Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers, 2002

These days, it is popular to assert that American education is "broken," and that school vouchers, or a national curriculum or year-round schooling is the answer. The author, a teacher for more than 30 years, and winner of the New York City and New York State Teacher of the Year awards, asserts that American education actually works perfectly for what it was designed to do. It was designed to ensure a docile, malleable workforce to meet the growing needs of corporate capitalism. It ensures a workforce that will rely on corporate institutions for their income, stimulation and self-esteem and will learn to find meaning in their lives solely in the production and consumption of material goods.

The average teacher teaches seven things: confusion (everything is taught out of context), class position (if a child starts in the lower class, they can forget about ever moving up to a higher class), indifference (having to move from class to class when the bell rings, nothing is worth finishing, so why care about anything?), emotional dependency (using prizes, stars and disgraces, children surrender their will to the chain of command), intellectual dependency (wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to give our lives meaning), provisional self-esteem (the lesson of grades and report cards is that children should rely on the evaluation of certified officials, not themselves or their parents. People need to be told what they are worth), and that one can't hide (homework is a type of surveillance to keep kids from doing any unauthorized learning, from a parent or someone in the neighborhood).

American education doesn't need "fixing," it needs a complete overhaul. The emphasis should be on self-knowledge. A child should be placed in an unguided setting (alone) and given a problem to solve. Children from an early age need to be trusted with independent study away from school. Community service will give children a dose of real-world responsibility, along with teaching them to act unselfishly. Warehousing children for several years, and asking nothing in return, is not the way to do it.

Wow. This easily reaches the level of Must Read. It's recommended for parents of school-age children (perhaps this is why your child is struggling in school), for young people who haven't been totally squashed by "the system," and for people in the education field (the book criticizes the education system, not the people in it). It is very highly recommended.