Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition

John Taylor Gatto

Description

• Features offered to: The Atlantic, Harpers, NY Times, Chronicle of Higher Education
• Excerpts offered to Utne Reader, Mother Jones, Practical Homeschooling, Homeschooling Parent
• Advertising in Homeschool Magazine
• Promotion to homeschooling groups
• Galley available on Edelweiss
• Promotion via New Society Publishers social media platforms.

• Over 80,000 copies sold
• Marks the 25th Anniversary of the first printing in 1992.
• John Taylor Gatto was an award-winning teacher in New York City's public school system for over thirty years.
• Gatto began to feel that he had been hired not to increase children's power, but to diminish it
• Gatto questioned whether the bells, confinement, age-segregation, lack of privacy, and constant surveillance in the school system were deliberately designed to prevent children from learning how to learn and behave, and to coax them into addictive and dependent behaviour.
• Dumbing Us Down reveals the shocking reality that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine
• Gatto sets out how he worked to remove those obstacles to allow a child's inherent genius to reveal itself
• Dumbing Us Down has become a beacon for parents seeking alternatives to compulsory schooling

Throw off the shackles of formal schooling and embark upon a rich journey of self-directed, life-long learning

After over 100 years of mandatory schooling in the U.S., literacy rates have dropped, families are fragmented, learning "disabilities" are skyrocketing, and children and youth are increasingly disaffected. Thirty years of teaching in the public school system led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling is to blame, accomplishing little but to teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine.

He became a fierce advocate of families and young people taking back education and learning, arguing that "genius is as common as dirt," but that conventional schooling is driving out the natural curiosity and problem-solving skills we're born with, replacing it with rule-following, fragmented time, and disillusionment.

Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a New Society Publishers bestseller for 25 years, continues to bang the drum for an unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years.

Featuring a new foreword from Zachary Slayback, an Ivy League dropout and cofounder of tech start-up career foundry Praxis, this 25th anniversary edition will inspire new generations of parents and students to take control of learning and kickstart an empowered society of self-directed lifetime-learners.

Foreword, by Zachary Slayback
Preface - About the Author
1. The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher
2. The Psychopathic School
3. The Green Monongahela
4. We Need Less School, Not More
5. The Congregational Principle
Extra Bonus Chapter: Against School
Afterword
Postscript 2005 - From the Publisher
Postscript 2017 - From the Publisher
Also available by John Taylor Gatto
A Note about New Society Publishers

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Parentalité et Éducation des Enfants
• Public Policy
• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• EDUCATION
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• General officer
• Central
• General

Informations

• Publié par: New Society Publishers
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781771422444
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for John Taylor Gatto and Dumbing Us Down
A remarkable achievement. I can t remember ever reading such a profound analysis of modern education.
- Howard Zinn, on The Underground History of American Education
Education s most original thinker.
- Daniel H. Pink, author of Free Agent Nation
I ve loved John Gatto s work ever since I first encountered his astounding essays.
- Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women s Bodies, Women s Wisdom
I count John Gatto among my heroes.
- Robert Bly
Gatto is a singular antidote to stale convention.
- David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars
Brilliant Work!
- Laissez Faire Books
I agree with damn near every semi-colon and comma that Mr. Gatto has written.
- Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence
Gatto s voice is strong and unique, a Socrates of the educational world.
- Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul
Any student would be lucky to have a teacher like Gatto.
- Editorial in Commonweal
I m still baffled by how someone so forthright would have been named Teacher of the Year.
- Jeanne Allen, Editor, Education Update , Washington DC
One of the world s most controversial education reformists.
- The Western Australian
Inspirational and chillingly on the money.
- Bruce Bebb, The Hollywood Reporter , Hollywood CA
You ve got guts.
- D Arcy Rickard, British Columbia School Trustees Association, Canada
Easily the most brilliant and arresting salvo on education that I ve seen.
- Graham Betts, Madison WI
I read what you had to say with the greatest of delight and shared it with friends, one of whom said it brought tears to her eyes. We both thank you for writing.
- Edward M. Jones, Editor, A Voice for Children , Santa Fe NM
Professor Kenneth E. Boulding saw your writing and got it to me. I so fully agreed with everything you said that you have re-excited me about the similar mission I am on.
- Ed Lyell, Colorado State Board of Education, Denver CO
A very important and passionate book-a reawakening of the penetrating critique of schooling made in the 1960s by John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, and James Herndon...it deserves to be in every bookstore in the country. Yours is a voice of humanity, community, and love. Bravo!
- Ron Miller, Editor, Holistic Education Review
My daughter, a smart, dedicated 14-year-old who just dropped out of high school and is successfully pursuing independent studies, reports that your findings about the nature of institutional schooling are precisely right. Drove her nuts.
- Ken Richards, Richmond IN
Brilliant. I ve never seen so many true statements about education, children, and families in one place.... Your insights and integrity are wonderful.
- Norah Dooley, Cambridge MA
Seldom have I read such a penetrating and passionate diagnosis of our current educational and cultural crisis. And I have read all the current weighty expostulations.
- Robert Inchausti, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo CA
I can visualize the Department of Education putting out a contract on your life. Please continue to speak out in the direction you are going.
- W. Evans, Woodbury/St.George UT
Your articles are wonderful and so desperately needed. I ve copied them for a dozen families and everyone was enthusiastic. One mother said, We should elect this man President!
- Elaine Majors, Chapel Hill NC
Thank you for challenging public education-in your Wall Street Journal editorial, your evening program at Carnegie Hall, your book, and all the rest.
- Sandra Booth, Spring Valley NY
It is as refreshing to read and hear your words as it is to study Zen.... Good show!
- John Warfield, Huntingdon VA

Copyright 2017 by John Taylor Gatto. First edition 1992 by John Taylor Gatto. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Cover Images iStock
Printed in Canada. First printing April 2017

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Dumbing Us Down should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com
Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada [phone]
Gatto, John Taylor, author Dumbing us down : the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling / John Taylor Gatto.-25th anniversary edition.
Contents: The seven-lesson schoolteacher-The psychopathic school-The green monongahela-We need less school, not more-The congregational principle.
Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-86571-856-2 (hardcover).- ISBN 978-0-86571-854-8 (softcover).- ISBN 978-1-55092-649-1 ( PDF ).- ISBN 978-1-77142-244-4 ( EPUB )
L IBRARY AND A RCHIVES C ANADA C ATALOGUING IN P UBLICATION
1. Education-Aims and objectives-United States. 2. Educational sociology-United States. 3. Education, Compulsory-United States. I. Title.
LA210.G38 2017 370.973 C2017-902383-7 C2017-902384-5
New Society Publishers mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.
This 25th Anniversary Edition is dedicated with deep love to my Scottish wife Janet, my enduring inspiration, and her children, Raven and Briseis, both thoroughbreds; plus our Icelandic granddaughter, assistant Dean of Admissions at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.
God bless you all for saturating my life with higher meaning.
Sparkle and shine in the face of darkness.
Contents
Foreword, by Zachary Slayback
Preface-About the Author
1. The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher
2. The Psychopathic School
3. The Green Monongahela
4. We Need Less School, Not More
5. The Congregational Principle
Extra Bonus Chapter: Against School
Afterword
Postscript 2005-From the Publisher
Postscript 2017-From the Publisher
Also available by John Taylor Gatto
A Note about New Society Publishers
Foreword
by Zachary Slayback
I CARRY A CARD in my wallet with a quote from John Taylor Gatto. I look at this card any time I feel the urge to settle on an easy path and to stop learning. It reads, You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else s script.
I was the perfect student through high school and the beginning of college. I got good grades, turned assignments in on time, got into an Ivy League university, landed a comfortable research fellowship, and continued my track towards being defined as a top student. Then, I left school.
I loved learning and enjoyed the aspects of school that allowed me to do that, but I always knew there was something off about school when I was a student. I was a product of the No Child Left Behind era, and I remember the deluge of standardized tests that always defined the end of the school year. My best teachers were those who did not follow exam requirements and only begrudgingly made sure that the exams were completed.
The best teacher I had was one who signed passes so students could skip other classes to go to her classroom and work on whatever they wanted. The worst were those obsessed with meeting state-mandated standards.
I thought getting to college would allow me to pursue my passions and dreams and finally break free of the chains that mandatory schooling put on me. I thought schooling and education didn t have to be mutually exclusive. I thought K-12 was merely a broken version of something better.
I was wrong.
At college, I found a continuation of the same push towards standardization and measuring human drives, skills, desires, dreams, and futures. I saw high-caliber classmates get caught in fierce competition for conventional careers working at companies for which they cared very little. People who were capable of changing the world wasted their intelligence and drive on things like impressing recruiters from Goldman Sachs or Facebook-instead of blowing their time on arbitrary exams, they blew their time on arbitrary accolades from others.
I first came across John Taylor Gatto s work when I realized that my love of learning and my dislike of school were related. It started with a video on YouTube of Gatto explaining the purpose of school and ended with my devouring all of his books. For the first time in my life, I felt like somebody had seen what I had seen and was assuring me that I wasn t crazy to want something better than school. For the first time in my life, I found somebody who took schooling to its logical conclusion. Here was somebody who had seen what I had seen and couldn t bring himself to keep perpetuating the system. Rather than sit around and wait year after year as that system kept crushing students and stealing their dreams, he actually did something about it.
What an inspiration. I couldn t keep participating in a system that was not only grinding me down, into a cog for somebody else, but was also taking some of the best and hardest working young people I knew and dumbing them down.
Being a great student ended up holding me back.
The years and energy I spent trying to get into a good college and continue the standardization and industrialization I experienced in K-12 could have been spent developing the passions I had as a child and the skills to live out my dreams.
I am one of the fortunate ones-I realized this and now spend my time developing these skills and deschooling myself. I work every day to unlearn the habits I picked up in school that made me a good student but prevent me from being the best version of myself.
For me, this meant leaving school. I found myself more fulfilled, more intellectually engaged, more productive, and happier when I wasn t playing for a place at the front of the conveyor belt.
Gatto first wrote Dumbing Us Down 25 years ago, before the mass popularization of the internet. Then, one could fin