(newest one at http://www.lizardelement.com/sds/againstschool.pdf)

but I must say, two things really stick in my craw so to speak about the politics of the essay:

“Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn’t go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be [...] captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller”

Carnegie and Rockefeller got what they had because they stole it from the people who made it for them, or someone in their family did. In the case of Carnegie, this included murdering people to get rich and be successful so that he might get onto Gatto’s list of successful “captains of industry”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike)

“Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships;”

This is a weak argument, other than being heteronormative (you have to be married to get divorced), and reeks of the “welfare mother” or the “woman who gets abortions instead of contraceptives” type of right-wing mythology. Divorce isn’t bad. Fucked up relationships that cause them are. Trapping women in abusive relationships and saying they need to “work” at them is also bad. Blecch. I can’t even put my finger on what precisely bothers me about this argument, but it sucks.