Dumbing Us Down

My wife and I have decided to homeschool the children God gives us.  We decided this for a number of reasons, but one enormous factor was John Taylor Gatto’s book, Dumbing Us Down.  A short read, the book delves into the philosophical foundations for modern public education, turning them on their heads and exposing all of their deficiencies.

Gatto addresses several subjects:

- Age Segregation:  He shows how segregating children by age for the vast majority of their waking hours is a disservice to any real attempt to educate.  Imagine the absurdity of sending your child to a school where 99% of his teachers only knew as much or less than he did.  But, Gatto argues, this is precisely what we already do, and we have learned the lesson so well that we now have reservations for the old, too.

- The lessons of bells and grades:  Bells teach children that no subject is so important that it cannot be immediately dropped once a bell is rung.  Grades are arbitrary, and yet we make children base their lives, interests, and self-respect on these evaluations from “experts.”

- Privacy:  Children get no time to themselves, to think for themselves, to examine their lives, etc.  After public school comes homework, then television or other activities that don’t help children to cultivate reflection about who they are.  What we need is less school, he says, and more independent study, community service, large doses of solitude, and a thousand different apprenticeships with adults of all walks of life.

- Dependence:  Public education has become adept at “curing” children of their innate love of learning.  Better to let an expert handle what will be learned, read, thought, etc.  We are a nation that now relies upon experts in much the same way.  The society of self-educators is extinct.

- Monopoly: the certification of “experts” in teaching is, in Gatto’s words, “a scam and a fraud.”  He argues that this system has produced disastrous results like teachers unions, whose primary goal is self-preservation, not education of students.  Gatto argues that market forces and private individuals are a much better way to produce genuinely educated communities.  He cites studies which show the shameful results of the current system.

The book has so many powerful ideas– I’m so glad I came across it and read it with my wife before my children were born.  I’m sending copies to all my family who will listen.