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# 2022-07-17 - Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto | |
I found this book interesting and relevant. I was most inspired by | |
the story told in chapter 3, The Green Monongahela, where the author | |
came to the aid of a student being unjustly and intentionally "ground | |
down" by the institution. She was an excellent reader far ahead of | |
her grade, but she was being held back in a class for poor readers as | |
punishment for "putting on airs." The author intervened in an | |
effective and fair way. This girl grew up to become an award winning | |
teacher. How's that for right livelihood, meaning, and satisfaction | |
in doing one's duty! | |
I know from personal experience that this type of institutional abuse | |
is real. I saw it happen to family members. It happens in both | |
rural and urban areas. It is not a matter of employee qualification. | |
The author makes some of the same points made by Booker T. | |
Washington. Most importantly, that book learning is meaningless | |
compared to real life learning that is useful to others. He | |
advocates a less abstract and more real-world style of learning where | |
a student's accomplishments actually mean something. | |
See also: | |
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington | |
# Foreword | |
Learning can't take place in pieces of time cut out for the | |
convenience of an institution or in lessons set apart from the world | |
in which students live. We don't learn when life is divided up into | |
sections that have little connection with each other. | |
In my language, I'd like to see us educate the soul, and not just the | |
mind. The result would be a person who could be in this world | |
creatively, make good friendships, live in a place he loved, do work | |
that is rewarding, and make a contribution to the community. | |
Thomas Moore is the author of Care of the Soul | |
Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore | |
# Introduction | |
"Self-reliance," he [John Gatto] concludes, "is the antidote to | |
institutional stupidity." | |
Gatto provided, and continues to provide the key to comprehending | |
this conundrum. Central to this understanding is the fact that | |
schools are not failing. On the contrary, they are spectacularly | |
successful in doing precisely what they are intended to do, and what | |
they have been intended to do since their inception. The system, | |
perfected at places like the University of Chicago, Columbia Teachers | |
College, Carnegie-Mellon, and Harvard, and funded by the captains of | |
industry, was explicitly set up to ensure a docile, malleable | |
workforce to meet the growing, changing demands of corporate | |
capitalism... [ensuring a workforce] that will be physically, | |
intellectually, and emotionally dependent upon corporate institutions | |
for their incomes, self-esteem, and stimulation, and that will learn | |
to find social meaning in their lives solely in the production and | |
consumption of material goods. | |
...the obvious question that follows from this is this: If | |
educational institutions are so demonstrably successful, why are we | |
always hearing about their failures? ...to sell a product or | |
service, one must create the perception of need and the palpable | |
feeling that this need can only be filled exclusively through the | |
purchase of the product or service being sold. The simplistic notion | |
that "our schools are failing" easily translates into a limitless | |
demand for more resources for the institution and its supports... | |
...the truth is that no matter how much is expended in the | |
educational marketplace, 50% of the schools will remain "below | |
average", with those branded as poor performers changing from year to | |
year and those above the mid-point fearing, above all, that they will | |
fall into the abyss. And the copywriter has done his [or her] job | |
for, it is universally believed, the only response to a fall into | |
sub-mediocrity is to buy one's way out. | |
The reforms are therefore never completed. To do so would require | |
admitting failure, or worse, admitting that the failure is not | |
failure at all, only a continuing round in the socialized enforcement | |
of intellectual and emotional dependency... In the meantime, what | |
we're doing is like requiring our children to live in buildings that | |
are never finished, and never will be, and forcing them to breathe in | |
the noxious fumes and dirt and dust from the never-ending | |
construction. | |
Let's put it plainly: in Gatto's view, the Combine [the powers that | |
be] needs dumb adults, and so it ensures the supply by making the | |
kids dumb. | |
Gatto implies through his writing, his life, and his witness that he | |
does not believe individual solutions are likely to be the answer to | |
larger societal problems... But he has also demonstrated... that we | |
can only stand to gain by protecting and enlarging those meager zones | |
of freedom we inhabit | |
David Albert | |
# Publishers Note from the First Edition | |
The social philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote that, "The aim of | |
totalitarian education has never been to instill conviction but to | |
destroy the capacity to form any." | |
If one were to poll our nation's leading educators about what the | |
goal of our educational systems should be, I suspect one would come | |
up with as many goals as educators. But I also imagine that the | |
capacity to form one's own convictions independent of what was being | |
taught in the classroom, the ability to think critically based upon | |
one's own experience, would not rank high on many lists. | |
# About the Author | |
I'm here to talk to you about ideas, but I think a purpose might be | |
served in telling a little bit about myself so I become a person like | |
you rather than just another talking head... | |
I've worked as a New York City schoolteacher for the past thirty | |
years, teaching for some of that time elite children from Manhattan's | |
Upper West Side between Lincoln Center, where the opera is, and | |
Columbia University, where the defense contracts are; and teaching, | |
in most recent years, children from Harlem and Spanish Harlem whose | |
lives are shaped by the dangerous undercurrents of the industrial | |
city in decay. | |
My own perspective on things, however, was shaped a long way from New | |
York City, in the river town of Monongahela, Pennsylvania, forty | |
miles southeast of Pittsburgh. In those days, Monongahela was a | |
place of steel mills and coal mines, of paddle-wheel river steamers | |
churning the emerald green water chemical orange, of respect for hard | |
work and family life. | |
During that time, I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly | |
common human quality, probably natural to most of us. | |
The trouble was that the unlikeliest kids kept demonstrating to me at | |
random moments so many of the hallmarks of human excellence-insight, | |
wisdom, justice, resourcefulness, courage, originality-that I became | |
confused. They didn't do this often enough to make my teaching easy, | |
but they did it often enough that I began to wonder, reluctantly, | |
whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was | |
dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge | |
children's power, but to diminish it? ...slowly I began to realize | |
that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the | |
age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and | |
all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed | |
exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning | |
how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent | |
behavior. | |
Bit by bit I began to devise guerrilla exercises to allow as many of | |
the kids I taught as possible the raw material people have always | |
used to educate themselves: privacy, choice, freedom from | |
surveillance, and as broad a range of situations and human | |
associations as my limited power and resources could manage. In | |
simpler terms, I tried to maneuver them into positions where they | |
would have a chance to be their own teachers and to make themselves | |
the major text of their own education. | |
In other words, I dropped the idea that I was an expert whose job it | |
was to fill the little heads with my expertise, and began to explore | |
how I could remove those obstacles that prevented the inherent genius | |
of children from gathering itself. | |
...the economy school-children currently expect to live under and | |
serve would not survive a generation of young people trained, for | |
example, to think critically. | |
I have come to believe that government monopoly schools are | |
structurally unreformable. They cannot function if their central | |
myths are exposed and abandoned. | |
# Chapter 1, The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher | |
It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass | |
schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among | |
even the best of my students' parents, only a small number can | |
imagine a different way to do things. | |
Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 600,000 copies to a population of | |
3,000,000, of whom twenty percent were slaves and fifty percent | |
indentured servants. | |
Were the Colonists geniuses? No, the truth is that reading, writing, | |
and arithmetic only take about one hundred hours to transmit as long | |
as the audience is eager and willing to learn. The trick is to wait | |
until someone asks and then move fast while the mood is on. Millions | |
of people teach themselves these things-it really isn't very hard. | |
Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you'll | |
see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be | |
considered college level. The continuing cry for "basic skills" | |
practice is a smoke screen behind which schools preempt the time of | |
children for twelve years and teach them the seven lessons I've just | |
described to you. | |
Global economics does not speak to the public need for meaningful | |
work, affordable housing, fulfilling education, adequate medical | |
care, a clean environment, honest and accountable government, social | |
and cultural renewal, or simple justice. All global ambitions are | |
based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated | |
from common human reality that I am convinced it is wrong and that | |
most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. | |
With lessons like the ones I teach day after day it should be little | |
wonder we have a real national crisis, the nature of which is very | |
different from that proclaimed by the national media. Young people | |
are indifferent to the adult world and to the future, indifferent to | |
almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence. Rich or | |
poor, school children who face the twenty-first century cannot | |
concentrate on anything for very long; they have a poor sense of time | |
past and time to come. They are mistrustful of intimacy like the | |
children of divorce they really are (for we have divorced them from | |
significant parental attention); they hate solitude, are cruel, | |
materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the | |
unexpected, addicted to distraction. | |
No common school that actually dared to teach the use of critical | |
thinking tools-like the dialectic, the heuristic, or other devices | |
that free minds should employ-would last very long before being torn | |
to pieces. In our secular society, school has become the replacement | |
for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be | |
taken on faith. | |
After an adult lifetime spent teaching school, I believe the method | |
of mass schooling is its only real content. Don't be fooled into | |
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are | |
the critical determinants of your son's or daughter's education. All | |
the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because | |
the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important | |
appointments with themselves and with their families to learn lessons | |
in self- motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity, | |
and love-and lessons in service to others, too, which are among the | |
key lessons of home and community life. | |
Thirty years ago these lessons could still be learned in the time | |
left after school. But [screen time] has eaten up most of that time, | |
and a combination of [screen time] and the stresses peculiar to | |
two-income or single-parent families has swallowed up most of what | |
used to be family time as well. Our kids have no time left to grow | |
up fully human and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in. | |
A future is rushing down upon our culture that will insist that all | |
of us learn the wisdom of nonmaterial experience; a future that will | |
demand as the price of survival that we follow a path of natural life | |
that is economical in material cost. | |
# Chapter 2, The Psychopathic School | |
We live in a time of great school crisis linked to an even greater | |
social crisis. Our nation ranks at the bottom of nineteen industrial | |
nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the very bottom! | |
Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world, and suicidal | |
kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. | |
This great crisis that we witness in our schools is interlinked with | |
a greater social crisis in the community. We seem to have lost our | |
identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from | |
the business of the world to a degree without precedent: nobody talks | |
to them anymore, and without children and old people mixing in daily | |
life, a community has no future and no past, only a continuous | |
present. | |
I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: | |
schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great | |
enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists | |
are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or | |
poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really | |
teach anything except how to obey orders. Although teachers do care | |
and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic-it has | |
no conscience. | |
Schools were designed by Horace Mann and by Sears and Harper of the | |
University of Chicago and by Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College | |
and by some other men to be instruments for the scientific management | |
of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the | |
application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be | |
predicted and controlled. | |
[Chapter 9 of There Is A Way contains interesting background | |
information about Herman Mann and the connection to German history | |
and Sparta. | |
Notes on There Is A Way | |
] | |
But keep in mind that in the United States almost nobody who reads, | |
writes, or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of | |
talkers; we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most and so | |
our children talk constantly, following the public models of | |
television and schoolteachers. It is very difficult to teach the | |
"basics" anymore because they really aren't basic to the society | |
we've made. | |
Two institutions at present control our children's lives: [screen | |
time] and schooling, in that order. Both of these reduce the real | |
world of wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice to a | |
never-ending, nonstop abstraction. | |
I want to tell you what the effect on our children is of us taking | |
all their time from them-time they need to grow up-and forcing them | |
to spend it on abstractions. You need to hear this because any | |
reform that doesn't attack these specific pathologies will be nothing | |
more than a facade. | |
* The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This | |
defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what | |
big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of | |
youth, but nobody wants children to grow up these days, least of | |
all the children themselves... | |
* The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what little | |
they do have is transitory. They cannot concentrate for very long, | |
even on things they choose to do. | |
* The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how | |
tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they | |
live in a continuous present: the exact moment they are in is the | |
boundary of their consciousness. | |
* The children I teach are ahistorical: they have no sense of how | |
the past has predestinated their own present, limits their choices, | |
shapes their values and lives. | |
* The children I teach are cruel to each other; they lack | |
compassion for misfortune; they laugh at weakness; they have | |
contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly. | |
* The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candor. They | |
cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of | |
preserving a secret inner self... | |
* The children I teach are materialistic... | |
* The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the | |
presence of new challenges. This timidity is frequently masked by | |
surface bravado or by anger or aggressiveness, but underneath is a | |
vacuum without fortitude. | |
It's a simple matter of arithmetic: between schooling and [screen | |
time], all the time the children have is eaten up. There simply | |
isn't enough other time in the experience of our kids for there to be | |
other significant causes. | |
[This seems like an oversimplification to me because it disregards | |
the momentum of history. The society around us is an influence | |
including our family and schoolmates.] | |
It's high time we looked backwards to regain an educational | |
philosophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a | |
favorite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. ... | |
I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones. | |
At the core of this elite system of education is the belief that | |
self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Everywhere in | |
this system, at every age, you will find arrangements that work to | |
place the child alone in an unguided setting with a problem to solve. | |
Sometimes the problem is the problem of mastering solitude, as | |
Thoreau did at Walden Pond, or Einstein did in the Swiss customs | |
house. | |
Right now we are taking from our children all the time that they need | |
to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent | |
school experiences that give a lot of that time back. | |
We've got to give kids independent time right away because that is | |
the key to self-knowledge, and we must reinvolve them with the real | |
world as fast as possible so that their independent time can be spent | |
on something other than abstraction. This is an emergency-it | |
requires drastic action to correct. | |
Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, | |
large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different | |
apprenticeships-the one-day variety or longer-these are all powerful, | |
cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But | |
no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged | |
children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of | |
"school" to include family as the main engine of education. If we | |
use schooling to break children away from parents-and make no | |
mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John | |
Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 | |
and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools | |
in 1850-we're going to continue to have the horror show we have right | |
now. | |
Experts in education have never been right; their "solutions" are | |
expensive and self-serving and always involve further centralization. | |
We've seen the results. | |
It's time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family. | |
# Chapter 3, The Green Monongahela | |
In 1964, I was making a lot of money. That's what I walked away from | |
to become a teacher. I was a copy-writer on the fast track in | |
advertising, a young fellow with a knack for writing thirty-second | |
television commercials. My work required about one full day a month | |
to complete, the rest of the time being spent in power breakfasts, | |
after-work martinis at Michael's Pub, keeping up with the shifting | |
fortunes of about twenty agencies in order to gauge the right time to | |
jump ship for more money, and endless parties that always seemed to | |
culminate in colossal headaches. | |
It bothered me that all the urgencies of the job were generated | |
externally, but it bothered me more that the work I was doing seemed | |
to have very little importance-even to the people who were paying for | |
it. Worst of all, the problems this work posed were cut from such a | |
narrow spectrum that it was clear that past, present, and future were | |
to be of a piece: a twenty-nine-year-old man's work was no different | |
from a thirty-nine-year-old man's work or a forty-nine-year-old man's | |
work (though there didn't seem to be any forty-nine-year-old | |
copywriters-I had no idea why not). | |
[Then he became a substitute teacher.] | |
Occasionally I'd get a call from an elementary school. This | |
particular day it was a third grade assignment at a school on 107th | |
Street, which in those days was nearly one hundred percent | |
non-Hispanic in its teaching staff and 99% Hispanic in its student | |
body. | |
Like many desperate teachers, I lolled most of the day listening to | |
the kids read, one after another, and expending most of my energy | |
trying to shut the audience up. This class had a very low ranking, | |
and no one was able to put more than three or four words together | |
without stumbling. All of a sudden, though, a little girl named | |
Milagros sailed through a selection without a mistake. After class I | |
called her over to my desk and asked why she was in this class of bad | |
readers. She replied that "they" (the administration) wouldn't let | |
her out because, as they explained to her mother, she was really a | |
bad reader who had fantasies of being a better reader than she was. | |
"But look, Mr. Gatto, my brother is in the sixth grade, and I can | |
read every word in his English book better than he can!" | |
I was a little intrigued, but truthfully not much. Surely the | |
authorities knew what they were doing. Still, the little girl seemed | |
so frustrated I invited her to calm down and read to me from the | |
sixth grade book. I explained that if she did well, I would take her | |
case to the principal. I expected nothing. | |
Milagros, on the other hand, expected justice. Diving into "The | |
Devil and Daniel Webster," she polished off the first two pages | |
without a gulp. My God, I thought, this is a real reader. What is | |
she doing here? Well, maybe it was a simple accident, easily | |
corrected. I sent her home, promising to argue her case. Little did | |
I suspect what a hornet's nest my request to have Milagros moved to a | |
better class would stir up. | |
"You have some nerve, Mr. Gatto. I can't remember when a substitute | |
ever told me how to run my school before. Have you taken specialized | |
courses in reading?" | |
"No." | |
"Well then, suppose you leave these matters to the experts!" | |
"But the kid can read!" | |
"What do you suggest?" | |
"I suggest you test her, and if she isn't a dummy, get her out of the | |
class she's in!" | |
"I don't like your tone. None of our children are dummies, Mr. | |
Gatto. And you will find that girls like Milagros have many ways to | |
fool amateurs like yourself. This is a matter of a child having | |
memorized one story. You can see if I had to waste my time arguing | |
with people like you, I'd have no time left to run a school." | |
But, strangely, I felt self-appointed as the girl's champion, even | |
though I'd probably never see her again. | |
I insisted, and the principal finally agreed to test Milagros herself | |
the following Wednesday after school. I made it a point to tell the | |
little girl the next day ... My responsibility was over, I told | |
myself. | |
The following Wednesday after school I waited in the room for | |
Milagros' ordeal to be over. At 3:30 she shyly opened the door of | |
the room. | |
"How'd it go?" I asked. | |
"I don't know," she answered, "but I didn't make any mistakes. Mrs. | |
Hefferman was very angry, I could tell." | |
I saw Mrs. Hefferman, the principal, early the next morning before | |
school opened. "It seems we've made a mistake with Milagros," she | |
said curtly. "She will be moved, Mr. Gatto. Her mother has been | |
informed." | |
Several weeks later, when I got back to the school to sub, Milagros | |
dropped by, telling me she was in the fast class now and doing very | |
well. She also gave me a sealed card. When I got home that night, I | |
found it, unopened, in my suitcoat pocket. I opened it and saw a | |
gaudy birthday card with blue flowers on it. Opening the card, I | |
read, "A teacher like you cannot be found. Signed. Your student, | |
Milagros." | |
That simple sentence made me a teacher for life. It was the first | |
praise I'd ever heard in my working existence that had any meaning. | |
I never forgot it, though I never saw Milagros again and only heard | |
of her again in 1988, twenty-four years later. Then one day I picked | |
up a newspaper and read: | |
## Occupational Teacher Award | |
> Milagros M., United Federation of Teachers, has won the | |
> Distinguished Occupational Teacher Award of the State Education | |
> Department for "demonstrated achievement and exemplary | |
> professionalism." A secretarial studies teacher at Norman Thomas | |
> High School, New York City, from which she graduated, Miss M. was | |
> selected as a Manhattan Teacher of the Year in 1985 and was | |
> nominated the following year for the Woman of Conscience Award | |
> given by the National Council of Women. | |
# Chapter 4, We Need Less School, Not More | |
A surprising number of otherwise sensible people find it hard to see | |
why the scope and reach of our formal schooling networks should not | |
be increased (by extending the school day or year, for instance) in | |
order to provide an economical solution to the problems posed by the | |
decay of the American family. One reason for their preference, I | |
think, is that they have trouble understanding the real difference | |
between communities and networks, or even the difference between | |
families and networks. | |
Because of this confusion they conclude that replacing a bad network | |
with a good one is the right way to go. Since I disagree so strongly | |
with the fundamental premise that networks are workable substitutes | |
for families, and because from anybody's point of view a lot more | |
school is going to cost a lot more money, I thought I'd tell you why, | |
from a school teacher's perspective, we shouldn't be thinking of more | |
school, but of less. | |
What is gained from consulting a specialist and surrendering all | |
judgment is often more than outweighed by a permanent loss of one's | |
own volition. This discovery accounts for the curious texture of | |
real communication, where people argue with their doctors, lawyers, | |
and ministers, tell craftsmen what they want instead of accepting | |
what they get, frequently make their own food from scratch instead of | |
buying it in a restaurant or defrosting it, and perform many similar | |
acts of participation. A real community is, of course, a collection | |
of real families who themselves function in this participatory way. | |
Networks, however, don't require the whole person, but only a narrow | |
piece. If, on the other hand, you function in a network, it asks you | |
to suppress all the parts of yourself except the network-interest | |
part-a highly unnatural act although one you can get used to. In | |
exchange, the network will deliver efficiency in the pursuit of some | |
limited aim. This is, in fact, a devil's bargain, since on the | |
promise of some future gain one must surrender the wholeness of one's | |
present humanity. If you enter into too many of these bargains, you | |
will split yourself into many specialized pieces, none of them | |
completely human. And no time is available to reintegrate them. | |
The fragmentation caused by excessive networking creates diminished | |
humanity, a sense that our lives are out of control-because they are. | |
In spite of ritual moments like the Christmas party or the office | |
softball game-when individual human components in the network "go | |
home," they go home alone. And in spite of humanitarian support from | |
fellow workers that eases emergencies-when people in networks suffer, | |
they suffer alone, unless they have a family or community to suffer | |
with them. | |
It is a puzzling development, as yet poorly understood, that the | |
"caring" in networks is in some important way feigned. Not | |
maliciously, but in spite of any genuine emotional attractions that | |
might be there, human behavior in network situations often resembles | |
a dramatic act-matching a script produced to meet the demands of a | |
story. And, as such, the intimate moments in networks lack the | |
sustaining value of their counterparts in community. | |
If the loss of true community entailed by masquerading in networks is | |
not noticed in time, a condition arises in the victim's spirit very | |
much like the "trout starvation" that used to strike wilderness | |
explorers whose diet was made up exclusively of stream fish. While | |
trout quell the pangs of hunger-and even taste good-the eater | |
gradually suffers for want of sufficient nutrients. | |
By preempting fifty percent of the total time of the young, by | |
locking young people up with other young people exactly their own | |
age, by ringing bells to start and stop work, by asking people to | |
think about the same thing at the same time in the same way, by | |
grading people the way we grade vegetables-and in a dozen other vile | |
and stupid ways-network schools steal the vitality of communities and | |
replace it with an ugly mechanism. No one survives these places with | |
their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, | |
and not parents. | |
A community is a place in which people face each other over time in | |
all their human variety: good parts, bad parts, and all the rest. | |
Such places promote the highest quality of life possible-lives of | |
engagement and participation. | |
Networks of urban reformers will convene to consider the problems of | |
homeless vagrants, but a community will think of its vagrants as real | |
people, not abstractions. Ron, Dave or Marty-a community will call | |
its bums by their names. It makes a difference. | |
Who can deny that networks can get some jobs done? They do. But | |
they lack any ability to nourish their members emotionally. | |
Networks divide people, first from themselves and then from each | |
other, on the grounds that this is the efficient way to perform a | |
task. It may well be, but it is a lousy way to feel good about being | |
alive. Networks make people lonely. | |
Whatever "caring" really means, it means something more than simple | |
companionship or even the comradeship of shared interests. | |
By isolating young and old from the working life of places and by | |
isolating the working population from the lives of young and old, | |
institutions and networks have brought about a fundamental | |
disconnection of the generations. The griefs that arise from this | |
have no synthetic remedy; no vibrant, satisfying communities can come | |
into being where young and old are locked away. | |
The deepest purposes of these gigantic networks are to regulate and | |
to make uniform. Since the logic of family and community is to give | |
scope to variety around a central theme, whenever institutions | |
intervene significantly in personal affairs they cause much damage. | |
...think of the New York City public school system in which I work, | |
one of the largest business organizations on planet Earth. While the | |
education administered by this abstract parent is ill-regarded by | |
everybody, the institution's right to compel its clientele to accept | |
such dubious service is still guaranteed by the police. And forces | |
are gathering to expand its reach still further-in the face of every | |
evidence that it has been a disaster throughout its history. | |
One thing I do know, though: most of us who've had a taste of loving | |
families, even a little taste, want our kids to be part of one. One | |
other thing I know is that eventually you have to come to be part of | |
a place-part of its hills and streets and waters and people-or you | |
will live a very, very sorry life as an exile forever. Discovering | |
meaning for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for | |
yourself, is a big part of what education is. | |
The quality-competition of businesses (when it actually happens) is | |
generally a good thing for customers; it keeps businesses on their | |
toes, doing their best. The competition inside an institution like a | |
school isn't the same thing at all. ... The culture of schools only | |
coheres in response to a web of material rewards and punishments: | |
A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars, "good" classes, access to a | |
photocopy machine. Everything we know about why people drive | |
themselves to know things and do their best is contradicted inside | |
these places. | |
When the integration of life that comes from being part of a family | |
in a community is unattainable, the only alternative, apart from | |
accepting a life in isolation, is to search for an artificial | |
integration into one of the many expressions of network currently | |
available. But it's a bad trade! | |
Yet it appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a | |
major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate | |
parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from | |
true curiosity about each other's lives. Schools stifle family | |
originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound | |
idea of family to develop-then they blame the family for its failure | |
to be a family. It's like a malicious person lifting a photograph | |
from the developing chemicals too early, and then pronouncing the | |
photographer incompetent. | |
Private time is absolutely essential if a private identity is going | |
to develop, and private time is equally essential to the development | |
of a code of private values, without which we aren't really | |
individuals at all. Children and families need some relief from | |
government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions | |
belonging to them are to develop. Without these freedom has no | |
meaning. | |
Mass education cannot work to produce a fair society because its | |
daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression, and | |
intimidation. The schools we've allowed to develop can't work to | |
teach nonmaterial values, the values which give meaning to everyone's | |
life, rich or poor, because the structure of schooling is held | |
together by a Byzantine tapestry of reward and threat, of carrots and | |
sticks. | |
Sixty-five years ago Bertrand Russell, one of the great | |
mathematicians of this century, its greatest philosopher, and a close | |
relation of the King of England to boot, saw that mass schooling in | |
the United States had a profoundly anti-democratic intent, that it | |
was a scheme to artificially deliver national unity by eliminating | |
human variation and by eliminating the forge that produces variation: | |
the family. According to Lord Russell, mass schooling produced a | |
recognizably American student: anti-intellectual, superstitious, | |
lacking self-confidence, and having less of what Russell called | |
"inner freedom" than his or her counterpart in any other nation he | |
knew of, past or present. | |
# Chapter 5, The Congregational Principle | |
These are surrealistic times. The scientific school establishment | |
continues to float plans for further centralization in the form of | |
national standards, a national curriculum, and improved national | |
standardized testing. Magical promises are everywhere: machines are | |
the answer; massive interventions are the answer; new forms of | |
pre-schooling are the answer; baseball bats, bullhorns, and padlocks | |
are the answer. In the face of a century and a half of searching for | |
it unsuccessfully, nobody seems to doubt for a minute that there is | |
an answer. One answer. The one right answer. | |
Most people think of Colonial New England as embodying the greatest | |
period of conformity this country has ever seen. But the nature of | |
Congregationalism hides a very great irony: structurally, this way of | |
life demands individuality, not regimentation. The service is almost | |
free of liturgy, emphasizing local preaching about local issues. | |
This virtually guarantees dissonance inside the congregation. The | |
constant struggle for clarity by every church member acting as his or | |
her own priest, his or her own expert, invariably leads to progress | |
toward truth. ... The Congregational procedure was dialectical down | |
to its roots, in a way acutely hostile to hierarchical thinking. | |
Central planners of any period despise the dialectic because it gets | |
in the way of efficiently broadcasting "one right way" to do things. | |
Half a century ago Bertrand Russell remarked that the United States | |
was the only major country on earth that deliberately avoided | |
teaching its children to think dialectically. | |
Now I want us to examine something that seems embarrassing in New | |
England civil life; and yet, paradoxically, I think it hides a secret | |
of great power, which the social engineers who built and maintain our | |
government monopoly schools are forced to overlook: Each town was | |
able to exclude people it didn't like! People were able to choose | |
whom they wanted to work with, to sort themselves into a living | |
curriculum that worked for them. The words of the first Dedham | |
charter catch this feeling perfectly; the original settlers wanted to | |
(and did) shut out "people whose dispositions do not suit us, whose | |
society will be hurtful to us." So in a funny way these early towns | |
functioned like selective clubs or colleges, like MIT and Harvard do | |
today, narrowing human differences down to a range that could be | |
managed by them humanely. If you consider the tremendous stresses | |
the dialectical process sets up anyway-where all people are their own | |
priests, their own final masters-it's hard to see how a | |
congregational society can do otherwise. If you have to accept | |
everyone, no matter how hostile they may be to your own personality, | |
philosophy, or mission, then an operation would quickly become | |
paralyzed by fatal disagreements. | |
It's a subtle distinction: living dialectically as the New Englanders | |
did produces spectacular accomplishments and brings out strong | |
qualities of character and mind in individuals, but it isn't possible | |
to manage where the whole catalogue of human beings is thrown | |
together haphazardly or forced together, as it is in government | |
monopoly school life. | |
These New Englanders invented a system where people who wanted to | |
live and work together could do so. Yet the whole region seemed to | |
prosper in wonderful ways: materially, intellectually, and socially. | |
It was almost as if by taking care of your own business you succeeded | |
in some magical fashion in taking care of pubic business too. The | |
habits of self-reliance, self-respect, fearlessness, democracy, and | |
local loyalty produced good citizens. | |
...the negative side of local choice is very easy to see and even | |
very easy to predict. We see it illustrated in the example of | |
Colonial Dedham. But the whole matter is a good deal more | |
complicated than assigning a bad grade to religious discrimination or | |
to any other type of social choice that prescribes and limits a | |
particular kind of human association. For instance, where could we | |
begin to look for an explanation of how these people grew gradually | |
more tolerant and came to accept all forms of religion? They even | |
changed their conservative ways to the point where Massachusetts | |
gained a national reputation as the most liberal state in the Union. | |
That's quite a flip-flop to account for in the absence of compulsion, | |
intimidation, or potent enabling legislation, isn't it. How did | |
Dedham and the rest of those towns teach themselves to reform without | |
experts making them do it and without central intervention? ... And | |
nobody forced them to do it! Something mysterious inside the | |
structure of Congregationalism worked to have them abandon some of | |
the exclusivity that adherence to Biblical elite dogma had taught | |
them. | |
I am certain that "something" was nearly unconditional local choice. | |
And it was self-correcting! | |
Yes, the negative aspects of local choice are easy to spot, and the | |
overwhelming argument in its favor-that without it the genius of | |
democracy cannot exist-is hard to see. Because there is plenty of | |
local tyranny as well, the temptation is to cede power to a central | |
authority in the name of fairness, to manage some best way for all | |
from central headquarters. That's what a national curriculum is | |
supposed to be for schools, a rational, fair way to legislate bad | |
schooling out of existence. A national curriculum would never have | |
allowed Dedham or Sudbury or Framingham or Wellfleet to develop as | |
they did; that would have been dangerous, unpredictable, divisive... | |
And here comes the dialectic. The experience of our centrally | |
planned century has not been very good for most people. According to | |
some, the planet itself is in jeopardy. And things legislated out of | |
existence, like alcohol and drug abuse or racism, don't seem to go | |
away... | |
The Congregationalists understood profoundly that good things happen | |
to the human spirit when it is left alone. | |
The best immediate evidence I have to offer, that leaving people | |
alone to work out their own local destinies is a splendid idea, is | |
the curious sociology of my presence as a speaker in Dedham last | |
year. There, in a community that had whipped half-naked Quaker | |
women, stood I-a Roman Catholic with a Scots Presbyterian wife, | |
accompanied by my good friend Roland, half pagan, half Jewish-in a | |
Unitarian Universalist church that had once been Congregational. No | |
act of the Massachusetts legislature made that possible, no | |
pronouncement of the Supreme Court. People learned to be neighbors | |
in Dedham because for three hundred years they were allowed real | |
choice, including the choice to make their own mistakes. Everyone | |
learned a better way to deal with difference than exclusion because | |
they had time to think about it and to work it through-time measured | |
in generations. | |
By allowing the imposition of direction from centers far beyond our | |
control, we have time and again missed the lesson of the | |
Congregational principle: people are less than whole unless they | |
gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. | |
Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family, and community | |
dreams consistent with their private humanity is what makes them | |
whole; only slaves are gathered by others. | |
many of us, the greatest attraction of social engineering and | |
antisocial demonologies is that both, at bottom, promise a quick | |
fix. That has always been the dark side of the American dream, the | |
search for an easy way out, a belief in magic. The endless parade | |
of promises that constitutes the heart of American advertising, one | |
of the largest of our national enterprises, testifies to the deep | |
well of superstition in our national foundation, which has been | |
institutionalized in the advertising business. Easy money, easy | |
health, easy beauty, easy education-if only the right incantation | |
can be found. Lurking behind the magic is an image of people as | |
machinery that can be built and repaired. | |
The old Congregationalists would have been able to put their finger | |
at once on the reason pyramidal societies, such as the one our | |
monopoly form of schooling sustains, must always end in apathy and | |
disorganization. At the root they are based on the lie that there is | |
"one right way" in human affairs and that experts can be awarded the | |
permanent direction of the enterprise of education. It is a lie | |
because the changing dynamics of time and situation and locality | |
render expertise irrelevant and obsolete shortly after it is anointed. | |
Monopoly schooling is the major cause of our loss of national and | |
individual identity. ... Its strength arises from many quarters, | |
the antichild, antifamily stream of history being one-but it draws it | |
greatest power from being a natural adjunct to the kind of commercial | |
economy we have that requires permanently dissatisfied consumers. | |
What is there to do? Turn your back on national solutions and toward | |
communities of families as successful laboratories. Let us turn | |
inward until we master the first directive of any philosophy worthy | |
of the name: "Know Thyself." Understand that successful communities | |
know the truth of the maxim "Good fences make good neighbors," while | |
at the same time being able to recognize, respect, understand, | |
appreciate, and learn from each other's differences. | |
Teaching must, I think, be decertified as quickly as possible. That | |
certified teaching experts like me are deemed necessary to make | |
learning happen is a fraud and a scam. Look around you: the results | |
of teacher-college licensing are in the schools you see. ... Trust | |
in families and neighborhoods and individuals to make sense of the | |
important question, "What is education for?" It is illegitimate to | |
have an expert answer that question for you. | |
# Afterword (2002) | |
How did I come to write Dumbing Us Down? When I won the first of my | |
Teacher of the Year awards in 1990, I intended to do nothing at the | |
ceremony except to thank the presenter and to wave at my daughter in | |
the audience or, if I were bold enough, to ask her to the podium for | |
a public hug (I was; I did). But on the evening before the ceremony, | |
a student from many years past called to offer congratulations. He | |
casually asked what I intended by way of remarks. | |
Remarks? I set him straight, or so I thought. "Nobody," I told him, | |
"wants to hear a public school teacher make a speech." There would | |
be no remarks. | |
"But you have to make speech," he demanded. "You have to speak for | |
me, for Wendy, for Amy, for Bruce, for Tamir, for Janet, Jane, Jill, | |
Andy; for all your classes over the years you have to sum up what | |
it's all meant." | |
"No one will listen," I said. | |
"I'll listen," he said. | |
And so that's how "The Psychopathic School" came to be written, in | |
one blaze of all-night coffee-drenched passion. | |
"The Psychopathic School," the key essay in this book, deals with a | |
number of pathological patterns I had noticed in schoolchildren over | |
the years, in rich kids as well as in poor. | |
Giving these speeches (and there were others, each a chapter in this | |
book) led directly to another phenomenon, which challenged some of my | |
most dearly-held assumptions: there was an outpouring of invitations | |
to speak to groups so diverse that, had they been assembled together | |
in one room, they surely would have killed one another! | |
Although I altered the rhetorical clothing to fit the various | |
audiences and situations, my core message was (and remains) that | |
forced institutional schooling is absolutely unreformable because it | |
is already an unqualified success! It does brilliantly precisely | |
what it was originally designed to do, that is, to be the | |
"educational" component of a centralized mass production economy | |
directed from a handful of command centers. Such an economy has | |
desperate needs: in order to work, it requires a particular kind of | |
"human resource," specifically one driven to define itself by | |
purchasing things, by owning "stuff," by evaluating everything from | |
the perspective of comfort, physical security, and status. | |
Schools are a great mechanism to condition the onrushing generations | |
to accept total management, to impose a kind of lifelong childishness | |
on most of us in the interests of scientific management. Efficient | |
management requires incomplete people to manage because whole people, | |
or those who aspire to wholeness, reject extended tutelage. It's | |
impossible to grow up under total management, whether that's total | |
quality management or any other version. | |
# Postscript (2005) | |
On April 7, 2004, the Mid-Hudson Highland Post carried an article | |
about an appearance that John Gatto made at Highland High School. | |
Headlined "Rendered Speechless," the report was subtitled "Advocate | |
for education reform brings controversy to Highland. | |
The article relates the events of March 25 evening of that year when | |
the second half of John Gatto's presentation was canceled by the | |
School Superintendent, "following complaints from the Highland | |
Teachers Association that the presentation was too controversial." | |
What was not reported in the newspaper is the fact that the school | |
authorities called the police to intervene and 'restore the peace' | |
which, ironically enough, was never in the slightest jeopardy as the | |
student audience was well-behaved and attentive throughout. A | |
scheduled evening meeting at the school between Gatto and the Parents | |
Association was peremptorily forbidden by school district authorities | |
in a final assault on the principles of free speech and free | |
assembly... | |
There could be no better way of demonstrating the lasting importance | |
of John Taylor Gatto's work, and of this small book, than this sorry | |
tale. It is a measure of the power of Gatto's ideas, their urgency, | |
and their continuing relevance that school authorities are still | |
trying to shut them out 12 years after their initial publication, | |
afraid even to debate them. | |
author: Gatto, John Taylor | |
LOC: LA2317.G33 A3 | |
tags: ebook,non-fiction | |
title: Dumbing Us Down | |
# Tags | |
ebook | |
non-fiction |