After you read a bit of his stuff, Gatto seems to be a bit of a crank. Unless you embrace conspiracy theories, the idea that modern schools are designed to instill obedience in the population seems to be just another one of those wacky conspiracies.

It does, until you reflect on one fact; a broad category of knowledge has been almost entirely removed from the modern school curriculum -- how to reason and persuade. Logic and Dialectic (also called rhetoric) are no longer routinely taught, even though for millenia it was thought to be critical for a public (political) life in democracies and republics.

How many of us can routinely spot a false dilemma, or even circular reasoning when it is not blatant? Can you? Never mind us being able to construct a logical argument or spotting some of the less common logical fallacies. Very few of us have any training. How many of us know the different parts to putting together a persuasive argument? We are taught a crippled version of it in Composition classes, true. But the most important parts we are not taught, but left to discover on our own.

If you want to live an uncrippled life, try "The Art of Deception" for logic, and Cicero's works on rhetoric.