With over 70,000 copies of the first edition in print, this radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. This second edition describes the wide-spread impact of the book and Gatto's "guerrilla teaching."

John Gatto has been a teacher for 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. His other titles include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000).

How ironic it is that Gatto's first two chapters contain the text of his acceptance speeches for NewYork State and City Teacher of the Year Awards. How ironic indeed, that he uses his own award presentation as a forum to attack the very same educational system that is honoring him! Gatto describes schooling, as opposed to learning, as a "twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the onlycurriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it," taunts the author.

While trapped in this debilitative system along with his students, Gatto, observed in them anoverwhelming dependence. He believes that school teaches this dependence by purposely inhibitingindependent thinking, and reinforcing indifference to adult thinking. He describes his students as"having almost no curiosity, a poor sense of the future, are a historical, cruel, uneasy with intimacy, and materialistic."

Gatto suggests that the remedy to this crisis in education is less time spent in school, and more timespent with family and "in meaningful pursuits in their communities." He advocates apprenticeships andhome schooling as a way for children to learn. He even goes so far as to argue for the removal of certification requirements for teachers, and letting "anybody who wants to, teach."

Gatto's style of writing is simple and easy to follow. He interlaces personal stories throughout the book to bring clarity and harmony to his views, while also drawing on logic and history to support his ideas about freedom in education and a return to building community. He clearly distinguishes communities from networks: "Communities ... are complex relationships of commonality and obligation," whereas, "Networksdon't require the whole person, but only a narrow piece."

While Gatto harshly criticizes schooling, we must realize that his opinions do come as a result of 26 yearsof experience and frustration with the public school system. Unfortunately, whether or not one agrees with his solutions, he has not outlined the logistics of how these improvements would be implemented. His ideas are based on idealism, and the reality of numbers and economics would present many obstacles. Nevertheless, it gives us a clear vision and a direction to follow for teachers and parents who believe in the family as the most important agent for childrearing and growth.


Superb! Should be Required Reading   May 19, 2002
 146 out of 154 found this review helpful

Everyone who has something to do with children should read this book: Educators, parents, counselors and employers.

This is not a book about solutions- This is a book about recognizing the problem. As we know, recognizing the problem is the first step to correcting the situation.

This is a series of essays and speaches the author has written about education in the United States. Mr. Gatto is an award winning teacher who has taken the brave step of stating what he sees wrong with education. As only someone who has worked in the system for so long can really see the problems, he not only sees the problems, he shares them with the rest of the nation.

As a teacher who has quit to stay at home with my children, I agree whole heartedly with Mr. Gatto. As a teacher who has vowed to home school, I agree with Mr. Gatto.

Education does what it was set up to do- to teach the masses, to tame the unruly individual thinkers, and more. Mr. Gatto's seven lessons that school teaches is exactly on target. Unfortunately.
How do we change the education system? It will take a shift of thinking across the nation. This book is just a small drop in the tidal wave of events that needs to happen. Each person reading this book and acting on it only adds to the rising wave of education reform.

Truly a well thought out book written by a brave man who was willing to put his job and living on the line for what he believes.


This book provides cogent arguements for homeschooling.   November 6, 1997
 110 out of 116 found this review helpful

John Taylor Gatto was an award-winning public school teacher when he wrote much of the text for this book. He reveals the curriculum of public schools nationwide under the headings: Confusion, Class Position, Indifference, Emotional Dependency, Intellectual Dependency, Provisional Self-Esteem, and One Can't Hide. He asserts that the true goal of childhood learning should be to discover some meaning in life...a passion or an enthusiasm that will drive subsequent learning pursuits. Instead, schools cram irrelevant facts into young minds, substituting book-knowledge for self-knowledge.This book explains a lot for anyone who got good grades, went to college, and then didn't have any idea what to do with his life. It's also a wake-up call to parents with school-age children. Do we really want our children to grow up to be good factory workers and do as they're told? Do we really want them to buy into the "Good grades=good jobs" myth? Do we want them to believe that the goal in life is to acquire more and more stuff to fuel consumerism?Or should we give them more reflective, unstructured time in childhood to find out who they are, what they like, and how they can contribute to their communities?Dumbing Us Down is a quick, worthwhile read.


Angry polemic misses the point. Save your money for a real book on the problems of public schooling   February 8, 2006
 87 out of 113 found this review helpful

I purchased this book in order to help make a decision about whether to homeschool my children. Given my own critical opinion about the public education system, I was predisposed to think favorably of this title.

The first thing one should bear in mind is that, with the exception of one or two essays, this is a collection of speeches the author has made over several years. The same few ideas are repeated with each new "chapter", and no larger framework or goal is attempted beyond a repetition of the same ideas extolled in the first few pages.

And now, the content. It is clear that Mr. Gatto has a very low opinion of public schools. Fine... take a number. But, as a former public school teacher, he is uniquely qualified to offer an informed opinion about public schools. This, he fails to do, preferring instead a shotgun approach in which whopping generalities are strung together in a semblance of logical reasoning.

Example:

Public schools are a mess. Kids graduate without learning anything other than how to be subservient worker bees. And half of all families end in divorce in this country, which shows how bad things have become.

Huh? Even if one is willing to accept the first two statements without a shred of statistical evidence, the last statement is completely unrelated to them.

Incidentally, the author does not cite any statistical evidence to defend his wild assertions. His main rhetorical device is emotion-- trying to sway you with huge generalities which then allow him to advance even broader statements on faith alone.

Save your money for a real book that details the problems of public education.


refreshing honesty from a former public school teacher   April 18, 2000
 70 out of 81 found this review helpful

You may be able to read this book in only a few hours but it may just change the way you view public schooling forever. John Taylor Gatto makes a compelling case for eliminating public "schooling" and returning education to the parents were it belongs. In one profound paragraph he neatly sums up the reason public schools don't educate. "The debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony. We already have a national curriculum locked up in the seven lessons outlined (Confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self esteem, and one can't hide) such a curriculum produces phisical, moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its hideous effects. What is currently under disscussion in our national histeria about falling academic performance misses the point. Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid." Clearly Mr Gatto knows the difference between "schooling" and real education and how to achieve the latter.()