Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

John Taylor Gatto is an award winning teacher that isn’t afraid to buck the trend.

Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto is a masterly an in-depth view into how public schooling really works.

Sampling many of his best personal essays, Dumbing Us Down features the true reasons why education in our modern day system is failing: because it’s meant to be that way.

Gatto reinforces his main premise with a thorough examination of public schooling in America. He carries this out rather incisively given his no holds barred approach to the matter, and this is very refreshing.

While many others have tippy toed their way around the issue, Gatto harpoons the heart of the matter with statements such as:

“…schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.”[1][Bold Emphasis Added]

“Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”[2][Bold Emphasis Added]

“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of the system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.”[3][Bold Emphasis Added]

Such scathing statements leave no question to Gatto’s courageous stance, and helps the reader understand the plight we face rather cogently.

Another component of this ongoing public schooling issue is how vital the community is, and more importantly, the family unit, in helping foster a healthier, more independent, more curious, and ultimately more self-sufficient individuals through proper education. While this might seem obvious in hindsight, it isn’t being employed that much at all in our modern environs.

Throughout the length of the book, Gatto fiercely touches upon the many different factors that have helped cause this growing dilemma. Some of these include the overwhelming amount of television being watched by society in general, and more specifically by children, while other components have to deal with the inherent designs of schooling such as the fragmentation of education, the removal of the family from an individual’s education, the poor life tenets individuals are taught, and much more.

One of the best parts of the book is what Gatto calls ‘The 7-Lesson School Teacher’, where the author shows what teachers are truly expected to inculcate into students. Once read, this particular lesson to the reader might seem facetious, but it’s really not. When one views what Gatto is stating with an open mind – while keeping cognizance of the fact that he worked decades for the system – then one completely gets to be aware of why failure in schooling isn’t the exception, but the rule.

In fact, more specifically, Gatto gets at the heart of why public schooling is destined to fail:

“Mass education cannot work to produce a fair society because its daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression and intimidation. The schools we’ve allowed to develop can’t work to teach nonmaterial values, the values which give meaning to everyone’s life, rich or poor, because the structure of schooling is held together by a Byzantine tapestry of reward and threat, of carrots and sticks. Official favor, grades, and other trinkets of subordination have no connection with education; they are the paraphernalia of servitude, not of freedom.”[69][Bold Emphasis Added]

Gatto has unbounded a phenomenal book in the field of public schooling and more importantly, what true education should encompass. Please keep in mind, schooling and education are not the same thing. Particularly, this differentiation and what each means is one of the main gems of this book.

To finalize, this book is a veritable fountain of information that is intense in precision and thought-provoking in its implications given that they filter into all aspects of our lives, and ultimately seep into the future. This is why it’s vitally important for individuals to become autodidacts, and help others become so through our interactions with our families and communities. Self-teaching is more important now than ever, especially with the deteriorating effects of public schooling.

Because of all the reasons mentioned above, and myriad more, this book is definitely a must read for everyone.

As the author saliently notes:

“Aristotle saw, a long time ago, that fully participating in a complex range of human affairs was the only way to become fully human…”[47][Bold Emphasis Added]

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Sources & References:

[1] John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling, pg. 21.
[2] Ibid., pg. 23.
[3] Ibid., pg. 24.
[4] Ibid., pg. 69.
[5] Ibid., pg. 47.
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Suggested resources reviewed below for those seeking ideas to self-teach and become autodidacts:

Socratic Logic V3.1 by Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
The Trivium – The Liberal Arts Of Grammar & Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph Ph.D.
How To Read A Book – The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Philosophy 101 – An Introduction To Philosophy Via Plato’s Apology by Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
The Complete Workbook For Arguments – A Complete Course In Critical Thinking [2nd Ed.] by David R. Morrow & Anthony Weston
The Imaginative Argument – A Practical Manifesto For Writers by Frank L. Cioffi

The following books reviewed below cover the disturbing issues within the public schooling system:

Rotten To The Common Core by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.& Gary Lawrence
A Different Kind Of Teacher – Solving The Crisis Of American Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
Weapons Of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
Drilling Through The Core, by Sandra Stotsky & Contributors
The Underground History Of American Education by John Taylor Gatto

Good book. I have spent almost twenty years in college education. Colleges had to adjust their material to the watered down curriculum that gets passed on to it from high schools. At one point I had attempted teaching in the high school system but it is poisoned. They are more oriented to social indoctrination than education. There is still safety in Mathematics and the physical sciences if you can make it to upper division classes.

Gatto writes from a position of authority having taught in government schools for 30 years and having won "teacher of the year" for New York City and New York state. Chapter One, the seven lesson schoolteacher explains how schooling produces boredom, dependency, class position and indifference plus and partly because schools exist to condition students to accept and propagate government values and a population of non-thinkers. All seven chapters offer much "food for thought" from a true expert and an ex-believer in government schooling.

John Taylor Gatto, upon winning the award for teacher of the year after 30 years in the classroom, delivered a speech that was so shocking that the reverberation is still being felt today. This speech is the first chapter of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and it is honest, insightful, and scathing. Essentially, he is an education whistleblower.

“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach schools and win awards doing it. I should know.”

Those “bad habits” he is referring to are what he outlines in the first chapter as being the true lessons taught in schools: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, one can’t hide (constant surveillance).

This book does not leave you feeling inspired – it leaves you outraged. But sometimes, that’s exactly what is needed to spur change (and it’s why the Sage Homeschooling book begins with our experience exiting the school system).

Read the book. Face the truth. Create a better path.

If you dislike that advertising permeates everything you read and watch and are amazed at how much crap people think they need then this book is for you. You will learn how the mandatory education you received might be the cause of society’s inability to concentrate and incessant need to be entertained. Maybe even why the average television is on more than 6 hours a day.

I have already removed my children from the government institutional schools many years prior to reading this book, so I didn't think I'd find much of Gatto's editorializing shocking. However, I did. John Taylor Gatto will likely not get the full respect he deserves for his musings and experience until a revolutionary end to compulsory schooling has taken place. If you've witness enough of the school system, and are on the fence about leaving it for the greener pastures of educational freedom, I highly recommend this book.

This book is surprisingly better than I thought. Being woefully aware of the pitiful state of public education today, I thought this book would have nothing to teach me. I expected it to be more like a reminder or clarification of conditions I already knew. I was terribly wrong. This reading has much wisdom and knowledge to pass on. I recommend this book wholeheartedly. It is short, sweet, and I frankly could not put the book down once I started reading. Be blessed and empowered!