Ana Gonzalez
Dumbing Us Down
John Taylor Gatto is an author and great teacher who sees education way differently than those who are actually teaching in this time of period. The book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling is based on John Taylor Gattos speeches rather than on a short story. He restates his purpose over and over again in every speech he has written and spoke. John explains that the new time of era of kids are not learning anything, but just knowing how to go to school and forgetting everything once they hear the school bell to be able to go home and do the things they wish to do. In college, students only attend college dorming to live the full college life and do not really want to be there. College students only study to continue the purpose of parents wishes or life’s purpose rather to seek what they really want for life.
This great believer who is called John Taylor Gatto quit teaching because he could no longer take part in a system that destroys lives by destroying minds. In every school he taught, pretty much everything was the same process within learning the same thing so he rather taught his students confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and one cannot hide.
In one of John Taylor Gattos speeches, "We Need Less School Not More," states so many true facts that only those who have lived life can relate to it. He states that by extending the school day or year, we would not understand the difference between communities and networks or families with networks. Strongly disagrees on networks being able to be described workable substitutes for families and that school will cost a lot of money. At every paragraph he finishes he restates this sentences, “People should think of less schooling." More ever, John Taylor compares how losing weight and attending school is pretty much the same. Losing weight is not going to last because in a short time you will get it back and comparing to networks, both are just temporary "work-outs" that people suffer with. Aristotle, a specialist, did a discovery on how people argue with drs, lawyers, ministers telling them what they want instead of accepting what they get is not working, but are trying to fight for it. For example, people really want to be able to start a dinner from scratch and cook every little thing rather than going to restaurants or fast food places and getting their food defrosted, but one of the causes that this does not happened is because people are lazy and do not have time.
John Taylor describes that people should accept that school as networks create a large part of the agony of modern life and that students do not need to be taught by officially by certified teachers in schools to be consider a good education because in the end, it all depends on the student if he/she wants to retain the information given. Another example of not really needing to go to a certified school so that once a kid graduates he/she wants to experience college life, so there goes the "certified" education because John strongly believes that it is an awful way to renew those associations.
Explaining this book more, John states that a community is a place in which people face each other over time in all their human variety, good parts, bad parts, Therefore, a person will never get happiness if they listen to what others say trying to please them after the fashion of schools rather than pleasing themselves and that this can tell what kind of life you’re going to live.
After reading this paragraph, it really made me think because John's statement opened my mind because if you really want to live up your life you have to do it by yourself and not what others are telling you because at the end who is really living your life, you or them? I strongly would say that in this time of period, there are more followers then leaders and this is going to destroy our dreams.
He once belonged in networks himself, but those that do not require all the extra energy. In other words he did it for himself. John rather would what kids to spend all the school time with their parents to learn about each other rather so later on their strangers are not living under the same roof and not wasting their time on school. Networks can divide people; first by themselves and then from each other and later make them lonely. As for this paragraph described in the book, he wants to repeat it until we get sick of it and listen to him. The difference between communities and institutions is that communities have natural limits; they stop growing or they die, we live in a world of rewards and punishments: A's, F's, bathroom passes, gold stars, etc. are given to learn the good and bad.
Ending this great book, he quoted, "Trust in families and neighborhoods and individuals to make sense of the important question, "What is education for ?""