Dumbing Us Down Read online

  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

  (250) 247-9737

  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)

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  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 u
niversity, 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 find an excuse to not be educated outside of school. Today, it’s not only inexcusable, but nearly impossible.

  Your iPhone contains access to the entire annals of human knowledge for less than the price of a textbook at Harvard. You are six circles removed from any expert on the face of the planet and can contact them instantly with an email. You can create a business in an hour and launch a website in 15 minutes, all for less than the price of an hour of class at Penn.

  It has never been easier for somebody to create opportunities for themselves—there’s no need to wait for permission from deans or employers.

  In my case, this meant reaching out to a friend who was starting a company called Praxis, building something better than college. I asked him to let me work for free. After several months of working with him, I joined the team full-time and had access to more and better educational resources than I had in the two years I was at an Ivy League university.

  And that’s the inspiration that drives us at Praxis. We believe that Gatto is right—you can educate your own. You can educate yourself. You are better set working with people in the real world and stepping outside of the classroom.

  John Taylor Gatto served as an inspiration to me because his story taught me that you don’t have to be a victim. You don’t have to be a passive cog in the machine of standardized education. You don’t have to suck it up and go 12 years and then 4 more (and then have to pay money for the damage done in those 4!).

  You can opt out.

  You can do something better.

  You can help your children, your friends, and your teachers do better.

  We don’t need school reform. Schools are working exactly as their designers intended. We need more choices and options outside of school. At the end of the day, the person who creates those is you. Stop waiting for permission from others and create opportunities to learn.

  Thanks to the work of Gatto and others, the cat’s out of the bag. You have no excuse not to.

  ZACHARY (ZAK) SLAYBACK is a communicator, Ivy League dropout, and entrepreneur focusing on issues of education, innovation, and philosophy. He’s the author of The End of School, and a founding team member at Praxis (discoverpraxis.com), an apprenticeship program for young people looking for a real-world education. He writes regularly and publishes audio content at zakslayback.com.

  Preface

  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 from the television set. I know that sometimes when I hear a news report from TV I wonder, Who are you? and, Why are you telling me these things? So let me offer you some of the ground out of which these ideas grew.

  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. I’ve taught at six different schools in that time. My present school is in the shadow of St. John the Divine Cathedral, the largest Gothic structure in the United States, and not a long walk from the famous Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. About three blocks from my school is the spot where the “Central Park jogger” (as media mythology refers to her) was raped and brutally beaten a few years ago—seven of the nine attackers went to school in my district.

  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. Monongahela was a place with muted class distinctions since everyone was more or less poor, although very few, I suspect, knew they were poor. It was a place where independence, toughness, and self-reliance were honored, a place where pride in ethnic and local culture was very intense. It was an altogether wonderful place to grow up, even to grow up poor. People talked to each other, minding each other’s business instead of the abstract business of “the world.” Indeed, the larger world hardly extended beyond Pittsburgh, a wonderful dark steel city worth a trip to see once or twice a year. Nobody in my memory felt confined by Monongahela or dwelled, within my earshot, on the possibility they were missing something important by not being elsewhere.

  My grandfather was the town printer and had been for a time the publisher of the town newspaper, The Daily Republ
ican—a name that attracted some attention because the town was a stronghold of the Democratic Party. From my grandfather and his independent German ways, I learned a great deal that I might have missed if I had grown up in a time, like today, when old people are put away in a home or kept out of sight.

  Living in Manhattan has been for me in many ways like living on the moon. Even though I’ve been here for thirty-five years, my heart and habit are still in Monongahela. Nevertheless, the shock of Manhattan’s very different society and values sharpened my sense of difference and made me an anthropologist as well as a schoolteacher. Over the past thirty years, I’ve used my classes as a laboratory where I could learn a broader range of what human possibility is—the whole catalogue of hopes and fears—and also as a place where I could study what releases and what inhibits human power.

  During that time, I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. I didn’t want to accept that notion—far from it: my own training in two elite universities taught me that intelligence and talent distributed themselves economically over a bell curve and that human destiny, because of those mathematical, seemingly irrefutable scientific facts, was as rigorously determined as John Calvin contended.

  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? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but 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.