Knowledge is power, so the pitch goes. Therefore, education is the key to success, the passport to the future, the door to a career. Bow down to us, and we shall give you the objective science, the value-free technology, and the business savvy to plunder the world of its goods. Enter the fold, and we shall give you the capacity and the skills to surround yourself with nice things. You will be respected, admired, and envied. Thus administrators, teachers, and above all students have been placed on a market of exchange, where the things bought and sold are not only the idols we pass off as consumer goods but also human souls. All too often the schools deemed to be the “good” ones are those that are good for the economy, attracting industry, grant money, and droves of bodies. The more numbers we have entered into our computers–indeed, the greater the number of the computers we have–the better we think we are. Hence we have fallen into a terrible confusion between quantity and quality: numbers mean everything. “Successful” programs are those that demonstrate “growth,” and growth is nearly always measured quantitatively. And so the numbers numb us into the sleeping sickness of complacency, where we bask in the illusion of knowing something for having increased our stores of information.

–David Patterson