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I should know, I am one of them. Food, clothing and shelter--we easily shop around for these things. His books are a must-read for all young parents and for anyone thinking about doing business with the educational establishment. John Taylor Gatto, former New York City and State Teacher of the Year wrote this wonderful book and others where he explains how we got this awful institution, how bad it really is and how we can escape. Why not schooling services too. Unfortunately, most young people are sentenced to 12 years of forced mass schooling in minimum security prisons run by government bureaucrats.
You'll feel relief and anger at the same time, and you'll find that even as an individual, you do have the power to help move us in the right direction. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a child in school. [.].Gatto also wrote a more objective and penetrating history of American Education[.].While these books are provided for free by their authors and publishers, I recommend a purchase in order to support their important work. Do you have the courage to honor your curiosity about it.If you are skeptical of those who criticize the institution of public education, you may want to look up another book that explains the same thing Gatto is getting at, but does it much more objectively: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. Do you face ugly truths head on, exploring and studying them or do you feel powerless against them. This book is a great introduction to the topic of education and its relationship to community and self-realization.
The kids are bored, the teachers are disengaged and the system is concerned more with self-preservation than education. He also has a common but erroneous view of Calvinism, seemingly thinking that it leads to public schooling. As a product of the public schools, I can say with confidence that what is going on in the government mandated school system has very little to do with education.Mr. Kids do need some structure, after all in the real world we have schedules and deadlines.
Having said that, this little collection of essays and speeches exposes the flawed premises and practices that define public schooling. If I owned it instead of getting in from the library, it would be overrun with underlining and highlighting. I dogeared over a dozen pages because of especially good comments, a series of quotes that I am planning on posting in bits and pieces very soon. He has another huge book as well but you can read it online at his webpage. I finally finished reading Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Tayor Gatto.WowFirst, the quibbles. I think in some areas Mr. As a long time (and award winning) public school teacher, Gatto both has credibility and an insiders view of what is going on and why it went wrong right from the beginning. Unfortunately, what it was designed to do has very little to do with education.
The very institution is in a way successful because it does exactly what it was designed to do. All things I have suspected for a long time and I found more confirmation in reading what Mr. I think every parent, not just those who have already rejected the compulsory government schools, needs to read this book and take a long, hard look at where this nation sends its children for the majority of their day during their formative years. This is one of those rare books where on almost every page there was something noteworthy. Mr. Gatto has written.
Gatto may have gone a bit overboard. Gatto rightly describes school as a bunch of kids unnaturally forced together in age segregated confines, shuffling from one class to the next at the sound of a bell. Instead the flaws are fundamental and tied to the system itself. It might be connected to those who hold to Calvinism but there is nothing in Calvinism itself that supports (or rejects) compulsory public schooling. Gatto argues quite convincingly that the flaws in public schooling are not a modern invention.
Also, most of the speeches are from the 1990s, and a lot has happened with the public education system since then. It is still worth reading, just not paying for. Gatto's short book is a good overview of the dangers of compulsory public education. All in all, I'd recommend borrowing this book from the library instead of purchasing it. :-) However, it tends to be very repetitive, as it is simply a compilation of speeches and essays given by Gatto over the years. A lot of what he writes, I have read before, but that is perhaps more my fault than the author's.
I give it four stars, only because the new intro in this new edition is a little redundant. Agree or disagree, this thought provoking book deserves a good look.
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