Dumbing Us Down

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

Absolutely outstanding!  Must read!  I have been hearing about this book in all of my 14 years of home education and can't believe I waited so long to read it.

John Gatto is an award-winning public school teacher who insightfully hones in on the invisible lessons the public educational system is teaching the children of this country:  confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependence, intellectual dependence, conditional self-esteem, and acceptance of surveillance.

Gatto's book, as summarized in the introduction by David Albert, contends that "schools are not failing.  On the contrary, they are spectacularly successful in doing precisely what they are intended to do, and what they have been intended to do since their inception. . .ensure a docile, malleable workforce to meet the growing, changing demands of corporate capitalism. . .a workforce that will not rebel, that will be physically, intellectually, and emotionally dependent upon corporate institutions for their incomes, self-esteem, and stimulation, and that will learn to find social meaning in their lives solely in the production and consumption of material goods" (xxii).

Gatto decries the loss of community (which has been replaced by networks), the separation of young from old, the removal of children from families, the idea of the "professionalization of teaching which preempts the teaching function which belongs to everyone" (16), the lack of free time for children to think, explore, and learn to serve.  He proclaims a need for self-knowledge so that "they'll also become self-teachers--and only self-teaching has any lasting value" (31), and a need for men to teach boys to grow up.  He realized himself, and knows children need to learn the same lesson, that we need something to do that is meaningful, that isn't absurd, that results in more than "a new abstract number in my bankbook" (40).  "Discovering meaning for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is.  How this can be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me" (62).

Gatto claimed schools began from a fear of the poor, a fear of immigrants and Catholics, and a fear of freed Black slaves between the mid 1800s and the early 1900s, as well as a desire by capitalists to produce a compliant workforce.  I thought this was an interesting perspective I had never before heard.

I am very intrigued by the correlation between Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the messages of this book.  Gatto wrote a Monarch Notes guide to this classic novel, and I think I'm going to have to read the novel and Gattos' guide together as I continue to ponder these thoughts.