Dumbing us Down

"Gatto comes down hard on the industrial one-size-fits-all schooling model. He argues that not only are schools irrelevant to the lives of children, they are in fact damaging. His central thesis is that factory schooling is causing great harm to children and communities. It is an anti-learning, anti-social and anti-democratic activity."

— Manish Jain, Shikshantar Andolan

 

Continuous ringing of the bells, from one compartment to another compartment, every day eight hours of confinement, the age-segregation like vegetables, the lack of privacy and constant surveillance, the crazy sequences, cut-off from the working community and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling are 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.

 

After teaching for years John Taylor Gatto reached to the sad conclusion that schooling has nothing to do with learning—but to teach young people to conform to the economic and social order. Dumbing Us Down reveals shocking reality to today's school system and has become a beacon for parents seeking alternatives to it.

 

Contents : Foreword for Indian Edition, by Manish Jain. Foreword, by Thomas Moore. Introduction, by David Albert. Publisher's Note — from the US Edition. 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. Afterword. Postscript 2005 — from the Publisher

 

John Taylor Gatto has taught for over 30 years in Government Public Schools and is recipient of the New York City Teacher of the Year Award and New York State Teacher of the Year. He is much sought after speaker on Education. Recently he has started Bartleby Project to peacefully refuse to take standardized tests or to participate in any preparation of these tests by simply writing "I would prefer not to take your test."