Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

After 26 years of teaching in the New York public schools, John Taylor Gatto has seen a lot. His book,Dumbing Us Down, is a treatise against what he believes to be the destructive nature of schooling. The book opens with a chapter called "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher," in which he outlines sevenharmful lessons he must convey as a public schoolteacher: 1.) confusion 2.) class position 3.) indifference 4.) emotional dependency 5.) intellectual dependency 6.) provisional self-esteem 7.) constant surveillance and the denial of privacy. How ironic it is that Gatto's first two chapters contain the text of his acceptance speeches for NewYork State and City Teacher of the Year Awards. How ironic indeed, that he uses his own award presentation as a forum to attack the very same educational system that is honoring him! Gatto describes schooling, as opposed to learning, as a "twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the onlycurriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it," taunts the author. While trapped in this debilitative system along with his students, Gatto, observed in them anoverwhelming dependence. He believes that school teaches this dependence by purposely inhibitingindependent thinking, and reinforcing indifference to adult thinking. He describes his students as"having almost no curiosity, a poor sense of the future, are a historical, cruel, uneasy with intimacy, and materialistic." Gatto suggests that the remedy to this crisis in education is less time spent in school, and more timespent with family and "in meaningful pursuits in their communities." He advocates apprenticeships andhome schooling as a way for children to learn. He even goes so far as to argue for the removal of certification requirements for teachers, and letting "anybody who wants to, teach." Gatto's style of writing is simple and easy to follow. He interlaces personal stories throughout the book to bring clarity and harmony to his views, while also drawing on logic and history to support his ideas about freedom in education and a return to building community. He clearly distinguishes communities from networks: "Communities ... are complex relationships of commonality and obligation," whereas, "Networksdon't require the whole person, but only a narrow piece." While Gatto harshly criticizes schooling, we must realize that his opinions do come as a result of 26 yearsof experience and frustration with the public school system. Unfortunately, whether or not one agrees with his solutions, he has not outlined the logistics of how these improvements would be implemented. His ideas are based on idealism, and the reality of numbers and economics would present many obstacles. Nevertheless, it gives us a clear vision and a direction to follow for teachers and parents who believe in the family as the most important agent for childrearing and growth.

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th-mach (2009-08-16)

John Taylor Gatto is my here. Read the book!

th-mach (2009-08-16)

EDIT:
John Taylor Gatto is my HERO.
:-)

 Djofullinn (2009-08-16)

Enjoy.

terrenmcc (2009-08-16)

This is something I have been seeing for years. Finally someone has written about it.

qajnu (2009-08-17)

isn't it similar everywhere?

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

It is and the universal policy has come from the UN, UNESCO, and before that from The Frankfort School. After the Prussians lost badly to Napoleon in 1806 they blamed education for their failure. The troops were too self-centric. So they set up a heavily outcome based education system where 95-98% of pupils were mostly taught to be obedient and the rest to be administrators. This system was soon adopted in Sweden, the US and elsewhere and the rest is ever more dismal history.

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

Prussia took the earlier principles set forth by
Rosseau and Locke and created a new three-tier educational system. The Prussian philosopher Fichte, in his Address to the German People, stated that the children will be taken over and
told what to think and how to think it. This is the real beginning of our dumbing education system for the purposes of the state and its financial sponsors.

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

To elaborate on this in 1819 Prussian (German) law made education compulsory. The Humboldt brothers, Stein and others divided German society into three distinct groups: (1) those who will be policy makers who are taught to think ( .5 %), (2) those who will be engineers, lawyers ,doctors who are taught to partially think (5.5%) and (3) the children of the masses (94%), who were to learn obedience and how to follow orders. The school of the masses (volkschulen)
divided whole ideas into subjects which did not exist previously . The result was that people would (1) think what someone else told them to think about,(2) when to think it ,(3) how long to think about it ,(4) when to stop thinking about it, and (5) when to think of something else. This way, no one in the masses would know anything that's really going on. (Although brilliant, the system is inherently negative in nature - it would lead eventually to German mind control paradigms in the late 19th and 20th century. The system also weakens or breaks the link between the child and the capacity to read (cross-assimilation creating whole ideas) by replacing the alphabet system of teaching reading with a system of teaching sounds, (breaking into smaller units). The same paradigm relative to reading is currently injected into US Society by the Peabody Foundation, who imposed a northern system of schooling on the US South between 1865 and 1918. The system in the northern US is the Prussian system. Over 48% of the soldiers in the American revolution against the British, on both the American and British sides, were Prussian (German) mercenaries.

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

Then from about 1822, for the next 30-40 years, a stream of Americans go to Prussia (Germany) and bring this educational system to the United States.

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

It's probably no coincidence in this context that the period from 1859 to 1931 is defined by historian Carroll Quigley as the historical stage of Financial Capitalism, where a system of worldwide financial control would be set up in private hands to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the planet as a whole.

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

In 1856 Daniel Coit Gilman, Andrew White and Timothy Dwight set up the Yale Trust to finance the Skull & Bones organization at Yale University. White would become first president of Cornell
University and US ambassador to Russia (1892) and US Ambassador to Germany (1897-1902). White advised Herbert Hoover to set up the Hoover Institution. Gilman trained John Dewey, who would help him dominate American education in the 20th century. Gilman also trained Richard Ely, who in turn trained Woodrow Wilson (who gave the Federal Reserve System
to the United States, the income tax and WWI.) All three of the men who set up the Yale Trust were educated at the University of Berlin, where they were indoctrinated with Hegelian Deteriminism, which states that everyone must be controlled to achieve predetermined goals.

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

In 1890 Andrew Carnegie wrote a series of eleven essays called "The Gospel of Wealth", a treatise which essentially stated that free enterprise and capitalism no longer existed in the United States, because he and Rockefeller owned everything, including the government, and that competition was impossible unless they allowed it. Eventually, says Carnegie, the young children
will become aware of this and form clandestine organizations to fight against it. Carnegie proposes that men of wealth form a
synthetic free enterprise system based on cradle-to-grave schooling. The people who advanced through schooling would be given licenses to lead profitable lives. All licenses are tied to forms of schooling. This way, the entire economy can be controlled and people have a motivation for them to learn what you want them to learn. It also places the minds of all children in
the hands of a few social engineers. (German System).

 Djofullinn (2009-08-17)

That's basically it folks.
The rough historical background of our dumbing down educational system, which was set up by financial sponsors of politicians and will undoubtedly go on keeping us asleep while they systematically enslave us financially and rob us blind and then probably wipe most of us out with whatever plagues they are preparing.

Yorkfield (2014-03-25)

Thank you!

Pro21 (2014-05-29)

Djofullinn, thanks for your comments. That was very interesting and informative.