Dumbing Us Down reveals the deadening heart of compulsory state schooling: assumptions and structures that stamp out the self-knowledge, curiosity, concentration and solitude essential to learning. Between schooling and television, our children have precious little time to learn for themselves about the community they live in, or the lives they might lead. Instead, they are schooled to merely obey orders and become smoothly functioning cogs in the industrial machine.
In his 26 years of teaching, John Taylor Gatto has found that independent study, community service, large doses of solitude and a thousand different apprenticeships with adults in all walks of life are the keys to helping children break the thrall of our conforming society. For the sake of our children and our communities, John Taylor Gatto urges all of us to get schools out of the way and find ways to re-engage children and families in actively controlling our culture, economy, and society. |
