Gatto

[Guest guest]

Just heard this guy giving a talk on CSPAN II. I went to his website,

johntaylorgatto.com, and want to order 2 of his books: Dumbing Us

Down, and A Different Kind of Teacher. Following is an excerpt of

a review of Dumbing Us down.

judith

No one in America today is better qualified to report on the true

condition of our government education system than Gatto,

the now-famous educator who spent 26 years teaching in six different

schools in New York City and quit because he could no longer take part

in a system that destroys lives by destroying minds.

....

" The trouble was that the unlikeliest kids kept demonstrating to me at

random moments so many of the hallmarks of human excellence--insight,

wisdom, justice, resourcefulness, courage, originality--that I became

confused. They didn't do this often enough to make my teaching easy,

but they did it often enough that I began to wonder, reluctantly,

whether it was possible that being in school itself, was what was

dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge

children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face

of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and confinement,

the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the

constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum

of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to

prevent children from learning how to think, and act, to coax them

into addiction and dependent behavior. "