Against School - John Taylor Gatto

http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm

by yters • 15 years ago

82 40 15 years ago

pero• 15 years ago

His magnum opus: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ (free read)

fleitz2• 15 years ago

If you ever get the chance to read Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto I highly suggest it, it's very eye opening as to the origins and reasons for mandatory schooling.

Also when reading John Taylor Gatto, please ensure you do not conflate schooling with education. You'll not like him very much if you conflate the two. Unless you really are against education, in that case please reply :)

tomjen3• 15 years ago

I already read The Underground History of American Education. Is it worth reading Weapons of Mass Instruction too?

Not that it greatly matters, of course, since there is absolutely nothing I can do about it as I have already decided not to have kids.

bmj2• 15 years ago

Why? There are plenty of home/un-schooling groups that you could assist even though you don't have kids.

gallamine• 15 years ago

I had the distinct privilege of being home-educated, and never darkening the door of a government run primary school. My parent's resolve in doing this was largely influenced by Mr. Gatto. There is hope.

fleitz2• 15 years ago

Not sure haven't read that work of his. Right now I'm finishing off Disabling Professions by Ivan Illich which looks at how professions are a continuation of the learned helplessness that schooling helps to instill.

Alex3917• 15 years ago

"I already read The Underground History of American Education. Is it worth reading Weapons of Mass Instruction too?"

No. Weapons of Mass Instruction is basically just excerpts from Underground History. I think there are a few new things, but mostly what happened is that the publisher for Underground History backed out once they read the book, which left Gatto allowed to self publish it himself but unable to find another publishing deal. So Weapons of Mass instruction was basically just him going out and repackaging Underground History and publishing the best of it.

JabavuAdams• 15 years ago

You can mentor someone else's kids. It needn't be formal.

djm• 15 years ago

Those who enjoy reading John Taylor Gatto may also like to read a great little book called "The teenage liberation handbook" by grace Llewellyn. It's that book you read as an adult and wish you'd read as a teenager.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

The fact that home schooled children often end up having a higher quality of education regardless of the educational levels of the parents seems to me a pretty damning indictment of the public school system in general. There is this perception (backed by laws, regulations, and taxes) that there is a specific and elevated set of skills necessary to be a teacher, however all of the evidence seems to indicate this isn't the case.

noahc• 15 years ago

Do you have a source for this?

Duff3• 15 years ago

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/30/home-schooli...

"Five areas of academic pursuit were measured. In reading, the average home-schooler scored at the 89th percentile; language, 84th percentile; math, 84th percentile; science, 86th percentile; and social studies, 84th percentile. In the core studies (reading, language and math), the average home-schooler scored at the 88th percentile.

The average public school student taking these standardized tests scored at the 50th percentile in each subject area."

If you look at results from alternative schools like Montessori schools, you usually find similar results. It's not magic -- I enjoyed school but recognize in retrospect that it was an awful experience in many ways that instilled bad habits.

mhb• 15 years ago

Although I agree that public education is a disaster, your conclusion doesn't seem justified here. That home schooled children do better could also be affected by other factors such as that the teachers of home schooled children are smarter/value education more/have better disciplined kids/have smaller class size/etc.

keiferski• 15 years ago

I'm not fan of the public school system, but I don't think it's that simple. Mainly, wouldn't home-schooled children (and their parents) presumably be more concerned about their "education" than your average family? The fact that they are homeschooling their kids, rather than dumping them off to the school system, seems to suggest this.

If that were the case, these students would probably get a higher quality of education even if they were forced to go through the system.

It's this same flawed argument that always comes up with college earnings. (College grads are more successful, therefore you should go to college.) Isn't it likely that those who are likely to enroll at a college are more driven, potentially-successful people to begin with?

ams6110• 15 years ago

Home schooling is not the universal answer. I can tell you anecdotally from first-hand knowledge that there are some parents who claim to be "home schooling" their kids but are in fact doing nothing at all. These kids end up absolutely unequipped to do anything but reproduce more of themselves and let the rest of us finance their existence.

bmj2• 15 years ago

(NB: My wife and I homeschool our kids.)

These kids end up absolutely unequipped to do anything but reproduce more of themselves and let the rest of us finance their existence.

You mean as opposed to kids who go through public schools (on our dimes) and end up with the same fate? What's the difference?

Home/un-schooling doesn't work for everyone. I've heard a story about a good friend of Ivan Illich who unschooled his two kids. The results were what you might expect: one went on to "great things" while the other didn't, and ended up on the dole.

I'd like to see statistics on homeschooled kids that back up your anecdotal evidence. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd be curious what the statistics say.

dereg• 15 years ago

I'm all for the privitization of schools (voucher system). People recoil in horror when I say this. However, it's not nearly as bad as what people make it out to be.

Government should get out of the school/education provisioning business. It hasn't worked, period. What I don't mind the government doing is providing education funding via vouchers.

Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding on how to allocate public education money? Think about it this way, do you want to maximize parent choice, and have them decide on the quality of a school, or do you want a board of education member deciding on the quality of schools?

Do you trust the decisions of a swarm self-interested parents and children or, or the decision of a self-interested government official? I trust the swarm.

anamax2• 15 years ago

> Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding on how to allocate public education money?

We let govt decide where people can spend food-stamps and what they can buy.

Oh wait - we don't - there's not nearly the same level of govt control wrt food.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

Homeschooling is harder - most parents are not trained teachers. They could not for instance teach a class of 30 better than the teacher at the school. Or even tutor their own child as well as the teacher at the school.

But parents very likely Can tutor their own child, better than the teacher teaches a class of 30. That's the apples-to-apples comparison that matters, since its the option facing parents.

Imaging for a minute that the classroom teacher spends the day tutoring each child. That would be, what, 10 minutes per child per day? And this doesn't of course happen.

A parent can do better than that in the first half-hour after breakfast. The rest of the day is gravy.

What does a home-schooled child miss? Socialization, practice at behaving as a member of a group, classes that require investment in equipment/facilities (art, gym, sports). These things can be mitigated by the clever parent, and honestly missing some of that is not all bad.

Anyway you end up with a different child. Not necessarily better or worse, but certainly different. And I suppose we need a few different adults.

yters• 15 years ago

What's my recipe for schooling, you ask?

1. Teach kid to read 2. Show him internet 3. Kick him out of house

epochwolf• 15 years ago

And how do you plan to keep him from watching porn all day long?

joelhooks2• 15 years ago

I tell mine that I do weekly log analysis of all traffic crossing the router. It isn't true, but the bluff has held for years. Shit, now he'll find this and have the keys to the pleasure garden...

greencircle• 15 years ago

I look forward to reading his online book. There are quite a few interesting books from the 60s on this topic, including Paul Goodman's "Compulsory Miseducation" --- which you can read online at http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys%20from%20Trash/Resources/... --- and A.S. Neill's Summerhill, and Dennison's The Lives of Children. All three offer a formal framework for addressing this topic: how we learn and develop is a psychological matter, not one of grades, nor figuring out how to fill a kid's head with facts. Contemporary work on cognitive and psychological development (unintentionally) corroborates this viewpoint (as far as I can tell, which is part time research, since full time I write code).

michaelchisari• 15 years ago

I've always enjoyed Gatto's writing, although I disagree on some points: I'd prefer to move public schooling towards a more liberatory model, than encouraging home-schooling (something which doesn't favor people without the bare minimum of means). I prefer to change institutions than to drop out of them.

If you like Gatto, I'd also recommend reading up on Francisco Ferrer, A.S. Neill, Paulo Freire, and Alfie Kohn.

joelhooks2• 15 years ago

Adjusting the government school model and encouraging home education aren't mutually exclusive. It would seem that any sort of effective change in the way government approaches education is extremely difficult.

We home educate our children, and you are correct. It has been a genuine challenge on many levels. I've observed various families with the minimum of means achieve success home educating, but in general it is folks that have a solid single income and understand that they are making a "sacrifice". There is very little in this life that favors those of bare minimum needs.

hoop• 15 years ago

I had to read this for a literature and composition class. Definitely an eye opener

SHOwnsYou2• 15 years ago

I had a hard time reading this and I suspect I'm not the only one. What particularly struck a nerve with me was the absolutely out of left field mention of Columbine as if it somehow amplifies the impact of public schools being bad (paraphrasing: "Schools are 2000-4000 child warehouses, like the now famous Columbine highschool").

The alternative of large schools (and what is being championed here) is home schooling children. Not only does that not scale, it also disproportionately favors the wealthy as families with already limited means are unlikely to be able to commit neither the money nor the time (on top of work everyday) to teach their children.

Even if you fix the scaling issues and the disproportionate income problems, you still have parents that simply don't care. When I was in school it was in vogue (in my locale) to take your kids out of public school and begin to homeschool them. But it turned out that parents' seemed to think that was the magic bullet, and their children were largely left to their own devices to figure out material, a schedule, and to somehow still be able to interact with kids their own age.

Obviously, I am not a big proponent of home schooling. I actually liked going through public school. I will forever wager my small town public school education against any home-schooled person's education any day.

jimwise2• 15 years ago

I'm curious whether you think home schooling favors the wealthy more than the public school system does? Recall that public school funding is a local affair; the wealthier the local population, the better funded the school.

I'm also not sure what you mean by `scaling issues'? Many districts here in New York State avereage 45-50 students per teacher. We have a large family by the national or local averages, and our five kids have one homeschooling parent all to themselves...

This doesn't mean that homeschooling is affordable for everyone -- especially given that every parent (and non-parent, for that matter) is paying (directly if they own, indirectly if they rent) for the public school system, whether they use it or not.

SHOwnsYou2• 15 years ago

> homeschool vs public school I can't speak with any authority on the relative value of home school vs public school for children of wealthy families. But I will point out that simply because a school district is well funded does not mean the school district will necessarily be better than better than a slightly less funded district.

>scaling I did speak incompletely. I meant to to explain that school best works at scale (I meant to say "not only does that not scale down"). You have already explained this for me. Each family requires a parent to do the home schooling, where as public schools can provide a teacher for multiple children of multiple families.

>pay for it regardless Fortunately those that own, they realize an associated cost of owning is taxation. The argument could also be made that in return for paying for the public school system, those residents are able to live in a place that has a compulsory education system.

I'd be willing to bet that no one would flock to (let alone stay there for a significant portion of time) an area that did not require taxes that went to a local school system.

emit_time_n3rgy• 15 years ago

Loads of Gatto audio at http://tinyurl.com/2d9rqr

Against School - John Taylor Gatto

Related Stories