John Taylor GattoRecensioni

WARNING! Read this book at your peril because--if you care about education--it will make you angry.

Here's one amazing fact:

"By 1940, literacy as a national number stood at 96 percent for whites, 80 percent for blacks. Four of five blacks were literate in spite of all disadvantages. Yet, six decades later, the Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported a 40 percent illiteracy rate among blacks -- doubling the earlier deficiency -- and a 17 percent rate for whites, more than quadrupling it. Yet money spent on schooling in real terms had grown 350 percent."

And don't blame the system on teachers:

"How many schoolteachers were aware of what they were actually a part of? Surely a number close to zero."

There were so many wonderful quotes here, and I kept thinking to myself, "Yes! This is exactly what I think, but didn't know how to articulate."

My only criticism is that Gatto seems to assume that individuals, left to their own devices, will somehow choose right and straighten themselves out, with "self-knowledge," etc. In reality, as shown over and over again in the Old Testament of the Bible, when people are left to their own devices and don't rely on God, havoc ensues. We cannot create our own purpose; we must acknowledge God's sovereignty and His purpose for our lives. We will find our purpose and sense of worth in the knowledge of His love.

While I was prepared for the degree to which this book was an indictment of our public education system, I was unprepared for the degree to which it's an indictment of pretty much our whole society, including education, national government, mass media, etc...

I have to admit that I'm really still digesting the implications of the book and will probably need to re-read shortly.

This book was okay. The only reason I’m giving it three stars is because it’s very hyperbolic and pretentious at times. I work in special education, so I’m with him that public education can be a nightmare in a lot of ways, and I agree that the federal government should have less power and the individual communities schools belong in should have more. But then he rages against television and fast food and gets all doom and gloom that everybody in America is a mindless idiot. That’s all a bit much. Couldn’t give it higher than 3 stars, despite agreeing with him on many points.

Interesting ideas, quick read. If you think of it more as a transcribed speech than as well-thought-through-expose, and you'll be happy with it.

I'm not sure what to think about this book; I found myself agreeing with Gatto's thesis despite all of his terrible arguments and proposed solutions for why the government monopoly education system is terrible. The book is in the form of several of Gatto's essays, but I would only suggest reading the first (The Psychopathic School -- coincidentally available online for free at http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Ed/GattoPsyPathSchl.htm), as the rest of the book does little but harp on these same topics over and over.

The excerpts from the book that I liked can be found here:
http://sandymaguire.me/books/john-taylor-gatto-dumbing-us-down.html

I am so glad I discovered this book. I think everyone should read this. I will be doing further research to educate myself on all sides after reading this. I completely see the correlations Gatto is making. I agree that school is a government serving institution and I believe it's important for children to learn on their own and in nature. I had honestly never thought about the fact that some of the most important and intelligent people of all time never attended a school.

The only weak spot in this otherwise excellent treatise is the loooong chapter discussing the distinctions between networks and communities. It's a solid critique, but belabored. It drags down the momentum in the middle of the book.
Outside of that section, I found this immensely readable and inspiring. A classic in radical education for a reason. Prepare to question your allegiance to traditional schooling-- not just where it shows up in the public system but also where it shows up in your own thinking and priorities.

Written by a man that taught in the monopoly called public school system, won awards for it, and lists what he taught;
confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, and provisional self-esteem.
The national curriculum is a joke. And what is different from this book compared to others, he doesn't just list the things that are wrong with the system or bash the system. Mr. Gatto gives suggestions of tearing the institution apart and rebuilding it. Something I've yet to read anyone else do.
There's interesting historical information about children in Massachusetts in 1850 being forced to go to public school at gun point. Not a good start and it hasn't improved much.

Though this book is several years old, it is still relevant today. Perhaps more so. Since the beginning of compulsory schooling, the literacy rates have gone down, while the bullying rate has gone up. Hmm. For a teacher in the trenches for 30 years, Gatto knows what he's talking about as he has seen it first hand.

It is quite sad to see how little education is taught in such a fashion and making kids still and quiet for so long, which is unnatural, of course. I'm surprised there aren't more incidents of pushback from students or parents.

This book makes me thankful, once again, that I chose to home school. It may not be for everyone, but it is definitely for me and my children.

If you stop and think about the waste of time it is to sit in a desk for 6-8 hours a day, for five days a week for 13 years to learn how to read, add and subtract, count money and maybe a few history facts, you would be on to something. And to have to sit there not moving, not talking, not really thinking either, it is a travesty.

The public schools are an institution and they will never be fixed because too many jobs and too much money is at stake. I feel bad for teachers who really want to teach, but have to force kids to memorize stuff for tests, that students have to take too often for no real reason.

Gatto is a former school teacher and tried his best to actually teach, but of course he wasn't appreciated for it. He did win teacher of the year a couple times, but by then, he saw the light and didn't want to be chained to the institution anymore.

I am so blessed to home school my kids and am reminded why I chose to make this sacrifice. This book reinforces my decision to do so.

A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

This is without a doubt the most important book I have read in several years. His recap of Alexander Inglis's six functions of modern schooling (from Inglis's "Principles of Secondary Education") in his prologue hooked me immediately. John Taylor Gatto opened America's eyes to the problems of compulsory education in 1991 in "Dumbing Us Down". With "Weapons of Mass Instruction", he continues his crusade against the establishment he was a part of for 30 years. To think there was a deliberate plan to create the mind-numbing schools I managed to survive is maddening. As is everything else he talks about.



Part lecture, part testimonial, all scathing indictment, this book will be lauded by homeschoolers and most likely condemned by teachers and administrators, dismissing his vision as untenable.



Gatto trickles a bit of his extensive research for his other book, "The Underground History of American Education" in outlining the historical (German) basis for a system that is designed to create conforming non-thinkers. He highlights a number of examples of extremely successful dropouts and people who were not schooled in the traditional way. And he draws on his direct experience within the system, contrasting with all those successes he cites to blister the institution that manages rather than teaches. Harsh? Perhaps. But think of how much time was spent in your "schooling" marching to the rules. As he overstates in one section of his book, primary school is mostly "don'ts" and little encouragement to think outside that proverbial box. And it is getting worse. I have questioned for many years the value of standardized testing and Gatto brings up the same questions. The measuring sticks fail to truly measure anything except how well someone can do on those tests.



As noted in other reviews, this is a must read for any homeschooler. And it should be required reading for every superintendent, teacher and student. Let the revolution begin.

John Taylor Gatto is an award winning teacher that isn’t afraid to buck the trend.

Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto is a masterly an in-depth view into how public schooling really works.

Sampling many of his best personal essays, Dumbing Us Down features the true reasons why education in our modern day system is failing: because it’s meant to be that way.

Gatto reinforces his main premise with a thorough examination of public schooling in America. He carries this out rather incisively given his no holds barred approach to the matter, and this is very refreshing.

While many others have tippy toed their way around the issue, Gatto harpoons the heart of the matter with statements such as:

“…schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.”[1][Bold Emphasis Added]

“Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”[2][Bold Emphasis Added]

“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of the system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.”[3][Bold Emphasis Added]

Such scathing statements leave no question to Gatto’s courageous stance, and helps the reader understand the plight we face rather cogently.

Another component of this ongoing public schooling issue is how vital the community is, and more importantly, the family unit, in helping foster a healthier, more independent, more curious, and ultimately more self-sufficient individuals through proper education. While this might seem obvious in hindsight, it isn’t being employed that much at all in our modern environs.

Throughout the length of the book, Gatto fiercely touches upon the many different factors that have helped cause this growing dilemma. Some of these include the overwhelming amount of television being watched by society in general, and more specifically by children, while other components have to deal with the inherent designs of schooling such as the fragmentation of education, the removal of the family from an individual’s education, the poor life tenets individuals are taught, and much more.

One of the best parts of the book is what Gatto calls ‘The 7-Lesson School Teacher’, where the author shows what teachers are truly expected to inculcate into students. Once read, this particular lesson to the reader might seem facetious, but it’s really not. When one views what Gatto is stating with an open mind – while keeping cognizance of the fact that he worked decades for the system – then one completely gets to be aware of why failure in schooling isn’t the exception, but the rule.

In fact, more specifically, Gatto gets at the heart of why public schooling is destined to fail:

“Mass education cannot work to produce a fair society because its daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression and intimidation. The schools we’ve allowed to develop can’t work to teach nonmaterial values, the values which give meaning to everyone’s life, rich or poor, because the structure of schooling is held together by a Byzantine tapestry of reward and threat, of carrots and sticks. Official favor, grades, and other trinkets of subordination have no connection with education; they are the paraphernalia of servitude, not of freedom.”[69][Bold Emphasis Added]

Gatto has unbounded a phenomenal book in the field of public schooling and more importantly, what true education should encompass. Please keep in mind, schooling and education are not the same thing. Particularly, this differentiation and what each means is one of the main gems of this book.

To finalize, this book is a veritable fountain of information that is intense in precision and thought-provoking in its implications given that they filter into all aspects of our lives, and ultimately seep into the future. This is why it’s vitally important for individuals to become autodidacts, and help others become so through our interactions with our families and communities. Self-teaching is more important now than ever, especially with the deteriorating effects of public schooling.

Because of all the reasons mentioned above, and myriad more, this book is definitely a must read for everyone.

As the author saliently notes:

“Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human…”[47][Bold Emphasis Added]

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Sources & References:

[1] John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling, pg. 21.
[2] Ibid., pg. 23.
[3] Ibid., pg. 24.
[4] Ibid., pg. 69.
[5] Ibid., pg. 47.

John Taylor Gatto is an award winning teacher and recipient of the New York State Teacher Of The Year Award with over 30 years experience within the public school system. Many of the lessons he’s learned are expounded upon at length in his books, which continue to gain popularity with every passing year.

For me, A Different Kind Of Teacher follows a reading of Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling. In it Gatto did a phenomenal job of outlining many of the most insidious issues taking place with the current public school system. The precision and pull-no-punches approach of Gatto’s work is what made Dumbing Us Down so notable, especially considering that he most pulled no punches when he stated that the main agenda of the public school system is to indoctrinate individuals how to follow orders so they can become unthinking cogs in the machine.

A snippet of some of Gatto’s most important points in Dumbing Us Down are:

“…schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.”[1]

“Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”[2]

“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of the system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.”[3]

Scathing remarks such as the above leave no doubt Gatto’s quest for individuals is that of true education, and not the facsimile of it as we’ve been sold over time.

With that said, his other phenomenal book, A Different Kind Of Teacher – Solving The Crisis Of American Schooling by John Taylor Gato is a fierce examination into not only public schooling and its many inherent flaws, but also what type of steps are required to be carried out by individuals in order to transcend the current bankrupt/corrupt system from its current miserable state and into a more robust, grounded and resonant system that doesn’t sell out to corporate/government interests.

One intricate notion Gatto explores regards education in the past, which was considerably different than what it is now. For instance, in Colonial America literacy rates were exceedingly high with no compulsory schooling whatsoever. The same cannot be said of now. In fact, one theme that Gatto convincingly explores is the damage inflicted on the human psyche through the many years of compulsory schooling.

When the reader reflects on how such actions instill the conditioning of the mind, and force it not to think but simply accept what it’s told, one arrives at the understanding of how a large part of society in this country continue to willingly accept the idea of public schools as a good thing

Thankfully, not everyone is following that pattern. With more and more families continuing to homeschool their children, and individuals seeking to become autodidacts, considerable change is taking place at the grassroots level.

And much of that change is taking place in large part by individuals such as John Taylor Gatto, who are relentless in not only mincing no words in calling the system for what it is, but also by offering solutions to individuals seeking such.

Regardless, each of one of us are inherently responsible for our own continuing education. When we pass that responsibility to the state, such as John Taylor Gatto has showed, we come to terms with the desolate fact of the education system’s cataclysmic decline.

The only way to stop such a system from continuing in tsunami-like fashion sweeping over everyone and everything is at the grass roots level, at the local level.

If we don’t, the country our forefathers conquered will be a ghost of the past, barely a facsimile of its former self, and the future will prove to be even murkier than now.

As Gatto elucidates:

“Figure out what matters. Do it yourself; work hard at it; no one else can do it for you. Relying on others in this regard or ignoring the necessity will ruin you thought you sit surrounded by machines in a rich school watching videos of spaceships. Each of us has a design problem to solve: to create from the raw material around us the curriculum for a good life. It isn’t easy and it isn’t the same for any two people. If you think you can buy it, look around you at the shambles my own generation has made of communal life and family life by trying to buy it or fashion it with machinery.”[4]

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Sources:

[1] John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling, pg. 21.
[2] Ibid., pg. 23.
[3] Ibid., pg. 24.
[4] John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind Of Teacher, pg. 208.

No, thank you. Schools do not need more input from religion, the community, or the family. As an example of this folly, I give you: sex education, where the US has the highest rate of teen pregnancy of any industrialized nation; where community and religious standards lead to abstinence-only programs which are not only free of actual facts, but actively promote doctrine which is demonstrably false, leading to the highest rate of STDs among teens in any industrialized nation. Frankly, anyone who calls modern US public education "prison" is an historical idiot, and would do well to spend 12 or 16 hour days down a mine or working in a sweatshop, or as a slave picking cotton, or perhaps in a workhouse, or just starving on the streets.

3.5 stars. 4 is too generous while 3 is unfair. The book brought up some interesting points, but nothing to write home about.

‘Dumbing us down’ is subtitled, ‘The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling’, and consists of the text of five speeches that the author has made. One of them, was somewhat ironically his acceptance speech after being given an award by his state for being ‘teacher of the year’. Thsi book is considered a classic in home educating circles.

The first chapter, ‘The seven-lesson school teacher’, outlines what the author perceives as the ‘lessons’ taught across the United States, no matter what the subject. The first lesson he mentions is ‘confusion’ - the non-connectedness of everything, something which often seems to be the case in standard schooling.

On the other hand, the second lesson, ‘Class position’, is something I didn’t relate to. Until secondary school, I don’t remember having grades at all; perhaps the UK has not yet gone so far down the 'dumbing' path as the US. Still, there's plenty to think about. Gatto argues that there are serious problems with the lack of privacy in schools and the need to learn what teachers decide rather than according to the student’s interests.

This book isn’t to attack education or classrooms as such; Gatto is, after all, a teacher himself. He merely wants to demonstrate the difficulties that can arise with the principle of classroom schooling as we know it, where the student has little say in what he learns. Obviously some schools are a great deal better than others.

Much of the book ties in with other books I’ve been reading on different topics, and issues in everyday life. I found myself several times seeing schooling as a metaphor for other aspects of human existence.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in education, whether at school or at home, and indeed to anyone interested in seeing how government restrictions can cause us to accept something that makes no sense at all when we think about it rationally.

If half of what Gatto says about compulsory education we have a serious problem. Thought-provoking to say the least.

Fore pretty much everything this book has to offer and more I suggest his later work "Weapons of Mass Instruction."

Dit boek viel zwaar tegen. Het is een verzameling van speechen, tussen de verschillende speechen is er veel herhaling.

Zijn stokpaardjes zijn dat het einde van een les ingeluid wordt door een belsignaal, dat mensen leren in de gemeenschap, dat het de bedoeling is van de school om mensen dom te houden enz. Zijn boek is geen logische uitwerking van een soort grondgedachte, en bevat ook amper concrete voorbeelden uit zijn schoolcarriere. Ik vind dat het boek dus gewoon wat amper samenhangende zinnen.

Modern schooling is a tool for stifling thinking and controlling the masses. Endless examples of people without much formal education who have made it big, nothing about the failures. Reasoned critiques of the school system are valuable. This book is not.

Although there were a few good points brought up in this book it really misses the mark as far as fixing things.

One of the problems the author singles out as an issue in the public schools is that children are learning how to be competitive in the school environment (grades, sports, and such). One solution offered is a type of homeschooling in which parents take bids from teachers who COMPETE with each other to earn the right to teach the child. Wait a minute...we don't want our children in a school environment that stresses competitiveness and part of the solution is employing a teacher using a competitive hiring system? It just seemed odd to me.

He mentions that this system should be operated much like the free market, you know, the one that recently collapsed and had to be bailed out by government. I don't think I would choose that as the prototype for the system I wish to educate my children with. Another issue with this system would be that families with more money would be able to "bid" more for teachers as opposed to a less financially stable family.

Another issue mentioned is that of the two wage earner family. I agree with his points in regards to this setup being detrimental to children. However this setup has evolved as a result of the economy as well as the government. In order to change education, you first have to change the economy and the way the government oversee's education. What good are reforms at the local or state level when the federal government can attempt override those changes if they so wish to?

Overall there were a lot of points that I agreed with the author on. I wish he had addressed the multitide of other factors that also need to be addressed if true educational reforms are to take place.

Both love JTG but get squirrelly about his so-anti-establishment that he rounds the bend toward conservative thought bent. Introduction in this new edition is stellar.

Must read for anyone wanting to understand the grandfathers/sages of secular homeschooling . . .

everyone should read this book. it will challenge your views on compulsory education and might compel you to question whether it is such a good idea (especially given its sinister historical roots). extremely thought-provoking!