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The author contends that conventional schooling tends to degrade community life. (p. He adds: "Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level." (p.
Gatto praises the home-schooling movement. 26). He points out that home-schooled kids are years ahead of others in terms of their ability to think.
Gatto, the author, believes [review based on the 1st edition] that only about 100 hours are necessary to learn the essentials of grammar, reading, and math to those who are properly motivated. 20). When he first wrote these words in 1990, he couldn't have realized how much home schooling would blossom since then.
13). His recommendation is as follows: "Some form of free-market system in public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers, a free market where family schools and entrepreneurial schools and religious schools and crafts schools and farm schools exist in profusion to compete with government education." (p.
Extending the school day, the school year and assigning massive amounts of homework deprive students (and family) valuable time and space that could be devoted to being together and learning about the world around them--immensely valuable life lessons.We must move from centralized, federal and state mandated schools to schools of local control. John Taylor Gatto was awarded New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. Gatto declares that he teaches seven concepts:1.Confusion - everything is out of context2.Class Position - a student must stay in the class where s/he belongs3.Indifference - bells forgo the completion of work, so work not worth completing is work not worth doing4.Emotional Dependency - students work for teacher approval and simple privileges5.Intellectual Dependency - good students wait for the teacher to tell them what to do6.Provisional Self-Esteem - self-respect depends on the opinion of the teacher7.One Can't Hide - students are under constant surveillance with no private time or spaceSchools are psychopathic. Bender, author of Disregarded: Transforming the School and Workplace through Deep Respect and Courage
If you are a public school teacher and critical of education, reading Dumbing Us Down may help you keep your sanity. You're not insane, currently structured schools are.--Jack H. always accept a personal solution in place of a corporate one."While Gatto mounts a powerful attack toward education, he does offer alternatives and the alternatives make sense. We have to "trust children and families to know what is best for themselves.
Everything is organized toward training the student to obey. We suffer from thinking there is one correct way to run schools and the tragedy is that we've created the wrong design. One can only guess that his love of children, especially the disadvantaged, somehow sustained his teaching while in a repressive, ineffective system. Nothing we will do to currently structured schools will make a difference because the basic design is completely wrong.
"As they gain self-knowledge they'll [students] also become self-teachers--and only self-teaching has any lasting value."Kids needs less school, not more. They have no conscience. Self-knowledge is the only basis of useful knowledge.
I had plenty of time to play afterwards. As a paraprofessional involved in the American education system for two decades, and as someone educated by the French, I absolutely agree with John Gatto about the state of schooling in this country. What I have been seeing in this country is an assault on the American people's intelligence. The education I received was top notch. As he says, there's more schooling than educating. I went to school the French way; I was in school for only four hours each day, six days a week, nine months a year.
A must read for deep thinkers. I read this book a few years ago and my mind carries with it some of the book's most cogent points. I especially think about the illusion that our schools are really 'communities.' Instead, they actually divide and alienate us.
It lived in the bottom of my backpack, tracing with me the daily monotonies- hallway consumerism to classroom illegitimacy to textbook vacancy. With this work, John Taylor Gatto inspired me to become a teacher and a better citizen. I discovered this book during my junior year of public high school. worksheet after worksheet after movie-based-on-the-book. He inspired me to communicate the injustices and inequalities with passion and clarity but, more importantly, to work for change.I can't recommend this book highly enough. It spoke so clearly and truthfully to my own terrible experience within the system. Articulating in a way most adolescents are unable, this book illuminates the systemic subjugation of personal power and genuine inquiry that is very much a reality for today's public school student (even those who don't know any better- perhaps especially those).This book held an important place in my life for a number of years.
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