I recently read John Taylor Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling". The author taught in NY public schools for 30 years. The first chapter titled The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher, is a speech he gave upon being named "New York State Teacher of the Year". He goes on to explain how he and all teachers teach confusion, class position, indifference, emotional & intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and that one can't hide. This guy is gutsy! "...there are some studies that suggest literacy at the time of the American Revolution, at least for non-slaves on the Eastern seaboard was close to total...pick up a 1850 5th grade math or rhetoric textbook and you'll see the texts were pitched on what would today be consider college level. The continuing cry for basic skills practice is a smoke screen behind which schools preempt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the seven lessons I've just described to you." p 12
"Schools take our children away from any possibility of an active role in community life- in fact, it destroys communities by relegating the training of children to the hands of certified experts- and by so doing it ensures our children cannot grow up fully human. Aristotle taught that without a fully active role in community life one could not hope to become a fully healthy human being... look around next time you are near a school or old people's reservation if you wish a demonstration." p 13
"... without the exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children, our schools could not survive at all... No common school that actually dared to teach the use of critical thinking tools would last very long before being torn to pieces." p 17
"the method of mass schooling is its only real content. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son's or daughter's education. School is a 12 year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned." p 19
"Schooles are inteded to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled. Well-schooled people are irrelevant... as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves" p 23. sheesh!
"It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a 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 you own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present. It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows no privacy and even follows you into the sancurary of your home, demanding that you do its 'homework'." p 24
"Think of the phenomena which are killing us as a nation: narcotic drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, and alcohol- and the worst pornography of all: lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy. All off these are addictions of dependent personalities, and this is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce." p 26
On the "victories" of women's rights "The predicament of women is a bit trickier to see, but if sharply accelerated rates of suicide, heart disease, emotional illness, sterility, and other pathological conditions are an indicator, the admission of women en masse to the unisex workplace is not an unmixed blessing. Further, some disturbing evidence exists that the income of working couples in 1990 has only slightly more purchasing power than the income of the average working man in 1910. In effect two laborers are now being purchased for the price of one... And an unseen social cost of all of this has been the destruction of family life, the loss of home as sanctuary or haven, and the bewilderment of children who, since infancy, have been raised by strangers."
"Teaching must, I think, be decertified as quickly as possible. That certified teaching experts like me are deemed necessary to make learning happen is a fraud and a scam." p 93.
It was a really great book (and less than 100 pages)! And shocking that it isn't even written from a Christian perspective and yet he still sees all of the problems & dangers! There are also quite a few youtube videos of John Taylor Gatto if anyone is interested.
Picture update coming soon... probably.
