| Corrections to the Pre-Publication Edition
Below you'll find the corrections, so far, to the Pre-Publication Edition of John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. The advantages of a pre-publication edition are that you get to read the book six months before anybody else, and you get a book that's usually much longer and more intricate before the cost accountants get to work on saving the publisher money. The disadvantage is that you have to live with the last proofreading of the book. Although Underground History has had four paid proofreadings and fact-checks, a few typos and errors remain to be purged before the market edition is released. In this section of our Web site we'll keep you posted about where the most important changes should be penciled in to your pre-publication copy. We'll omit very small changes like commas, semicolons, and spacing adjustments, concentrating only on the things that would make a paragraph difficult to read, or to correct misstatements of fact.
Incidentally, special thanks go to Joyce Schaeffer of Connecticut; Stuart Williams-Ley of California; Dana Albrecht of San Jose, California; and Mary Kay Hollinger of California, for calling attention to these corrections to the Pre-Publication Edition.
Page 259 The information about B.F. Skinner’s daughter, transcribed from a piece of journalism about the psychologist, is erroneous. She did not commit suicide but is a successful artist living abroad! Change the section title to "Miss Skinner Sleeps Scientifically," from "Miss Skinner Commits Self-Slaughter."
The fourth line of paragraph 2 should read: . . . much like keeping a baby in an aquarium, a device somewhat mis-described in the famous article, "Baby in a Box," (Ladies Home Journal, September 28, 1945).
The third line of paragraph 3, following the sentence, "What happened to Miss Skinner?" should read: Apparently she was eventually sent to a famous progressive school the very opposite of a rat-conditioning cage, and grew up to be an artist.
Page 381 In the section titled "Schoolbooks," the third dropout referred to is Robert Maxwell. The "fact" is actually Maxwell’s assertion. In Maxwell’s The Outsider, Tom Bower states that Maxwell had seven years in school, not three. Which is correct I can’t determine, but in either case the main point—school is only a modest factor in the development of a mogul—remains unchallenged.
Page 13 In the last whole paragraph, line 3, Varro’s actual words are instituit magister, docet pedagogus. Apologies to Varro as to Miss Skinner in the first correction.
Page 17 The third line up from the bottom of the page, which begins, "That Spain nation had." Delete the word "Spain" and the line makes sense.
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