“Something in the structure of schools calls forth violence. While latter-day schools don't allow energetic physical discipline, certainly they are state-of-the-art laboratories in humiliation, as your own experience should remind you. In my first years of teaching I was told over and over that humiliation was my best friend, more effective than whipping.

“I witnessed this theory in practice through my time as a teacher. If you were to ask me now whether physical or psychological violence does more damage I would reply that slurs, aspersion, formal ranking, insult, and inference are far and away more deadly. Nor does law protect the tongue-lashed.

-- John Taylor Gatto, NY Public School Teacher,
The Underground History of American Education , page 6