Book: Dumbing Us
Down
Author: John Taylor Gatto
Length: 106 pages
Published by: New Society Publishers
Year of Publication: 2005
Paperback ISBN: 0-86571-448-7
Length: 106 pages
Published by: New Society Publishers
Year of Publication: 2005
Paperback ISBN: 0-86571-448-7
John Gatto is a celebrated
teacher of the New York City with decades of teaching experience. He was
awarded the New York City Teacher of the Year in 1990 by the New York State
Senate where he gave a memorable speech. From the sedate and laid back beginning
of life in the river town of Monongahela, he switched to the field of teaching
after aborting a fledgling, yet profitable career as copyright writer in
advertising (much to the consternation of his employers). His pursuits in
teaching were initially set back the baptism he received in one of his earliest
encounters with pupils as a substitute teacher where he came close to getting
struck by chair by retaliating, jeering students in his class. He almost gave
up the field in a few months when he was disillusioned by the pitiful state of
affairs in the schools with disinterested students, lackluster teachers and a
monolithic regime of powers in control. However, an event in which he featured
as a courageous change agent in the life of a distressed young girl and her
subsequent admiration for him convinced him to cling onto the field. “That
simple sentence made me a teacher for life”
John Gatto wrote this book to
publicize to parents and educationists alike that centrally controlled
mass-schooling school is the root cause for the malice of the modern day
generation. He refutes reforms at improving schools as futile because the very
foundation on which the schooling system rests is unnatural and detrimental to
real learning.
Dumbing Us Down is a chilly account
of a teacher stuck at the crossroads between the demands of his chosen
profession and the call of his conscience and integrity. It is a slogan of
rebellion against the mass schooling system (and by that token the entire
schooling system) It is an inside story of an educationist that reveals the
dark and murky side of the schooling system. He is blunt about confessing the
“pathologies” spread by schooling system captured and stabs at the beliefs that
schooling is education. He questions the very fundamentals of the schools: the
confusion spread by the disconnected theories, the abstraction of concepts from
real life. He exposes how children become emotionally and intellectually
dependent on the grades, the stars, the report cards. How the society is
divided into castes and strands by the concept of “classes”. He highlights how
the children are deprived on solitude and privacy by the constant surveillance
in the schools and shorn of quality time at home by the “extension of the
school, the homework”. He argues that the modern schooling system is at the
helm of the disintegrated family unit. It separates children from parents and deprives
them of meaningful opportunity to serve community and experience life.
Gatto not only highlights the
issues but also offers the alternative of a free-market in schools where there
is competition and also plentiful choice for the thoughtful; “A free market
where family schools and small entrepreneurial schools and religious schools
and crafts schools and farm schools exist in profusion to compete with
government education”. He stresses the need to return to the core of family
unit and strengthening communities. He advocates a 'local' influence as opposed
to a global perspective which he states is opportunistic anyways. John Gatto
quite reasonably believes that this book has made the required tremors in the
sphere of parents. His powerful narrative, convincing arguments backed by
historical anecdotes and events lead the reader to question the modern
education system
A key feature of the book is
short length with eloquent style of writing. It is arranged in 5 chapters of
varying length. Some of the content is repeated in chapters because of the
speeches he gave at various occasions. The last chapter on The Congregational
Principle is too grounded in American history and without much historical or
religious background can be underwhelming for some audience. Almost always the
book addresses the mass-schooling or public schools in America but due to the
similarities can be easily extended to schools everywhere.
This book read is a must for an
insight into schooling for anyone who has children or is concerned about them.
In fact, so many of our modern problems are associated with schooling that
anyone who has concern about human race and would be glad to have read this
book.