The Underground History Of American Education - Chapter 17

I just can't do it. I tried, I really tried. I read the first few pages, then I skimmed the rest. I can't read it in depth. It's too depressing. It's also the longest chapter in the book. That alone says enough.

This was the paragraph that pushed me over the edge and killed my will to continue.

By the end of 1999, 75.5 million people out of a total population of 275 million were involved directly in providing and receiving what has come to be called education. And an unknown number of millions indirectly. About 67 million were enrolled in schools and colleges (38 million in K-8, 14 million in secondary schools, 15 million in colleges,) 4 million employed as teachers or college faculty (2 million elementary; 2 million secondary and college combined), and 4.5 million in some other school capacity. In other words, the primary organizing discipline of about 29 percent of the entire U.S. population consists of obedience to the routines and requests of an abstract social machine called School.