Sometimes it's the other way round: 0% about the thing they respond to and 100% about themselves. Sometimes it's somewhere in between. Unless H.H. has personally applied THC without achieving good results, or knows someone who has applied them without good results, I assume that his response about THC being a scam is a 100% response to the BS in his head and 0% about THC!

My colleague Mark Lindsay, who has applied THC more extensively than I have, says: "My opinion of "THC" is that they work phenomenally well. For me, THC has worked far better than things like Idenics and Centerpointe Holosync technology. You can also work with a coach, which adds a "laser-like focus" to the process."

Lift Your Finger!

1. Hold your index finger about 8-12 inches in front of your face.

2. Lift your finger about 2-3 inches.

3. What made your finger go up?

4. How did you do it?

5. What is it about you that made it possible for you to do it?

6. By lifting your finger did you create a shift in the universe?

7. If you could do that, what else can you do?

8. If you could do that, what can't you do?

9. Do your beliefs affect what you can and can't do?

10. Can you see your beliefs like you can see your finger?

11. Can you "lift" your beliefs like you can lift your finger?

12. If "yes," go ahead; if "no," what and why are your limitations?

The Money Solution

The Big Obstacle and its Solution?

Frederick Mann: In general, I think Tom Cruise hits the nail on the head about psychiatry. I share his concerns about "psychiatric drugs"; I think they should be avoided like the plague. Cruise briefly mentions vitamins. In general, I think supplements are much safer than prescription drugs. The drug companies benefit most if they can get people hooked on drugs with side effects. The typical doctor will then prescribe extra drugs for the side effects... I think Cruise is completely mistaken about "no chemical imbalances." To validate this claim, every human on earth would have to be tested for "normal chemical balances." It would take just one person with an imbalance, to refute the "no chemical imbalances" claim.

For more on psychiatry, see Psychiatric Fakery?

Considerable research indicates that low levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and serotonin (a chemical imbalance) in the brain are associated with feelings of helplessness. In the "7 Keys to UltraWellness" video (below) Mark Hyman, M.D. refers to "hormonal imbalances" -- another chemical imbalance.

For more information, see Wealth Scan as well as Health, Life-Extension & Biological/Physical Immortality (another video by Gerard Kielty I.R.B; I.D.E.).

For more information, see UltraWellness as well as Health, Life-Extension & Biological/Physical Immortality (more videos by Mark Hyman, M.D.).

Most people experience situations where their Feelings Overpower their Will and their Thoughts! Some Feelings are Much More Powerful than Thoughts and Willpower for most people. Strong Feelings Make Most People Relatively Helpless. That's why, for most people, the Key to Open the Door that Makes Upgrading Possible is Brain Chemistry! (How many people can use willpower to not eat when they FEEL hungry?)

By the way, the easiest way to get control over the quantity you eat is to Remove the FEELING of Hunger! Google: appetite suppressor. You may have to do some experimenting to discover what works best for you. (It's brain/body biochemistry!)

This article has been adapted from the original. The purpose is to provide some backround information on how "American education" seems designed to produce Packers. See also "Are Our Schools Concentration Campuses for Mind Destruction?"

John Taylor Gatto
(1991 New York State Teacher of the Year) Interview By Jerry Brown

March 25, 1997

Jerry Brown: Welcome to another edition of We The People. This hour we're going to talk some more about learning, education, and schooling in its many variations. To help us reflect more deeply on this question, we have on a line from New York John Taylor Gatto. He was named the New York Teacher of the Year in 1991. He was also named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, as well as 1991. He resigned from teaching during his state titled year, and he's put out an op-ed piece in the Wall St. Journal, and four months later he was honored by his former students in a program at Carnegie Hall called "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto -- the Exhausted School." He's written the book "Dumbing Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schools."

So, what should I call you, not professor of course, just John! John, welcome to the show. Call me Jerry.

John Taylor Gatto: Okay, Governor, I'll call you Jerry.

Jerry Brown: Ok. It's a real pleasure, I've been reading some of your material, and it certainly harkens back to a couple of major influences on my teaching, or rather my school ideas, one Ivan Illich and the other Paul Goodman. I guess I got off the trail there in 1991 and 1992; I read the book Compulsory Mis-education, and I've never quite been able to get the hang of school issues since.

John Taylor Gatto: I know both of those writers, and they've had a big influence on me as well.

JB: Well tell me John, you've been in the school business thirty odd years teaching in the public schools of New York, so can you state here in the beginning what the problem is here with here. People are just wringing their hands, and it doesn't seem like anything is going to get better with the path that we're on.

JTG: Well, there's a lot of problems Jerry. But I think they boil down to a quick slug of we don't teach the way children learn and because the business has become really a central part of the American economy, you're really not allowed to teach the way children learn although any individual component in this system would admit privately that they wish they'd allow you to do that. You have the perfect example of that out your way: an elderly Peruvian immigrant, in a school near Los Angeles, inside of four years, had the best scores on the Advanced Placement Calculus Test. I'm sure he was an excellent teacher, but that's really beside the point. He was working with a group of kids with no mathematical tradition, and very little literary tradition, and inside of a short time, Garfield High was the third ranking school in the US on the AP calculus. Mr. Escalante's fate is just fascinating -- he was harassed and hounded out of the school. They made it intolerable for him to stay!

In Chicago, there's a black lady named Marva Collins, working with black ghetto kids, many of them with no intact families. She found out what I found later on, which was that these children have no resistance to very high level work and ideation. In a quick take, if you set the idiom aside, they're producing work of a caliber that we associate with adults. I know this must sound fantastic to your listeners, but the truth is you and I could spend hours and not come to the end of people who've accidentally stumbled on the great dirty secret of American schooling: it just doesn't teach the way children learn, nor can it be allowed to, or maybe that's just momentum and not design. We're dealing with a 6,700 billion dollar a year industry -- it's the gatekeeper to all of the rest of the jobs. We couldn't turn out an excess of competent people without really doing damage to this economy. If this sounds like I'm playing a conspiratorial string on my violin, hardly, the president of Columbia's teacher's college, Dean Russell, in 1908, in the keynote speech to the NEA, said that there was a tremendous danger that too many leaders would be produced, and it would cause a collapse in the system.

JB: I'm reading a quote you have by Edward Roth, in his book written in 1906 called Social Control, where he says, "Plans are on the way to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough." Now you quote that I suppose because for you it encapsulates the underlying spirit of education in America?

JTG: Yeah, I actually used that in a book that's coming out in the summer called The Empty Child by Simon and Schuster. Since they wouldn't give me the million words I needed, I needed to find the most trenchant reflection of this attitude towards children that they're little plastic lumps of dough. Roth of course is not just a professor of sociology he was one of the two or three people who created the American discipline of sociology. And you also have a few years later Geddard of Princeton, the head of the psychology department, who said that standardized testing would function as a dunce cap, making people aware of their inferiority, making them reluctant to compete and even, even reproduce themselves! There's a current to this, not a strain but a powerful central current right before the first world war, reaching a tremendous visible crescendo sometime right after the second world war, after which it disintegrated itself, rather than provoking controversy, as a duty thing and not talk about it.

I stumbled upon all of this while I was trying to figure out why on earth so many people appeared to have a vested interest in trying to stop me from doing what they knew worked in a school setting. But I talked to each one of them individually, they'd admit that that "its stupid, but I have to do it because" -- and then they'd refer to the next highest person on the administrative ladder. Eventually when we got the state education dept. and I was able to talk to the people there. They began referring to politicians, not all politicians, but certain politicians. And when I spoke to some of their administrative assistants, a few were honest enough to refer me to corps, great foundations, think tanks which were running this particular politician, although this was hardly said, but I heard that. What we have done then is to displace authority over the lives of children into so many different hands, many of those quite invisible, that to approach this with a problem-solving set of mind is really to frustrate yourself to death. We're dealing with a system that's working exactly the way it's supposed to work. There are ways around that -- you can sabotage it like I did for many years, and that works sometimes locally, or parochially, until you're caught. You can sidestep it by sending your kids to some private schools, but most private schools function the same way, except that they're more cosmetic. You can homeschool your children, I mean there are a variety of ways around it, but they're not all tackling the problem.

[Note: Gatto's hint about "foundations running politicians" and some of what Alex Jones and Norman Dodd say may be "paranoid conspiracy theory" and off the mark.]

JB: I want to ask you, you said that anytime you do something that is right, you get blocked. Could you give me one example of what you did that was right, and was blocked?

JTG: Oh sure! I'll give you the actual example that triggered my resignation and the op ed editorial in the Wall Street Journal. My school system, that I continued to succeed in, in the sense that my kids were succeeding, including the kids that weren't supposed to succeed, continued to move me into worse and worse school settings. Until finally I ended up at the school that produced 7 of the 9 "Central Park jogger" rapists, including a number of other distinctions. And here, using the essentially the same methods, but it took a lot longer and I was an older man, but using essentially the same methods, the kids began to lose their "kid" quality and began to become people and have a vested interest in developing their minds and spirits and characters as far as they could. When I saw this heartening response, my method is then to offer more and more challenges, and at some point a challenge to a kid is navigating in the adult world of reality that they see around them dimly.

I had arranged with the president of, I'll call it "Bell Telephone," in New York, to have my kids taken through to visit a telephone station, in keeping with things that I had been doing for 15-20 years. At the moment that some executive was dispatched to pick up the kids at the school and take them to the station, our principal raced to the door that very moment, confronted me, and said "these kids can't go out, they haven't filed the proper papers." I said, "sure I did Jules, I dropped those in your box 48 hours ago." He said, "the policies have changed, it has to be done two weeks in advance, sent to the district, and approved." And I said, "Ok Jules, the next time," and he said, "No!" -- In front of the vice president of the phone company, with the kids all assembled together. At that point I realized that what happened was not an independent decision by the principal, but rather a frantic attempt by the school district, which happens to be on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In fact, they were disturbed by the continued success of children who happened to be under my direction. The truth is they could have been under anyone's direction, who had followed the same sort of system dirt farmers would have followed 150 years ago.

JB: Now what did you do for the kids, with the kids, that triggered this kind of retaliatory response?

JTG: Essentially I operated on a couple of really simple assumptions. That this bizarre and disturbing behavior that kids, not only poor kids, but really prosperous kids in New York were producing, was a direct result of their lives being stripped of significant experiences, confined in these abstract cells for all of their natural youth, and set a diet of low-level abstractions. Not even the challenging debate material or text that you would have find in a fourth or fifth grade in the middle of the 19th century. I mean, that stuff that is reserved for the "gifted" or "talented" kids. The ones in high school are doing sixth or seventh grade work by a century ago's standards.

JB: If I can read between the lines, you deviated from the standard curriculum that the administration wanted?

JTG: I put together what I call a "guerrilla" curriculum Jerry, and that was composed of stuffing them with primary experiences, as much as I could, from an ad-hoc basis, when I would read the paper in the morning or the night before. Any kind of news going on, I would have advance permission and the kids would be dispatched to investigate. One part of this was I brought a kind of seminar standard to the classroom. We didn't have to understand -- I'll use Aristotle as an example -- we didn't have to understand everything Aristotle was driving at to be absolutely certain that a lively discussion shows that much of what he was driving at were current topics in kids' minds. Once they got over the barrier of the language gap, which is extremely easy to do, just like teaching reading is extremely easy to do, California's example to the world notwithstanding.

JB: OK. So you got them into more challenging material in a way which would change based on day to day events in the environment. The way the administration saw it, this was not in the structure that the curriculum was designed, but you get that this was the way to give reality and aliveness to the learning experience.

JTG: You're quite right, but I think that the dynamic at work is worth exploring because its not as simple as the administration opposing it. What's happening is that each subordinate level that has to give permission is on thin ice. So that the ball is passed, and when the ball leaves the local precincts, it's really passed between foundation project officers, certain university staff, policy people in Washington, so that in fact the ball never returns to your court, or when it does, its invariably ringed around with so many restrictions by other people who are making a living. I'm not alleging that its conscious, but it happens. To the point that you don't want to do it anymore.

JB: I want you to comment on the curve, marking on the curve in standardized testing as a way to imbed the growing inequality in our society. Would you comment on the idea that grading on the curve, which I presume most schools do, is a way to put in a type of bell curve social stratification that is increasingly being replicated in almost every part of America.

JTG: The idea very, very early on, came out of Prussian Germany. In a series of debates in the 19th century, that essentially said a mathematical, or mathematized predictable world is the best out of all possible things to hope for. The big people to read -- if you've read Hegel himself -- I think you'd know all you'd need to know. In order to control everybody, certain strategic courses were undertaken in forced schooling. There had never been, prior to Prussia in the early 19th century, been successful forced schooling in the history of the planet. And suddenly Prussia, in 1819, drew in all of the children, put them in a 2-stage system. The first stage was to trivialize the greatest learning time by filling it -- I realize that this is going to get the backs up of some of your listeners -- with balloons, songs, and funny games. But to keep the intellectual/moral part under the control of the teacher. Somewhere in the age of 12, the idea was to set everyone suddenly in competition with each other, and produce visible marks of rank for everyone, so that no matter how secure you were in your understanding of something, there would always be people you could see who had been visibly recognized as your masters. And according to Hegel and a number of other thinkers, this constant "alienation"- that was the world they used which was translated directly to American schools -- this alimentation would lead to the kind of society which could be placed under the direction of certified experts that the state, and the corporate world, found safe and productive! The net result of this, Jerry, was that Prussia, a dirt poor country, in 30 or 40 years, was one of the world leaders. The Prussian King decided the Canadian/American border, because he was the most prestigious monarch on earth! Hartsman, and every other founder of American schooling before we had compulsory schooling, went to Prussia and came back with glowing reports of what the Prussians had produced, that is to say a predictable society that could be run by the best minds.

What you see on a normal bell curve, probably at a moment when assessment is the wrong thing to do, its inappropriate, people learn on private learning curves. We know the point in which we cross the barrier and understand something. Some people learn instantly certain things, and others learn six years later. I will tell you this -- a kid who learns to read at five, and a kid who learns to read at 9, will be indistinguishable to each other at the age of fourteen, assuming they both like what they're doing. On the other hand, we can say its too inconvenient, or too expensive, to allow that and impose a learning curve in first grade that produces this wonderful bell, we can then assign the people on the fringes of the bell to special ed and the people in the middle of the bells -- the walls of the curve -- to the dull classes and so on. And we will create a class system by simply doing that. Inside of a year or two, the kids will impose that kind of class system on themselves! It's a phenomenally intricate, but rather easy to unravel puzzle there - reading is pathetically easy to teach, you assume that once you assemble 30 people in a room, and do it in the same routines, that you'll fail to teach it to some of them, that this bell will appear, and the atmosphere in the classroom is that the humiliation of being a dull reader or bad reader will never wear off. You can predict the rise of a giant remediation industry.

On the other hand, I want your to compare it to 1812 or 1815 when the founder of the DuPont fortune wrote to investors in France and said there's a miracle going on in this country, because everyone here can read and debate like a lawyer! "There's nobody who can't read and they're facile with numbers." Or you can look at De Tocqueville's famous 1835 analysis, when he said that the classical Greeks are children compared to these dirt farmer's kids! Look at the best-sellers of that day! The Last of the Mohicans [by James Fennimore Cooper] -- I would urge your readers to get an uncut version of Last of the Mohicans, especially if they have one or two college degrees, and see what an impossible book it is to read. And yet, it sold the equivalent of 10 million copies!

JB: I notice that you're also saying that judging from the Army Intelligence Test that you have 17% of the whites who can't read and 44% of the African Americans who can't read.

JTG: Its just amazing because just in 1941, these figures were just 4% for the white group and 20% for the African American group.

JB: Do you believe, John, do you believe those numbers, because they're very shockingÖ

JTG: I believe those numbers from my own experience! When you try to reconstruct the intellect of a 13 tear old kid, which is essentially what my classroom was about, you're dealing with social resistance which is quite unbelievable, yet I just got a call today from a kid who had 16 criminal charges against him at 13, and furthermore he was filed as a functional illiterate by the school. He's working on his second college degree and trying to decide among 3-4 offers which would make him leave academia. This is a boy that wanted to have a gun at 13, he's only about 23 now. So what miracle happened? Well the miracle that happened was that he was given himself back -- and it didn't take a N.Y. teacher of the year to do that. I'm not claiming any particular insight, other than what was common knowledge a century ago. This country was unique in world history, because it took ordinary people, people who were considered trash in Europe, and made them independent hard working self-respecting people. To deny what is unique about American history is just nuts, because in there we have the skeleton key to unlock the problem of our schools!

JB: My own grandmother I think went to school until the 6th grade, she was quite a reader well into her 90's, very well read. Now we have a world in which this president is saying that we have to create a situation that everyone can have at least two years of college, in the same way that I suppose that the 6th grade was assumed to be necessary at the beginning of the century.

JTG: I hope that he's just a dupe, Jerry, I really hope so. The way that the game works is that we say that the reason this problem exists is that A. we don't have enough money and B. we don't have enough of the kids lives to work on them. So we've watched schooling go from an average 12-14 weeks and produce a totally literate nation --

JB: 12-14 weeks or 12-14 years??

JTG: 12-14 weeks! The truth is that nowhere in the US as late as 1876, nowhere did more than 49% of the people go to school.

JB: And when they went to school, you're saying that they only went for 12-14 weeks? That's only a couple of months!

JTG: And kids who went for longer than that didn't go every day, or even every week! So they came and went. And furthermore, they were under the control of one woman who had 6-7-8 ages and class sizes of 60-80, that's an impossible situation according to the way we do business today. And yet, as soon as you change the teacher-student ratio from the teacher being 90% of the solution and the student 10, to the reverse of that, the student 90% of the solution the teacher 10, then you can see how very large classes, or mixed classes, can work, because the kids are responsible teaching each other.

JB: What I'm hearing here, one of the key building blocks, more important than TV, in the development of a society of dependent, obedient, sheep-like herdlike uncritical people is that the school is the mechanism of schooling, enshrined as a secular religion. So if the goal is independent thinking, self reliance, critical thinking, all the good stuff that Abe Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin held up as such important values, then somehow this whole schooling mechanism needs to be smashed! And I want to get that very clear, because there is a childlike devotion to the school system that reminds me of the "Devotion of the Blessed Mother" at St. Brendan's grammar school 50 years ago!

JTG: It was sold that way, all of this, the various media sold it this way. I'm not saying that there was a cabal, but simply that it was the way it was presented to them. Flattering luncheons where the decision has been made to take that wonderful woman who had run without an administration those one-room schools which had done so well, and put her under the direction of an apparatus of men, not just a single layer, but infinite layers which are still being spun out.

JB: It almost sounds like the apparatchiks in the late stage Soviet Union!

JTG: That's an excellent kernel! The question is whether this grows naturally as a result of certain economic decision. MIT makes mandatory I believe a book called Autonomous Technology by Langdon Winter written about 30 years ago, in which Winter says once you start with certain premises, it is inevitable that the system will eventually control all the personnel, the apparent leaders will remain only as long as they serve the system's purposes. If they don't, they are marginalized and gotten rid of, and someone else is put in.

A lot of them thought that the family was the barrier to a "sane" future. They may not have liked each other, but they all agreed that you had to get children away from the family. School was the mechanism to utopianize. I think both things are at work here -- ideologues who communicate this idea and are able to perpetuate themselves from generation to generation. They control hiring at universities and foundations and so on, and look for people like themselves.

JB: Today we get a report of Al Shanker's funeral, a memorial, Al Shanker being the head of the United Federation of Teachers of America, probably the most powerful educator of this country. And you have Senator Kennedy, representing the Left wing of the remnant Democratic Party, and you have [former New York City mayor Ed] Koch, once a Democrat, but now a populist-corporatist-conservative former New York mayor. So you have a pretty wide spectrum, at least on the left-right spectrum, giving real encomiums of adulation to the creative work of Shanker, which as far as I know, without speaking ill of the deceased, Shanker was a pillar of this entire apparatus which you have been criticizing for the last 40 minutes!

JTG: He was. Let me say, not in Shanker's defense, but an explanation of how Shanker managed to draw support from all portions of the political spectrum: Shanker was, to his credit, very outspoken of the division that he represented. Shanker is as close to being a classical old-line socialist -- nor did he make any bones about that. Shanker is on record a number of times saying that schools are not about the best destiny for the children, schools are not about making Johnny's family stronger, or bringing his parents in on the governance or deliberations. I had dinner twice with Shanker, I was at this small table with him, and I must say, that compared to everyone else at the table, probably me included, that Shanker absolutely said what was on his mind [laughs]. Not that I agreed with him!

JB: But that's the real issue: wha