Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling | 
| Author: John Taylor Gatto
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $8.24
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Avg. Customer Rating:  123 reviews
Sales Rank: 267038
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Collectors
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 086571519X
Dewey Decimal Number: 370.973
EAN: 9780865715196
ASIN: 086571519X
Publication Date: March 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A highly praised bestseller for over a decade, Dumbing Us Down is a radical treatise on public education that concludes that compulsory government schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in a machine. This Special Collector's Hardcover Edition celebrates 100,000 copies of the book in print, and the book's on-going importance and popularity. John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. A much-sought after speaker on education throughout North America, his other books 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 118 more reviews...
 Pre-set education results in collective stupidity November 15, 2008
It's about a time to reconsider what education is. For mass schooling damages students. We would actually need less school, not more!
The truth is that schools only teach us how to follow orders. Of the millions of things of value to study, always somebody else decides what few you need to study - and how. They make us intellectually dependent animals! Like a good student always has to wait for a teacher to tell him what to do, a model citizen should also rely on other people to do the real thinking for him.
The "specialists", who are supposedly much better trained than ourselves, must take over in everything. In politics, religion, healthcare - you name it! They always know best. But, how come everything in our society tends to SUCK so real well? -You figure it out...
 Catholic and private schools worse! November 15, 2008
But private schools, esp. Catholic schools are even worse. The students are dullards and conformist. The only real creative learning occurs in public schools, because the teachers are the best and the children nice, not spoiled brats. If you want unthinking conformity, try Catholic school.
A MUST READ FOR EVERY PARENT!! Scary, bone-chilling truths are revealed! November 5, 2008
I was glued to it from page 1. Actually, that's not true. I started long before page 1. You must read this book in it's entirety. Do not skip past the forwards or the "about the author" section! The whole thing was Fabulous. You really learn the truth about public schooling and it's agendas.
Thank you so much John Gatto!
A great opening argument in the case against government schooling September 21, 2008
This book is basically a collection of speeches and essays by anti-gov't school advocate John Taylor Gatto, who is himself a longtime veteran of teaching -- he even won some "Teacher of the Year" awards -- in New York City public schools. Here, he looks at what our school system REALLY teaches, and what's wrong with those teachings.
While short, this book is compulsively readable and sketches many of the arguments found fleshed out in Mr. Gatto's longer works (such as THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION) as well as works by other critics of "public education" who are of the libertarian, anarchist, individualist, or paleoconservative mindset (or combinations thereof.) Mr. Gatto is of the opinion that compulsory government schools can't be "fixed" because they're actually accomplishing their real (as opposed to their stated) purpose perfectly. That is, they're turning out, in factory-like fashion, incomplete, soul-less, dependent, ignorant people who are better suited to being cogs in a machine or bees in a hive than they are to being good, self-sufficient citizens of a free republic. These mass people are educated just enough to pay their taxes and buy the latest products, but not enough to think critically about their situation, question authority, or take care of themselves (serving the interests of big government and big business which actually, contrary to popular belief, dovetail more often than not.)
Read this book with an open mind. It will probably go against your conscious conceptions, but it will also articulate many of the murky misgivings you've felt if you have attended and/or worked at government schools. It may even make you decide to keep your child from becoming one of the victims of the Leviathan schools. Heck, if enough Americans read this book (and others like it that dare to tell unpopular truths), maybe we could actually slay this particular Leviathan. One can hope.
 great for the most part August 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
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