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A review by egrullon12
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
4.0
An absolute must read! Written from the New York State teacher of the year. Here are just a few of my favorite quotes...
"The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do." pg. 6
"Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of them all: we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves to make meanings of our lives. The expert make all the important choices." pg. 7
"The truth is that, reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about 100 hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn." pg. 12
"It's just impossible for education and school to ever be the same thing." pg. 23
"By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the wasy we grade vegetables- and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways- network schools steal the viatality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism." pg 51
"Networks do great harm by apprearing enough like real communities to create expectations that they can manage human social and psychological needs.
....
Belonging to many networks does not add up to having a community, no matter how many you belong to or how often your telephone rings." pg. 53
"No vibrant, satisfying communities can come into being where old and young people are locked away." pg. 57
"Discovering meaning for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How can this be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me." pg. 62
"It appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other's lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop-then they blame the family for it's failure to be a family." pg. 67
"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 did in 1910. In effect, two laborers for the price of one." pg. 84
If your kids are grown, or you don't have them, if you are a teacher or never set foot in public school, compulsory schooling is affecting everyone, and everyone should read this book!
"The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do." pg. 6
"Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of them all: we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves to make meanings of our lives. The expert make all the important choices." pg. 7
"The truth is that, reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about 100 hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn." pg. 12
"It's just impossible for education and school to ever be the same thing." pg. 23
"By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by locking young people up with other young people exactly their own age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by grading people the wasy we grade vegetables- and in a dozen other vile and stupid ways- network schools steal the viatality of communities and replace it with an ugly mechanism." pg 51
"Networks do great harm by apprearing enough like real communities to create expectations that they can manage human social and psychological needs.
....
Belonging to many networks does not add up to having a community, no matter how many you belong to or how often your telephone rings." pg. 53
"No vibrant, satisfying communities can come into being where old and young people are locked away." pg. 57
"Discovering meaning for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How can this be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me." pg. 62
"It appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other's lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop-then they blame the family for it's failure to be a family." pg. 67
"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 did in 1910. In effect, two laborers for the price of one." pg. 84
If your kids are grown, or you don't have them, if you are a teacher or never set foot in public school, compulsory schooling is affecting everyone, and everyone should read this book!