Weapons of Mass Instruction - mer Gatto

"John Taylor Gatto is a former New York public schoolteacher who taught for thirty years and won multiple awards for his teaching.

However, constant harassment by unhelpful administrations plus his own frustrations with what he came to realize were the inherent systemic deficiencies of our `public' schools led him to resign; he now is a school-choice activist who writes and speaks against our compulsory, government-run school system.

THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION is a freewheeling investigation into the real - as opposed to the `official' - history of schooling, focused on the U.S. but with examinations of other historical examples for the purposes of comparing and contrasting, as well as for tracing where ideas and concepts related to education originated.

You will discover things you were never told in the official version, things that will, at times, surprise, disgust, and scare you. You will also be introduced to the little-known historiography of the the darker side of the construction of compulsory government schooling. In the final analysis, Gatto believes that compulsory, government-run schooling is inherently destructive to true education, the cultivation of self-reliance, and indeed to individualism - which used to be a defining element of the American character.

The true purpose of our public school system in reality has more to do with control than it does with learning. This does not mean that rank-and-file teachers, principals, and even superintendents believe they are making students dumber, more conformist, less self-reliant, less capable of genuine analytical, independent thought, and more easily controlled; most people involved in the system no doubt believe that they are trying their best to really teach their students.

However, the system itself (which Gatto often characterizes as a complex web) ensures that its real purpose is served, despite the efforts of individual reformers within it - that true democracy is rendered unworkable even as the trappings of democracy are allegedly bolstered.

Seen in this light, these institutions that produce barely literate, dependent, conformist, incomplete individuals full of emotional and psychological problems, who lack real knowledge (and whose capacity for acquiring such is deliberately weakened or eliminated), and who are just `educated' enough to pay their taxes and buy the latest products, are not, in fact, failing schools - on the contrary, if we are to believe Gatto's analysis, they are performing their designated function PERFECTLY.

That purpose is to mold people in such a way as to make them more easily controlled by corporations and the state (a clear-cut example of how, contrary to popular myth, the interests of big business and those of big government more often than not coincide.)

Though the organization of the book is somewhat haphazard, and there are occasional writing errors, this book is compulsively readable to any critical thinker with an open mind to consider what's REALLY wrong with our school system (and, no, it's nothing so simple as a shortage of funds or a lack of `accountability' -- the real problems are deeper, philosophical, and systemic.)

The book is absolutely riveting, and the country would be better off if more citizens read it and demanded real change to the system. Unfortunately, since most citizens have been "educated" in our "public' schools" they might either completely lack the ability to understand Gatto's often complex arguments, or, if they can grasp them, many will doubtless instinctively reject their unsavory implications, however true they may be.

The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.amazon.com/Underground-History-American-Education-Investigation/dp/0945700040/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in

From Library JournalIn this tenth-anniversary edition, Gatto updates his theories on how the U.S. educational system cranks out students the way Detroit cranks out Buicks. He contends that students are more programmed to conform to economic and social norms rather than really taught to think. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
This radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of Dumbing Us Down and to keep this classic current, we are renewing the cover art, adding new material about John and the impact of the book, and a new Foreword.

Dumbing US down
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487/ref=pd_cp_b_1?pf_rd_p=413864201&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0865716315&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0GR5259NP83PFGRS4BDP

Och här Gattos senast utgiva bok:

John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of familiar schooling that cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a by-product of rote-memorization drills.

Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, put that now-famous expression of the title into common use worldwide. Weapons of Mass Instruction promises to add another chilling metaphor to the brief against schooling.

Here is a demonstration that the harm school inflicts is quite rational and deliberate, following high-level political theories constructed by Plato, Calvin, Spinoza, Fichte, Darwin, Wundt, and others, which contend the term "education" is meaningless because humanity is strictly limited by necessities of biology, psychology, and theology. The real function of pedagogy is to render the common population manageable.

Realizing that goal demands that the young be conditioned to rely upon experts, remain divided from natural alliances, and accept disconnections from the experiences that create self-reliance and independence.

Escaping this trap requires a different way of growing up, one Gatto calls "open source learning." In chapters such as "A Letter to Kristina, my Granddaughter"; "Fat Stanley"; and "Walkabout:London," this different reality is illustrated.

John Taylor Gatto taught for thirty years in public schools before resigning from school-teaching in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal during the year he was named New York State's official Teacher of the Year. Since then, he has traveled three million miles lecturing on school reform.

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (Hardcover)by John Taylor Gatto (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716315/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_a

Infotainment
http://intheendwerealldebt.blogspot.com/2008/11/infotainment.html