I just finished a book that's been on my "to read" list for a long while. It was actually a really fast read, being only about 100 pages. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in "education." It's called Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, who was a teacher in the New York City's public schools for over 30 years and who has received the New York City Teacher of the Year award and the New York State Teacher of the Year award. This really was a fabulous book that challenges the "system" and really gets the reader asking some important questions in their mind.
Here are a few passages that I really liked:
"What, after all this time, is the purpose of mass schooling supposed to be? Reading, writing and arithmetic can't be the answer, because properly approached those things take less than a hundred hours to transmit - and we have abundant evidence that each is readily self-taught in the right setting and time.
Why, then, are we locking kids up in an involuntary network with strangers for twelve years? Surely not so a few of them can get rich? Even if it worked that way, and I doubt that it does, why wouldn't any sane community look on such an education as positively wrong? It divides and classifies people, demanding that they compulsively compete with each other, and publicly labels the losers by literally de-grading them, identifying them as "low-class" material. And the bottom line for the winners is that they can buy more stuff! I don't believe that anyone who thinks about that feels comfortable with such a silly conclusion. I can't help feeling that if we could only answer the question of what it is we want from these kids we lock up, we would suddenly see where we took a wrong turn. I have enough faith in American imagination and resourcefulness to believe that at that point we'd come up with a better way - in fact, a whole supermarket of better ways.
One thing I do know, though: most of us who've had a taste of loving families, even a little taste, want our kids to be part of one. One other thing I know is that eventually you have to come to be part of a place - part of its hills and streets and waters and people - or you will live a very, very sorry life as an exile forever. 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."
"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important: how to live and how to die."
He also discloses the 7 lessons of what he really teaches in school. They make for an interesting read! I'll leave you hanging there. You can read the beginning of it here, or check it out from the library like I did.
So, let me know if you decide to pick up this book and read it!
4 wonderful people have this to say:
Sounds like a good read. I'll have to check it out some time. I'm always interested in anything that questions the norm.
Oh my ward I sooo want to read this book. This along with a few other reasons were the deciding factors of me changing my mind about becoming a teacher.
Sounds like a good book! :) I like reading your blog, its great.
I tagged you on my blog to do something with music, check it out. You don't have to do it if you don't want, but I thought you might, if you're bored. :) 17 days!? That's so crazy!
I've heard of this book. I'll have to read it.
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