Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling | 
| Author: John Taylor Gatto
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 11481
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6 x 0.5
ISBN: 0865714487
Dewey Decimal Number: 370
EAN: 9780865714489
ASIN: 0865714487
Publication Date: February 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: **NEW COVER EDITION**Reprint 2005
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Product Description
With over 70,000 copies of the first edition in print, this radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. This second edition describes the wide-spread impact of the book and Gatto's "guerrilla teaching." John Gatto has been a teacher for 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. His other titles include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000).
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| Customer Reviews: Read 114 more reviews...
 great for the most part August 25, 2008
This is a great book for the most part. Although I agree with many of his points, I disagree in the part where he proposes a reform that requires mandatory community service. In the book he mostly says that people do well when they aren't made to do something, and yes community service is great but it shouldn't be forced on people, and people should have the option to decide if that is what they want to do. That's what freedom is all about.
He's right about school. My experience in school felt like a prison, where my teachers didn't take me seriously, they sometimes liked humiliating me and my classmates, and honestly to this day, I have zero respect for teachers. I can't look back on a teacher that I actually liked. Many of them just made me follow dumb rules that had nothing to do with learning but about respecting authority.
Even as a college student, I feel that college is just another scam, its not about learning but about getting that degree so you can get a good job. Getting As and Bs isn't a sign of intelligence, but a sign that you did the work the way that your teacher wanted you to. I think true learning occurs when you are accountable to yourself for your own education.
 Great! July 9, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
i got my product in a timely manner and it was in great condition. Thanks!!
a must for taxpayers, teachers, parents and students May 29, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
John Taylor Gatto taught in New York City public schools for 30 years. He is now a writer and a lecturer. He was named New York City Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the Year.
"The Seven Lesson School Teacher" is the first chapter of his book. It is the speech he gave after he was named New York State teacher of the year in 1991.
I've summarized the first chapter (which I taught to my high school sophomores and juniors).
Mr. Gatto said that he teaches 7 things. They are as follows:
1)confusion - lessons are out of context & out of sequence; random instruction; standardized tests; too many subjects; assemblies; fire drills; staff development days; age segregation; no depth in subjects; most teachers are not experts
2)class position - kids assigned numbers; stay in classes; stay in classrooms; envy and fear of the better classes; contempt for the lower classes
3)indifference - forced enthusiasm; bell rings, students must stop doing stuff (in class or change classes)
4)emotional dependency - individuality is discouraged; students lack rights; teachers & administrators manipulate and control the students
5)intellectual dependency - lesson chosen by teachers, administration or school board; students told to wait before working; wait for the expert to tell you what to do; helpless people are good for the economy (food service, law, medicine, teaching, tv, entertainment)
6)provisional self-esteem - confident people are problems; you are to be evaluated & judged; most grades have very little work in them; self-evaluation is rarely done; people must rely on experts to see their value
7)one can't hide - control and surveillance; no private spaces or private time; little time between classes; people trained to tell on each other; homework keeps them busy and away from other learning
"Schools are an essential support system for social engineering that condemns most to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control" pg. 13 (this reminds me of Huxley's Brave New World)
Mr. Gatto makes a few other points in his speech as well. I've listed them in bullet format for you.
- Schools were created partly as a result of two "Red Scares" in 1848 and 1919. People in power were afraid of the industrial poor and wanted to reign in the culture of the new immigrants (Celtics, Slavs and Latins).
- Look at the seven lessons: they are "all prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius." (16)
- These lessons and the problems in our schools have now seized the middle class as well
- Critical thinking is not taught
- Solutions: family schools, farm schools, small entrepreneurial schools, religious schools, craft schools
- Lessons not taught: self-reliance, self-motivation, perseverance, courage, dignity, love
- TV, sports/clubs, and jobs take up all the free time outside of school - learning and the feeling of community are stifled
Makes you think. April 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I wish I'd read this while I was in school; I'd have seen then that there was something wrong with the system, not me. This book is thought-provoking and a must-read for parents of kids of all ages.
 Great Diagnosis; Solutions Not So Great March 31, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Gatto makes a compelling and strong argument for precisely what the problem is with our educational system - in essence, that it is designed to make good consumers who follow the rules and don't challenge authority, and who can be trusted with doing repetitive tasks and quietly occupying their designated socio-economic niche without much complaint. Given that he has over 30 years of experience in the public school system, he almost assuredly knows what he's talking about.
Unfortunately, the last few chapters in the book dip severely in quality, as Gatto presents his "solution" to the problem: complete privatization of the school system. His assumption that it would be better is never fully explored; it's simply stated, with some great comments about how wonderful homeschooling is. But in a completely free market system education, like everything else, becomes a product, and unfortunately it's one that parents can't fully explore before they've already "purchased" it. That is, after all, the entire premise underlying this book - that there is a "hidden curriculum" in public schools (Gatto never mentions that it's also in many private schools, though that's obviously the case) which parents usually aren't aware of until the damage has been done. How, then, are parents going to make an intelligent choice between the options available to them in a fully privatized school setting? Gatto never makes that clear.
Furthermore, if indeed it is corporate and governmental interests which push this hidden curriculum, then how could complete privatization help? They are, after all, the groups with the money, and in the free market those interests would almost assuredly be able to offer a near-complete monopoly on the market. Parents, after all, will only ever have limited choices on how to educate their child - homeschooling, various local private schools (unless they're willing to board their eight year old somewhere), or public schools; all privatization will ensure is that public schooling is no longer even an option and instead parents will be entirely dependent on what the local private schools have to offer or the possibility of homeschooling.
The obvious solution to this educational dilemma would be for the government and private organizations to encourage more parents to pursue homeschooling, or to promote "alternate" educational systems such as Waldorf and Montessori schools which don't have the same problems Gatto notes. Unfortunately, Gatto doesn't bring up those possibilities. For him, "privatization" is presented as a panacea which will miraculously solve the problem.
By all means, read the book. It's a scathing report on the way "traditional" education destroys children's interest in learning and ability to think independently, and well worth the read. Skip the last chapters, though - in them, Gatto depends on his readership having had their own critical thinking ability destroyed.
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