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Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

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Manufacturer: New Society Publishers
List Price: $12.95
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This radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of Dumbing Us Down and to keep this classic current, we are renewing the cover art, adding new material about John and the impact of the book, and a new Foreword.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 370
EAN: 9780865714489
ISBN: 0865714487
Label: New Society Publishers
Manufacturer: New Society Publishers
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: 2002-02-01
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Studio: New Society Publishers


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
• The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom
• Learning All The Time
• The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling
• How Children Learn (Classics in Child Development)


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Restore Educational Liberty
Comment: Food, clothing and shelter--we easily shop around for these things. 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. I should know, I am one of them.

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. His books are a must-read for all young parents and for anyone thinking about doing business with the educational establishment.

Customer Rating:
Summary: For those who are afraid...
Comment: I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a child in school. 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. 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. 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. [...]

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.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Who is benefitting from the school system?
Comment: I finally finished reading Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Tayor Gatto.

Wow

First, the quibbles. I think in some areas Mr. Gatto may have gone a bit overboard. Kids do need some structure, after all in the real world we have schedules and deadlines. He also has a common but erroneous view of Calvinism, seemingly thinking that it leads to public schooling. It might be connected to those who hold to Calvinism but there is nothing in Calvinism itself that supports (or rejects) compulsory public schooling.

Having said that, this little collection of essays and speeches exposes the flawed premises and practices that define public schooling. 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. Mr. Gatto argues quite convincingly that the flaws in public schooling are not a modern invention. Instead the flaws are fundamental and tied to the system itself. The very institution is in a way successful because it does exactly what it was designed to do. Unfortunately, what it was designed to do has very little to do with education. 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. 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. The kids are bored, the teachers are disengaged and the system is concerned more with self-preservation than education. All things I have suspected for a long time and I found more confirmation in reading what Mr. Gatto has written.

This is one of those rare books where on almost every page there was something noteworthy. 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 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.

Customer Rating:
Summary: not much I haven't heard before
Comment: Gatto's short book is a good overview of the dangers of compulsory public education. 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. Also, most of the speeches are from the 1990s, and a lot has happened with the public education system since then. All in all, I'd recommend borrowing this book from the library instead of purchasing it. It is still worth reading, just not paying for. :-)

Customer Rating:
Summary: every parent should read this
Comment: Agree or disagree, this thought provoking book deserves a good look. I give it four stars, only because the new intro in this new edition is a little redundant.

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