What do you think?
Rate this book
A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling
A hard-hitting collection of essays and articles written by a New York City school teacher exposes a system designed to promote economic and business interests and advocates a greater emphasis on teaching critical thinking skills.
226 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 2000
14 people are currently reading
1390 people want to read
About the author
John Taylor Gatto
29 books588 followersJohn Taylor Gatto is an American retired school teacher of 29 years and 8 months and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
June 30, 2009
You might think this guy is a crabby teacher......you'd be wrong. He critiques modern schooling in the most honest voice.
Even if you're not a teacher, read it if you've got kids.
My whole philosophy of teaching has changed because of this book
Even if you're not a teacher, read it if you've got kids.
My whole philosophy of teaching has changed because of this book
February 21, 2018
If I were to rate 'A Different Kind of Teacher' based on my propensity to share many of Gatto's ideas and how much I appreciate his open, honest, opinions, and considerable elaboration of his unorthodox position I'd have given 5 stars.
I do have a few hung-ups with some of Gatto's justifications and I have a hard time getting past the fact he just doesn't give citations. However he did make several references throughout for which I'm thankful.
I'll bump this review once I gather my thoughts. Do I recommend it still?
Yes.
I do have a few hung-ups with some of Gatto's justifications and I have a hard time getting past the fact he just doesn't give citations. However he did make several references throughout for which I'm thankful.
I'll bump this review once I gather my thoughts. Do I recommend it still?
Yes.
November 6, 2017
Gatto reiterates many of his core beliefs about the unnaturalness and perversity of compulsory schooling in this book. Having said that, I found a few of the essays here presented perspectives that I hadn't encountered in the two other books of his I've read--for example, the linking of compulsory schooling to the Puritan belief that children did not belong to the family but to God (in Gatto's view the state has replaced God); to the pillaging, enslaving Vikings (perhaps Gatto's farthest stretch of all) and to the (frightening) influx of non-Protestant Irish immigrants (who needed to be controlled, assimilated, and put in their place) in the mid-nineteenth century.
If nothing else, Gatto's work is provocative. One really does have to wonder why we incarcerate young people for years in the artificial sensory-depriving environment of schools, divorced from the natural world, stuck with others the same age as them.
In the end, some of Gatto's thoughts seem strained and far-fetched, but the fundamentals of his arguments about school strike me as astute and profoundly true.
If nothing else, Gatto's work is provocative. One really does have to wonder why we incarcerate young people for years in the artificial sensory-depriving environment of schools, divorced from the natural world, stuck with others the same age as them.
In the end, some of Gatto's thoughts seem strained and far-fetched, but the fundamentals of his arguments about school strike me as astute and profoundly true.
November 2, 2007
With school fast approaching, I wanted to read at least one book relevent to my profession, and I picked this one which I purchased at the end of last school year.
John Taylor Gatto was thrice the New York City Teacher of the Year and twice the New York State Teacher of the Year, and he taught in both the best and worst schools in NYC. So, as you might guess, he has some credentials to be discussing the problems of American schools.
In a certain sense, Gatto would say that American schools aren't broken, that they do exactly what they're supposed to do--the problem is that what schools are supposed to do is make people into machine-like people, docile, easily controlled and manipulated, living lives as drones, consumers, and parasites rather than as real, full people. So the problem really is that schools work very well at this.
This book is a collection of essays, and though there's a fair amount of repetition, each essay says something a little different. The gist of it, though, is that the system of education we have is set up not to educate, but to school. In Gatto's opinion, little of real value is taught in school, and those things could be taught better in other ways than the way that school does so.
During his thirty years as a teacher (he has since quit teaching in schools), he succeeded mostly by subverting these aims of schooling, seeking to make students question things, working to connect students back to their families and to their communities, through service, "apprenticeships" and self-directed projects. It's important, he believes, to let students direct their own educations for them to be invested in what they're learning. It's important for students to learn the value of service rather than being disconnected from or parasitic on their community.
There's a lot in this book, and I've only summarized some of the main points. These essays should be required reading for anyone who's been involved in schooling, either as a teacher or as a student or as the parent of a student. So pretty much everyone. We've all been effected by our schooling--negatively, Gatto would assert, and it's a particularly pernicious negative influence because it's masked as being the normal and proper course of things. Our lives have been crippled in ways we weren't even aware of.
To be honest, I don't agree with everything in this book (there were times when I looked at his historical judgments and disagreed, for instance), but Gatto is a deep thinker who probes carefully, reasons thoughtfully, and makes arguments which cannot simply be ignored or dismissed. Gatto's work demands our attention and consideration. I find myself wishing that I'd read this book at the beginning of the summer so that I could integrate more thoroughly the ideas that I've taken from the book into my teaching, but I'll have to make do with what I can do.
John Taylor Gatto was thrice the New York City Teacher of the Year and twice the New York State Teacher of the Year, and he taught in both the best and worst schools in NYC. So, as you might guess, he has some credentials to be discussing the problems of American schools.
In a certain sense, Gatto would say that American schools aren't broken, that they do exactly what they're supposed to do--the problem is that what schools are supposed to do is make people into machine-like people, docile, easily controlled and manipulated, living lives as drones, consumers, and parasites rather than as real, full people. So the problem really is that schools work very well at this.
This book is a collection of essays, and though there's a fair amount of repetition, each essay says something a little different. The gist of it, though, is that the system of education we have is set up not to educate, but to school. In Gatto's opinion, little of real value is taught in school, and those things could be taught better in other ways than the way that school does so.
During his thirty years as a teacher (he has since quit teaching in schools), he succeeded mostly by subverting these aims of schooling, seeking to make students question things, working to connect students back to their families and to their communities, through service, "apprenticeships" and self-directed projects. It's important, he believes, to let students direct their own educations for them to be invested in what they're learning. It's important for students to learn the value of service rather than being disconnected from or parasitic on their community.
There's a lot in this book, and I've only summarized some of the main points. These essays should be required reading for anyone who's been involved in schooling, either as a teacher or as a student or as the parent of a student. So pretty much everyone. We've all been effected by our schooling--negatively, Gatto would assert, and it's a particularly pernicious negative influence because it's masked as being the normal and proper course of things. Our lives have been crippled in ways we weren't even aware of.
To be honest, I don't agree with everything in this book (there were times when I looked at his historical judgments and disagreed, for instance), but Gatto is a deep thinker who probes carefully, reasons thoughtfully, and makes arguments which cannot simply be ignored or dismissed. Gatto's work demands our attention and consideration. I find myself wishing that I'd read this book at the beginning of the summer so that I could integrate more thoroughly the ideas that I've taken from the book into my teaching, but I'll have to make do with what I can do.
February 20, 2020
The late John Taylor Gatto was an award winning teacher and recipient of the New York State Teacher Of The Year Award with over 30 years experience within the public school system. Many of the lessons he learned are expounded upon at length in his books, which continue to gain popularity with every passing year.
For me, A Different Kind Of Teacher followed a reading of Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling. In Dumbing Us Down, Gatto did a phenomenal job of outlining many of the most insidious issues taking place with the current public school system. The precision and pull-no-punches approach of Gatto’s work is what made Dumbing Us Down so notable, especially considering that he was incisive when he stated that the main agenda of the public school system is to indoctrinate individuals how to follow orders so they can become unthinking cogs in the machine.
A snippet of some of Gatto’s most important points in Dumbing Us Down are:
“…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]
“Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”[2]
“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]
Scathing remarks such as the above leave no doubt Gatto’s quest for individuals is that of true education, and not a ghost of it as the public has been sold for many decades now.
With that backdrop established, A Different Kind Of Teacher – Solving The Crisis Of American Schooling by John Taylor Gato is a fierce examination into not only public schooling and its many inherent flaws, but also what type of steps are required to be carried out by individuals in order to transcend the current bankrupt/corrupt system from its current miserable state and into a more robust, grounded and resonant system that doesn’t sell out to corporate/government interests.
One intricate notion Gatto explores regards education in the past, which was considerably different than what it is now. For instance, in Colonial America literacy rates were exceedingly high with no compulsory schooling whatsoever. The same cannot be said of now. In fact, one theme that Gatto convincingly explores is the damage inflicted on the human psyche through the many years of compulsory schooling.
When the reader reflects on how such actions instill the conditioning of the mind, and force it not to think but simply accept what it’s told, one arrives at the understanding of how a large part of society in this country continue to willingly accept the idea of anything the government or mainstream media press states without much thought.
Thankfully, not everyone is following that pattern. With more and more families continuing to homeschool their children, and individuals seeking to become autodidacts, considerable change is taking place at the grassroots level, as often times takes place throughout history.
Much of that change is taking place in large part by individuals such as John Taylor Gatto, who were relentless in not only mincing no words in calling the system for what it is, but more importantly, offering solutions to individuals seeking such.
Regardless, each of one of us is inherently responsible for our own continuing education. When we pass that responsibility to the state, such as John Taylor Gatto has showed, we come to terms with the desolate fact of the public schooling system’s cataclysmic decline.
The only way to stop such a system from continuing in tsunami-like fashion sweeping over everyone and everything is at the grass roots level, at the local level.
If we don’t, the country our forefathers conquered will be a ghost of the past, barely a facsimile of its former self, and the future will prove to be even murkier than now, with a continuing decline in education with no end in sight.
As Gatto elucidates:
“Figure out what matters. Do it yourself; work hard at it; no one else can do it for you. Relying on others in this regard or ignoring the necessity will ruin you though you sit surrounded by machines in a rich school watching videos of spaceships. Each of us has a design problem to solve: to create from the raw material around us the curriculum for a good life. It isn’t easy and it isn’t the same for any two people. If you think you can buy it, look around you at the shambles my own generation has made of communal life and family life by trying to buy it or fashion it with machinery.”[4]
In other words, we can be our own problem, or our own solution. Ultimately, individuals always decide.
Whatever takes place, please make sure that you choose what is best for you, for no one else can make that choice but you.
________________________________
Sources:
[1] John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling, pg. 21.
[2] Ibid., pg. 23.
[3] Ibid., pg. 24.
[4] John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind Of Teacher, pg. 208.
________________________________
Suggested Reading:
Socratic Logic V3.1 by Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Philosophy 101b by Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
A Workbook For Arguments – A Complete Course In Critical Thinking by David Morrow
The Imaginative Argument – A Practical Manifesto For Writers By Frank L. Cioffi
The Trivium – The Liberal Arts Of Logic, Grammar & Rhetoric by Sister Mary Joseph Ph.D.
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Rotten To The Common Core by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell & Gary Lawrence
A Different Kind Of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto
Weapons Of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
Drilling Through The Core by Sandra Stotski & Contributors
Tavistock Institute: Social Engineering The Masses by Daniel Estulin
A Mind Of Your Own – The Truth About Depression & How Women Can Heal Their Bodies To Reclaim Their Lives by Dr. Kelly Brogan
For me, A Different Kind Of Teacher followed a reading of Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling. In Dumbing Us Down, Gatto did a phenomenal job of outlining many of the most insidious issues taking place with the current public school system. The precision and pull-no-punches approach of Gatto’s work is what made Dumbing Us Down so notable, especially considering that he was incisive when he stated that the main agenda of the public school system is to indoctrinate individuals how to follow orders so they can become unthinking cogs in the machine.
A snippet of some of Gatto’s most important points in Dumbing Us Down are:
“…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]
“Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”[2]
“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]
Scathing remarks such as the above leave no doubt Gatto’s quest for individuals is that of true education, and not a ghost of it as the public has been sold for many decades now.
With that backdrop established, A Different Kind Of Teacher – Solving The Crisis Of American Schooling by John Taylor Gato is a fierce examination into not only public schooling and its many inherent flaws, but also what type of steps are required to be carried out by individuals in order to transcend the current bankrupt/corrupt system from its current miserable state and into a more robust, grounded and resonant system that doesn’t sell out to corporate/government interests.
One intricate notion Gatto explores regards education in the past, which was considerably different than what it is now. For instance, in Colonial America literacy rates were exceedingly high with no compulsory schooling whatsoever. The same cannot be said of now. In fact, one theme that Gatto convincingly explores is the damage inflicted on the human psyche through the many years of compulsory schooling.
When the reader reflects on how such actions instill the conditioning of the mind, and force it not to think but simply accept what it’s told, one arrives at the understanding of how a large part of society in this country continue to willingly accept the idea of anything the government or mainstream media press states without much thought.
Thankfully, not everyone is following that pattern. With more and more families continuing to homeschool their children, and individuals seeking to become autodidacts, considerable change is taking place at the grassroots level, as often times takes place throughout history.
Much of that change is taking place in large part by individuals such as John Taylor Gatto, who were relentless in not only mincing no words in calling the system for what it is, but more importantly, offering solutions to individuals seeking such.
Regardless, each of one of us is inherently responsible for our own continuing education. When we pass that responsibility to the state, such as John Taylor Gatto has showed, we come to terms with the desolate fact of the public schooling system’s cataclysmic decline.
The only way to stop such a system from continuing in tsunami-like fashion sweeping over everyone and everything is at the grass roots level, at the local level.
If we don’t, the country our forefathers conquered will be a ghost of the past, barely a facsimile of its former self, and the future will prove to be even murkier than now, with a continuing decline in education with no end in sight.
As Gatto elucidates:
“Figure out what matters. Do it yourself; work hard at it; no one else can do it for you. Relying on others in this regard or ignoring the necessity will ruin you though you sit surrounded by machines in a rich school watching videos of spaceships. Each of us has a design problem to solve: to create from the raw material around us the curriculum for a good life. It isn’t easy and it isn’t the same for any two people. If you think you can buy it, look around you at the shambles my own generation has made of communal life and family life by trying to buy it or fashion it with machinery.”[4]
In other words, we can be our own problem, or our own solution. Ultimately, individuals always decide.
Whatever takes place, please make sure that you choose what is best for you, for no one else can make that choice but you.
________________________________
Sources:
[1] John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling, pg. 21.
[2] Ibid., pg. 23.
[3] Ibid., pg. 24.
[4] John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind Of Teacher, pg. 208.
________________________________
Suggested Reading:
Socratic Logic V3.1 by Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
Philosophy 101b by Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
A Workbook For Arguments – A Complete Course In Critical Thinking by David Morrow
The Imaginative Argument – A Practical Manifesto For Writers By Frank L. Cioffi
The Trivium – The Liberal Arts Of Logic, Grammar & Rhetoric by Sister Mary Joseph Ph.D.
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Rotten To The Common Core by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell & Gary Lawrence
A Different Kind Of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto
Weapons Of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto
Drilling Through The Core by Sandra Stotski & Contributors
Tavistock Institute: Social Engineering The Masses by Daniel Estulin
A Mind Of Your Own – The Truth About Depression & How Women Can Heal Their Bodies To Reclaim Their Lives by Dr. Kelly Brogan
December 1, 2007
MAY be the reason I became a teacher...
April 9, 2014
I actually finished this a while ago but needed some time to digest it. In the meantime I read "Reign of Error" by Diane Ravitch which was an interesting counterpoint to this. While I was reading the Gatto book I couldn't stop talking about it. It's full of interesting ideas. Everyone I talked to now probably thinks I am totally insane (if they didn't already). Gatto argues for a more authentic education, rather than the "schooling" that largely takes place today in many schools (by which he means basically being trained rather than educated). This is in many ways a fair criticism. Public education has gone totally off the deep end with national standards that are not created by educators and not tested to see if they produce better results than existing state standards. Education SHOULD be a real, authentic engagement with a subject of interest, where growth and learning take place together. This book is full of fascinating ideas, such as an economic study that showed that once a dollar value is placed on something, we value it less (in our minds) than we did before. So interesting, and so true, I think. He also talks about the sanitation of education and how it is a disservice to kids to get rid of all the death that was in kids' stories till recently, how there has been a shift to a "go it alone, up by your bootstraps" kind of literature where families and communities are irrelevant; the hero solves his problems alone.
It's hard to explain succinctly all his theories, which are tossed in all hodge-podge, since this is a collection of essays. Some are better than others. As a whole, the book is worth a read for anyone who cares about education. But, my biggest criticisms are that (1)he constantly pines for a past that I'm pretty sure never existed, or wasn't as great as he makes it out to be, (2) he offers no real solutions, and (3)there is no data to back up what he says. To the first point, he bemoans the end of child labor, where kids really learned what they needed to to make a living. Um, I'm pretty sure school was better than sticking little fingers in rapidly moving looms, going down in mines, or working at gunpowder mills...any of the fairly horrific things children used to do before the enactment of child labor laws. Also, he claims literacy rates were higher back 200ish years ago BEFORE public schools...but without any data to back that up I just find that really, really hard to believe. I do not think slaves were as literate as he claims. Like I said, there's a wistfulness for the good ol' days that I don't think ever really existed. Secondly, the closest he comes to offering solutions is a program where kids are in school 2 days, at an internship 1 day, with the family 1 day, and doing community service 1 day. Fascinating idea, really. But just so impossible that it's hard to imagine how it would work. And at what age would you start this? I think having time off school in the upper grades to do an internship with a local company or time to do a community project is a fantastic idea. But to have kids out of school 5 days a week is really not a feasible idea. Like it or not, this is not the good ol' days and most kids don't have a parent at home during the week. Finally, there is a chapter called (something like) 21 facts and 9 inferences, but there are no references for these facts, many of which do not sound like facts at all.
So I guess my review would be: read it. It's full of neat ideas. But take it with a grain of salt (maybe Reign of Error) to look at other points of view, and real, enactable solutions.
It's hard to explain succinctly all his theories, which are tossed in all hodge-podge, since this is a collection of essays. Some are better than others. As a whole, the book is worth a read for anyone who cares about education. But, my biggest criticisms are that (1)he constantly pines for a past that I'm pretty sure never existed, or wasn't as great as he makes it out to be, (2) he offers no real solutions, and (3)there is no data to back up what he says. To the first point, he bemoans the end of child labor, where kids really learned what they needed to to make a living. Um, I'm pretty sure school was better than sticking little fingers in rapidly moving looms, going down in mines, or working at gunpowder mills...any of the fairly horrific things children used to do before the enactment of child labor laws. Also, he claims literacy rates were higher back 200ish years ago BEFORE public schools...but without any data to back that up I just find that really, really hard to believe. I do not think slaves were as literate as he claims. Like I said, there's a wistfulness for the good ol' days that I don't think ever really existed. Secondly, the closest he comes to offering solutions is a program where kids are in school 2 days, at an internship 1 day, with the family 1 day, and doing community service 1 day. Fascinating idea, really. But just so impossible that it's hard to imagine how it would work. And at what age would you start this? I think having time off school in the upper grades to do an internship with a local company or time to do a community project is a fantastic idea. But to have kids out of school 5 days a week is really not a feasible idea. Like it or not, this is not the good ol' days and most kids don't have a parent at home during the week. Finally, there is a chapter called (something like) 21 facts and 9 inferences, but there are no references for these facts, many of which do not sound like facts at all.
So I guess my review would be: read it. It's full of neat ideas. But take it with a grain of salt (maybe Reign of Error) to look at other points of view, and real, enactable solutions.
July 26, 2008
Synopsis
John Gatto (pronounced GATE-oh) is a retired teacher from the New York City Public System. This book consists of essays and speeches he has given concerning the perils of the public education system. This book is not a compilation of ranting; he provides solutions and in a time when many seem only to complain I found it refreshing that someone is actually thinking about how to resolve. After much thought (I finished this book in August ‘07-YIKES) I’ve finally decided, this book deserves a 5-star rating.
Review
“5-stars? Surely you jest” will be the response by many and “figures” the response by others but now let me explain/justify. On my scale, 5-star doesn’t mean its perfect. 5-star merely indicates that the book was challenging, educational and left a message that continues to resonate far after the book has been read and all-in-all that resonate message is uplifting.
I didn’t agree with everything Gatto puts out there. For instance he suggests that the Federal Government may be trying to produce a social class of non-thinkers so that “they” (the federal government) can push their agenda’s without question. Although this is an intriguing conspiracy theory…I just have a hard time believing that the government is that organized. My take on it is yes; the public education system does create non-thinkers however I believe that is just the by-product of a terrible system, not the primary objective.
In his classrooms, Gatto taught several things one of which was to question anything. This kind of thinking could be tagged as reckless but it made me wonder, why would someone want me NOT to question something. I enjoyed where this questioning took me. And just to set the record straight here, Gatto is NOT propagating that we ACT contrary to what we have been taught, he merely wants us to think about the contrary. Once you’ve spent much time thinking about it, then comes the time for action.
I did run out of steam a little toward the end because some of the essay’s overlapped and therefore there was a bit of repetition that I could have done without, but on the whole I just loved how this book got me and kept me thinking. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes.
“Each of us has a one-of-a-kind identity…and what education means is to develop that unique personality so that we each know who we are. Self –discovery is at the bottom of being somebody real.” (p. 32)
John Gatto (pronounced GATE-oh) is a retired teacher from the New York City Public System. This book consists of essays and speeches he has given concerning the perils of the public education system. This book is not a compilation of ranting; he provides solutions and in a time when many seem only to complain I found it refreshing that someone is actually thinking about how to resolve. After much thought (I finished this book in August ‘07-YIKES) I’ve finally decided, this book deserves a 5-star rating.
Review
“5-stars? Surely you jest” will be the response by many and “figures” the response by others but now let me explain/justify. On my scale, 5-star doesn’t mean its perfect. 5-star merely indicates that the book was challenging, educational and left a message that continues to resonate far after the book has been read and all-in-all that resonate message is uplifting.
I didn’t agree with everything Gatto puts out there. For instance he suggests that the Federal Government may be trying to produce a social class of non-thinkers so that “they” (the federal government) can push their agenda’s without question. Although this is an intriguing conspiracy theory…I just have a hard time believing that the government is that organized. My take on it is yes; the public education system does create non-thinkers however I believe that is just the by-product of a terrible system, not the primary objective.
In his classrooms, Gatto taught several things one of which was to question anything. This kind of thinking could be tagged as reckless but it made me wonder, why would someone want me NOT to question something. I enjoyed where this questioning took me. And just to set the record straight here, Gatto is NOT propagating that we ACT contrary to what we have been taught, he merely wants us to think about the contrary. Once you’ve spent much time thinking about it, then comes the time for action.
I did run out of steam a little toward the end because some of the essay’s overlapped and therefore there was a bit of repetition that I could have done without, but on the whole I just loved how this book got me and kept me thinking. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes.
“Each of us has a one-of-a-kind identity…and what education means is to develop that unique personality so that we each know who we are. Self –discovery is at the bottom of being somebody real.” (p. 32)
January 30, 2008
Should be put with Albert Einstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson. What Gatto calls for in all his work -- especially this book -- is a searing (r)evolution of what it means to be educated. These are not his ideas alone, but he articulates them in such a way as to make a case in the highest courts of law.
May 26, 2009
A very provocative collection of essays from an award-winning NYC teacher. If I wasn't already homeschooling my children, I would have pulled them out of public school immediately after finishing the first chapter.
August 5, 2021
This was extremely eye-opening. Although most of these essays were written in the early 90s, I found his arguments even more relevant today. The current educational system is in a word, a disaster. Schools are a business, a billion dollar business, and our kids are the product. If that sounds cold and harsh, then you’d be right. It is.
Warning: Once you read this book you can’t go back to your blissful ignorance of what “compulsory” education is doing to our children.
Warning: Once you read this book you can’t go back to your blissful ignorance of what “compulsory” education is doing to our children.
September 28, 2014
John Taylor Gatto offers a scathing indictment of public schools in “A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling.” The book itself is a collection of 16 essays and speeches published by Gatto from 1990-1999. After being named New York City Teacher of the Year three times, he very publicly resigned and denounced the system and compulsory education. How did he survive 30 years in a system he loathed? On p. 65 he confesses:
“On a daily basis I consciously practiced sabotage, breaking laws regularly, forcing the fixed times and spaces of schooling to become elastic, falsifying school records so the rigid curricula of those places could be what individual children needed. I threw sand in the gears by encouraging new teachers to think dialectically so that they wouldn’t fit into the pyramid of administration. I exploited the weakness of the school’s punitive mechanism, which depends on fear to be effective, by challenging it in visible ways, showing I did not fear it, setting administrators against each other to prevent the juggernaut from crushing me. When that didn’t work I recruited forces to challenge the school—businessmen, politicians, parents and journalists—so I would be given a wide berth. Once, under heavy assault, I asked my wife to run for school board. She got elected, fired the superintendent, and then punished his cronies in a host of imaginative ways.”
Gatto distinguishes “schooling” from true education and explains how confining children in an artificial environment throughout their childhood and controlling their thoughts through state-approved standardized textbooks and tests destroys their curiosity and creativity, completely undermining the American spirit of our founders and producing docile minions (or homicidal/suicidal young adults) rather than capable citizens.
As a product of Indiana’s public school system who taught high school in Indiana for four years before going to law school, I found myself completely agreeing with Gatto on so many of his key points. Then suddenly and without warning, I would completely disagree with many of his arguments. Perhaps Gatto explains it best in a letter to his daughter on p. 213 when he describes a conversation with an old friend and says, “[H]e was rendering critical analyses and judgments at high speed, marked with intelligence, but like all judgmental discourse, clotted with unexamined values and assumptions.”
Karl Marx is often quoted as saying that religion is the opium of the people. Gatto sees Christianity, specifically American Protestantism, as a guiding principle our nation should return to (glossing over issues such as slavery, misogyny, and child abuse) and essentially calling American schooling the opium of the people. He does not fully consider the role of movies and television in undermining students’ critical thinking skills and ability to visualize what they’re reading and could not even begin to predict the role of the internet and social media in the new millennium.
By the end, though, when he’s describing “The Art of Conversation” and “The Educated Person,” I once again found myself agreeing whole-heartedly. “An educated person can discover the truth for himself” and “has the capacity to create new things, new experiences, new ideas.” (p. 226). The book is certainly thought-provoking and correct in many of its criticisms of our current public school model. For more encouraging suggestions on how to deal with the system, however, I recommend the writings and TED talks of Sir Ken Robinson.
“On a daily basis I consciously practiced sabotage, breaking laws regularly, forcing the fixed times and spaces of schooling to become elastic, falsifying school records so the rigid curricula of those places could be what individual children needed. I threw sand in the gears by encouraging new teachers to think dialectically so that they wouldn’t fit into the pyramid of administration. I exploited the weakness of the school’s punitive mechanism, which depends on fear to be effective, by challenging it in visible ways, showing I did not fear it, setting administrators against each other to prevent the juggernaut from crushing me. When that didn’t work I recruited forces to challenge the school—businessmen, politicians, parents and journalists—so I would be given a wide berth. Once, under heavy assault, I asked my wife to run for school board. She got elected, fired the superintendent, and then punished his cronies in a host of imaginative ways.”
Gatto distinguishes “schooling” from true education and explains how confining children in an artificial environment throughout their childhood and controlling their thoughts through state-approved standardized textbooks and tests destroys their curiosity and creativity, completely undermining the American spirit of our founders and producing docile minions (or homicidal/suicidal young adults) rather than capable citizens.
As a product of Indiana’s public school system who taught high school in Indiana for four years before going to law school, I found myself completely agreeing with Gatto on so many of his key points. Then suddenly and without warning, I would completely disagree with many of his arguments. Perhaps Gatto explains it best in a letter to his daughter on p. 213 when he describes a conversation with an old friend and says, “[H]e was rendering critical analyses and judgments at high speed, marked with intelligence, but like all judgmental discourse, clotted with unexamined values and assumptions.”
Karl Marx is often quoted as saying that religion is the opium of the people. Gatto sees Christianity, specifically American Protestantism, as a guiding principle our nation should return to (glossing over issues such as slavery, misogyny, and child abuse) and essentially calling American schooling the opium of the people. He does not fully consider the role of movies and television in undermining students’ critical thinking skills and ability to visualize what they’re reading and could not even begin to predict the role of the internet and social media in the new millennium.
By the end, though, when he’s describing “The Art of Conversation” and “The Educated Person,” I once again found myself agreeing whole-heartedly. “An educated person can discover the truth for himself” and “has the capacity to create new things, new experiences, new ideas.” (p. 226). The book is certainly thought-provoking and correct in many of its criticisms of our current public school model. For more encouraging suggestions on how to deal with the system, however, I recommend the writings and TED talks of Sir Ken Robinson.
November 25, 2009
Amazing. Anyone who is interested at all in education should read this book. Its clear to see that our system of public schooling is failing and Gatto gives the history of how we arrived where we are and solutions to fix it.
June 19, 2013
I think I will have to write a full review on this book later, but let me just say I recommend it to everyone. Seriously had me thinking about everything. And what presents seems to answer questions I've been searching for answers to for a long time.
August 28, 2010
This book feels like a dangerous read because it makes me question my role in schools, but it is not only insightful but so well-written. This book will make you think.
July 1, 2011
I read this a few years ago and liked it. I'm reading it again and I like it even more than I did last time. Gatto's insights on learning and education are spot on.
July 28, 2011
Excellent book!
July 29, 2011
Gatto writes about his experiences as a classroom teacher and how he grew to see modern education as a method of societal control. His attitude and the resulting methods of teaching are inspiring.
Read
July 30, 2011Wow, shazow, aMAZing! Already knew I agreed with this guy on some school stuff but this went beyond school. Awakens the soul.
September 27, 2011
John Taylor Gatto is a smart guy and I love the way he thinks. In fact, he is quite brilliant.
July 7, 2014
Started strong and clever, but devolved into anti-government propaganda.
June 17, 2014
Another classic work by Gatto. A must read.
November 24, 2021
A Different Kind of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto is a collection of essays, with all but one being by the author. They are about how current required schooling does a bad job of true educating. The purpose of schooling is not to give intellectual training, but to produce robots who are easily controllable and predictable (Gatto, 73). Compulsory schooling created “loyalty to a principle of abstract central authority, and no serious rival—whether parents, tribe, tradition, self, or God would be welcome in school” (Gatto, 176-177). In contrast, the purpose of educating is to create whole human beings. “To be educated is to understand yourself and others, to know your culture and that of others, your history and that of others, your religious outlook and that of others” (Gatto, 55). For the most part, I agree with Gatto’s opinions. Throughout this paper, I will discuss the things I agree and disagree with.
In Gatto’s essay called “School Books and the Hidden Curriculum,” he discusses the origins of compulsory schooling. Americans invented compulsory schooling because they feared Irish and Italian immigration; those cultures valued family closeness over material rewards. Compulsory schooling would teach kids that they (the kids) did not belong to their parents, and therefore should not obey them (their parents), but the state instead. The New England Primer (circa 1680) instructed children that “one of the three signs of true salvation was adoption,” so “the changeover from children as property of God to children as property of the state was easy to make” (Gatto, 153). Gatto believes that the reason families are falling apart is because parents are contradicted by the state.
Schools today are bad because they are compulsory and monopolized by the government (or at least the public ones are). Almost everyone in the U.S. could read, write, and do math at the time of the American Revolution. Now kids read less fluently, and only a minority of kids in New York can add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the ninth grade (Gatto, 24, 60). Compulsory schooling works like compulsory military; there is less interest and more of a discipline problem when the people are forced to be there. By forcing learning, compulsory schooling has the effect of getting kids to hate learning and be less likely to ever try it again after they graduate. “Only one person in ten reads more than one book a year after they graduate from our schools” (Gatto, 95). I was forced to read many books in college. Sometimes I would have to read for twelve hours a day just to get my daily assignments done. So when summer vacation came each year, I didn’t want to have anything to do with reading. I had a list of books I wanted to read, but I wouldn’t read them until after I graduated; college made me so sick of reading that I didn’t want to spend my summer breaks doing more of the same.
Gatto says that the purpose of school must be changed from a place that teaches obedience to a place that teaches adventure and independence. One day a week should be devoted to each of the following: independent study, community service, and field curriculum. “The two days spent in the classroom should be dedicated to tackling great themes” (Gatto, 19). He thinks it is unlikely that schools will ever be reformed in this way, because too many people will be threatened by the change. As a teacher, Gatto himself practiced what he preached.
One of the essays in the book was by a thirteen year old student of Gatto’s who wrote about what it was like to be in his class. It was interesting that the student agreed so strongly with Gatto, saying that education means self-discovery, and one can’t discover one’s real self by following orders or imitating what’s on TV. I was surprised that Gatto’s school allowed him to let kids go out on their own so much. It was not mentioned what subject Gatto was supposed to be teaching. Was he an English teacher? If so, what time was there for learning English if his students were out of the classroom three out of five days a week? And I wonder how Gatto can be so confident that the kids will actually be doing educational activities while they are out and not doing drugs or vandalizing property? Many of Gatto’s essays preach about the benefits of independent study, community service, and field curriculum. That’s fine and dandy for kids who already know reading, writing, and arithmetic like Gatto’s seventh graders, but what about seven year olds? He doesn’t mention at all how he expects younger kids to learn the three R’s.
The third grade teacher at the school I work at gave her students an independent study project. She told each of her students to come up with something they were interested in, research it on their own outside of school, and give a presentation to the class about it. When I first heard of this, I thought it was too hard for third graders to do. Filling out daily worksheets for homework is so much easier; I know I would probably prefer doing worksheets to doing an independent project, no matter how old I was. But the point of school work shouldn’t be about what is easy to do. It should be about actual learning. And independent projects certainly teach more than filling out mindless worksheets. Independent projects encourage kids to find out what they are interested in, to learn more about it without being dependent on a teacher to tell them what to do, and to display what they learned in a presentation.
Even when kids “are offered real work to do, most drift back to the secure meaninglessness of busy work. . . . ‘Just tell me what to do,’ they say through gritted teeth” (Gatto, 94). I can relate to that even as an adult. I feared getting a job for the first time, because there was so much uncertainty about what I would be doing and how. I felt like I wanted to be given commands, because it is so much easier to just do what I am told. Doing things on my own and making my own decisions has the frightening possibility of mistakes or failure, embarrassment or humiliation. I would have liked my school to actually teach me how to make it in the real world instead of teaching me to be obedient and submissive. Then I might have been more prepared and confident when I actually did strike out on my own to make a living.
One of the major problems with students today is their inability to hold interest in anything for very long. Gatto believes that this is caused by school’s “cacophony of ringing bells and announcements, and by endless interruptions for testing, counseling, and special events” (Gatto, 159). All of us know of the bell system in middle school and high school—how it forces us to go to one subject and learn it for about fifty minutes, then at the ring of the bell, go to the next class and learn that one for another fifty minutes. It does not matter whether students are done with their current assignment or not; they are all forced to move to the next class and start working on another assignment. Sometimes if a teacher catches students working on something from another class, s/he scolds them. I do not remember being interrupted a lot in my elementary school, but I sure notice it at the elementary school I work at now. Elementary schools do not have bells for anything but recess, but the teachers still interrupt students from working on whatever they are working on so that they can move to the next subject. Unlike the higher grades’ fifty or so minutes per subject, I have noticed that the elementary kids at the school I work at now sometimes only get fifteen minutes to work on something before they have to stop and move on. They usually never finish their work because of the frequent interruptions. In addition to the interruptions of three to four recesses a day and the teacher teaching different subjects, the kids also have to leave class for things like private tutoring, special education, music lessons, physical education, assemblies, library visits, and lunch. It’s a wonder how the kids learn anything at all!
Gatto believes that it is wrong to force kids to learn a certain subject when they really want to learn something else. Television and school control children’s lives and reduce the wisdom they could have. Because of that, kids grow up to lack curiosity, kindness, and interest. Most of them do not want to be in school (Gatto, 26). That is one reason why they do not learn. People learn best when they are interested. I agree that modern kids lack interest and curiosity because of compulsory schooling and television, but also because of video games. Kids in the past learned to read because reading books was the major form of entertainment. Today that is not the case. Modern kids are exposed at a young age to the instant gratification of TV and video games. Kids probably feel that they do not need to read in order to have fun, so what is the point? Electronic fun is immediate. Reading takes work. It is obvious why kids lack interest and curiosity.
I didn’t start watching TV until I was seven years old, and I didn’t start playing video games until I was thirteen. I was a highly imaginative child. I was good at reading, but I didn’t like it. I preferred to make up my own stories and act them out, whether with my Barbies at home or by myself at recess. I only read when I was bored, but I was rarely bored. For the most part, that is still true today. Throughout school, I didn’t see the point of learning most of what I was taught. I didn’t like the other kids I was forced to be around. I would have rather written books, which I started doing at age ten. My fondest memories in school had nothing to do with what went on in the classroom at all; instead they were recess adventures, writing my books when I was done with an assignment, and frolicking in the fields during P.E. when I should’ve been playing team sports with my classmates. I was also interested in many things, like astrology, astronomy, and world religions—so much so that I made time to research them on my own. When I was in high school, I hated how I didn’t get to take electives like psychology, philosophy, or guitar because my schedule was too packed with required academic subjects like math, history, and science.
In contrast, my younger brother has watched TV since he was born, and he has played video games since he was six. He has practically no imagination and no interest in anything. When he does not have TV or video games, he is completely bored and feels like doing nothing but sleeping. He cannot decide on what he wants to get a degree in when he goes to college, because every subject bores him. And unlike me, he doesn’t like himself; kids dislike themselves because they are made useless; they become addicted to things to escape their uselessness (Gatto, 39-40, 194). So while I agree with Gatto that it is not right that kids should be forced to learn things that they do not want to learn, I also think that kids in this modern time period will not want to learn to read on their own; they will not see the need, and they will be too busy with TV or video games to bother. A solution to this problem would be to not allow kids under age 10 or so to watch TV or play video games at home, or to ban them all together. But we all know that will never happen; they generate too much money, and even adults refuse to part with them.
Gatto says that school often “leaves children worse off in terms of mental development and character formation than they were before being 'taught' . . . . It's not intellectual growth that grades and reports really measure, but obedience to authority” (69, 74-75). I agree with this because of my own childhood experience. When I was age eight and below, I was free, smart, outspoken, and true to myself. But after so many times getting shunned by my classmates and scolded by my parents and teachers for the things I said and did, I forced myself to conform to be a quiet, obedient little girl. “After struggling at the bars of the cage for a few years, most kids just give up and settle into the low-grade vocational activities of the school” (Gatto, 192). That is very true for me. I was literally silenced by school, made to obey. And it was only after I began to do that that I started getting good grades. Both my brother and I were squelched by school. I used to be the most talkative student in my first grade class. Now I never talk. My brother used to giggle for minutes on end when someone did or said something funny—until his elementary school teachers scolded him on numerous occasions for laughing. Now he never laughs.
I agree with Gatto that community service is valuable to do. For one thing, there are plenty of ways that our world could be improved. There is always dirty work that no one wants to do. Even though kids would probably resent being forced to do community service—as they resent being forced to do anything—they would most likely learn important concepts from the experience: One, that they should not do things like pollute the earth, because some poor innocent soul would have to either suffer because of it or clean it up; and two, it is more satisfying to be rewarded with knowing that you made a difference instead of being rewarded with money. “Real learning is always its own reward” and putting a monetary value on things cheapens them (Gatto, 95 & 188). If a person is getting paid for doing work, they are most likely doing the work for the money. If the person does the work without getting paid, it is more likely that they’re doing it for intrinsic motivation. The same could be said for rewarding schoolwork with grades versus researching a topic on one’s own without it being required. The problem is that one can never be sure that kids will be interested in anything enough to learn about it on their own, just as one can never be sure that kids will want to do community service enough to do it without it being required. Another problem is that if community service became “compulsory” for kids, then adults would probably use it as an excuse not to clean up their own messes.
Gatto criticizes child labor laws, because they took kids out of work and into school; the government wants to keep kids “idle and passive” (131). But in my opinion, child labor laws are partially good. During the time when American kids were working, they did not do it out of choice. They did it because they needed to help support their family financially. In addition, the working conditions were very bad. Kids need to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic; they do not need to work unless they need the money. But the question is do kids really want to work for the sake of working? Who works because they want to? I think most people would rather be “idle” and have fun. I know I would. Adults already work—mostly out of necessity and not because they want to—from ages 18 to 65. People work for the majority of their lives; they should get to have the first couple decades to enjoy themselves. If the child labor laws were removed today, the kids who would end up working would be the ones from poor families, working out of necessity rather than genuine desire to work. And this new ability to bring in more money with more kids would encourage poor families to have more kids, which would in turn raise the human population which is already too high! However, I also see the good in Gatto’s opinion that child labor laws hurt the kids who actually want to work by preventing them from working. But I still think that not many kids would actually choose to work for work’s sake. Not many would choose to go to school either, of course. What they would choose to do is play or watch TV.
Gatto says that family should be more involved with students, and students should be more involved with their families. “Families are the basic institution of human life” (Gatto, 100). Compulsory schooling takes kids away from their families. It enables the government to brainwash kids with ideas and opinions that it wants them to have, robbing them of their values. Thus, kids grow up to have no values at all. I agree with Gatto on this, except that families also brainwash their kids. If kids are constantly around their parents, then the kids will probably think that their parents are always right, and grow up to be just like them. Is this better than government brainwashing? Gatto also says that one can only truly learn if one does so independently. Being taught by parents is no more independent learning than being taught in school.
According to Gatto, having school assignments that involve students’ families would be good, but families actually teaching their children would be even better. He says that school reform would need to involve teaching each child individually based on each child’s unique needs.
“To have a kind of education that served individuals, families, and communities we would need to abandon forever the notion—learned in school and reinforced through every institution—that ordinary people are too stupid, too irresponsible, too childish to look out for ourselves. We need to admit finally that knowledge is a useful thing but that it is a far cry from wisdom, and without wisdom we wander like lost sheep” (Gatto, 59).
For the rest of my review, see my comment(s) below.
In Gatto’s essay called “School Books and the Hidden Curriculum,” he discusses the origins of compulsory schooling. Americans invented compulsory schooling because they feared Irish and Italian immigration; those cultures valued family closeness over material rewards. Compulsory schooling would teach kids that they (the kids) did not belong to their parents, and therefore should not obey them (their parents), but the state instead. The New England Primer (circa 1680) instructed children that “one of the three signs of true salvation was adoption,” so “the changeover from children as property of God to children as property of the state was easy to make” (Gatto, 153). Gatto believes that the reason families are falling apart is because parents are contradicted by the state.
Schools today are bad because they are compulsory and monopolized by the government (or at least the public ones are). Almost everyone in the U.S. could read, write, and do math at the time of the American Revolution. Now kids read less fluently, and only a minority of kids in New York can add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the ninth grade (Gatto, 24, 60). Compulsory schooling works like compulsory military; there is less interest and more of a discipline problem when the people are forced to be there. By forcing learning, compulsory schooling has the effect of getting kids to hate learning and be less likely to ever try it again after they graduate. “Only one person in ten reads more than one book a year after they graduate from our schools” (Gatto, 95). I was forced to read many books in college. Sometimes I would have to read for twelve hours a day just to get my daily assignments done. So when summer vacation came each year, I didn’t want to have anything to do with reading. I had a list of books I wanted to read, but I wouldn’t read them until after I graduated; college made me so sick of reading that I didn’t want to spend my summer breaks doing more of the same.
Gatto says that the purpose of school must be changed from a place that teaches obedience to a place that teaches adventure and independence. One day a week should be devoted to each of the following: independent study, community service, and field curriculum. “The two days spent in the classroom should be dedicated to tackling great themes” (Gatto, 19). He thinks it is unlikely that schools will ever be reformed in this way, because too many people will be threatened by the change. As a teacher, Gatto himself practiced what he preached.
One of the essays in the book was by a thirteen year old student of Gatto’s who wrote about what it was like to be in his class. It was interesting that the student agreed so strongly with Gatto, saying that education means self-discovery, and one can’t discover one’s real self by following orders or imitating what’s on TV. I was surprised that Gatto’s school allowed him to let kids go out on their own so much. It was not mentioned what subject Gatto was supposed to be teaching. Was he an English teacher? If so, what time was there for learning English if his students were out of the classroom three out of five days a week? And I wonder how Gatto can be so confident that the kids will actually be doing educational activities while they are out and not doing drugs or vandalizing property? Many of Gatto’s essays preach about the benefits of independent study, community service, and field curriculum. That’s fine and dandy for kids who already know reading, writing, and arithmetic like Gatto’s seventh graders, but what about seven year olds? He doesn’t mention at all how he expects younger kids to learn the three R’s.
The third grade teacher at the school I work at gave her students an independent study project. She told each of her students to come up with something they were interested in, research it on their own outside of school, and give a presentation to the class about it. When I first heard of this, I thought it was too hard for third graders to do. Filling out daily worksheets for homework is so much easier; I know I would probably prefer doing worksheets to doing an independent project, no matter how old I was. But the point of school work shouldn’t be about what is easy to do. It should be about actual learning. And independent projects certainly teach more than filling out mindless worksheets. Independent projects encourage kids to find out what they are interested in, to learn more about it without being dependent on a teacher to tell them what to do, and to display what they learned in a presentation.
Even when kids “are offered real work to do, most drift back to the secure meaninglessness of busy work. . . . ‘Just tell me what to do,’ they say through gritted teeth” (Gatto, 94). I can relate to that even as an adult. I feared getting a job for the first time, because there was so much uncertainty about what I would be doing and how. I felt like I wanted to be given commands, because it is so much easier to just do what I am told. Doing things on my own and making my own decisions has the frightening possibility of mistakes or failure, embarrassment or humiliation. I would have liked my school to actually teach me how to make it in the real world instead of teaching me to be obedient and submissive. Then I might have been more prepared and confident when I actually did strike out on my own to make a living.
One of the major problems with students today is their inability to hold interest in anything for very long. Gatto believes that this is caused by school’s “cacophony of ringing bells and announcements, and by endless interruptions for testing, counseling, and special events” (Gatto, 159). All of us know of the bell system in middle school and high school—how it forces us to go to one subject and learn it for about fifty minutes, then at the ring of the bell, go to the next class and learn that one for another fifty minutes. It does not matter whether students are done with their current assignment or not; they are all forced to move to the next class and start working on another assignment. Sometimes if a teacher catches students working on something from another class, s/he scolds them. I do not remember being interrupted a lot in my elementary school, but I sure notice it at the elementary school I work at now. Elementary schools do not have bells for anything but recess, but the teachers still interrupt students from working on whatever they are working on so that they can move to the next subject. Unlike the higher grades’ fifty or so minutes per subject, I have noticed that the elementary kids at the school I work at now sometimes only get fifteen minutes to work on something before they have to stop and move on. They usually never finish their work because of the frequent interruptions. In addition to the interruptions of three to four recesses a day and the teacher teaching different subjects, the kids also have to leave class for things like private tutoring, special education, music lessons, physical education, assemblies, library visits, and lunch. It’s a wonder how the kids learn anything at all!
Gatto believes that it is wrong to force kids to learn a certain subject when they really want to learn something else. Television and school control children’s lives and reduce the wisdom they could have. Because of that, kids grow up to lack curiosity, kindness, and interest. Most of them do not want to be in school (Gatto, 26). That is one reason why they do not learn. People learn best when they are interested. I agree that modern kids lack interest and curiosity because of compulsory schooling and television, but also because of video games. Kids in the past learned to read because reading books was the major form of entertainment. Today that is not the case. Modern kids are exposed at a young age to the instant gratification of TV and video games. Kids probably feel that they do not need to read in order to have fun, so what is the point? Electronic fun is immediate. Reading takes work. It is obvious why kids lack interest and curiosity.
I didn’t start watching TV until I was seven years old, and I didn’t start playing video games until I was thirteen. I was a highly imaginative child. I was good at reading, but I didn’t like it. I preferred to make up my own stories and act them out, whether with my Barbies at home or by myself at recess. I only read when I was bored, but I was rarely bored. For the most part, that is still true today. Throughout school, I didn’t see the point of learning most of what I was taught. I didn’t like the other kids I was forced to be around. I would have rather written books, which I started doing at age ten. My fondest memories in school had nothing to do with what went on in the classroom at all; instead they were recess adventures, writing my books when I was done with an assignment, and frolicking in the fields during P.E. when I should’ve been playing team sports with my classmates. I was also interested in many things, like astrology, astronomy, and world religions—so much so that I made time to research them on my own. When I was in high school, I hated how I didn’t get to take electives like psychology, philosophy, or guitar because my schedule was too packed with required academic subjects like math, history, and science.
In contrast, my younger brother has watched TV since he was born, and he has played video games since he was six. He has practically no imagination and no interest in anything. When he does not have TV or video games, he is completely bored and feels like doing nothing but sleeping. He cannot decide on what he wants to get a degree in when he goes to college, because every subject bores him. And unlike me, he doesn’t like himself; kids dislike themselves because they are made useless; they become addicted to things to escape their uselessness (Gatto, 39-40, 194). So while I agree with Gatto that it is not right that kids should be forced to learn things that they do not want to learn, I also think that kids in this modern time period will not want to learn to read on their own; they will not see the need, and they will be too busy with TV or video games to bother. A solution to this problem would be to not allow kids under age 10 or so to watch TV or play video games at home, or to ban them all together. But we all know that will never happen; they generate too much money, and even adults refuse to part with them.
Gatto says that school often “leaves children worse off in terms of mental development and character formation than they were before being 'taught' . . . . It's not intellectual growth that grades and reports really measure, but obedience to authority” (69, 74-75). I agree with this because of my own childhood experience. When I was age eight and below, I was free, smart, outspoken, and true to myself. But after so many times getting shunned by my classmates and scolded by my parents and teachers for the things I said and did, I forced myself to conform to be a quiet, obedient little girl. “After struggling at the bars of the cage for a few years, most kids just give up and settle into the low-grade vocational activities of the school” (Gatto, 192). That is very true for me. I was literally silenced by school, made to obey. And it was only after I began to do that that I started getting good grades. Both my brother and I were squelched by school. I used to be the most talkative student in my first grade class. Now I never talk. My brother used to giggle for minutes on end when someone did or said something funny—until his elementary school teachers scolded him on numerous occasions for laughing. Now he never laughs.
I agree with Gatto that community service is valuable to do. For one thing, there are plenty of ways that our world could be improved. There is always dirty work that no one wants to do. Even though kids would probably resent being forced to do community service—as they resent being forced to do anything—they would most likely learn important concepts from the experience: One, that they should not do things like pollute the earth, because some poor innocent soul would have to either suffer because of it or clean it up; and two, it is more satisfying to be rewarded with knowing that you made a difference instead of being rewarded with money. “Real learning is always its own reward” and putting a monetary value on things cheapens them (Gatto, 95 & 188). If a person is getting paid for doing work, they are most likely doing the work for the money. If the person does the work without getting paid, it is more likely that they’re doing it for intrinsic motivation. The same could be said for rewarding schoolwork with grades versus researching a topic on one’s own without it being required. The problem is that one can never be sure that kids will be interested in anything enough to learn about it on their own, just as one can never be sure that kids will want to do community service enough to do it without it being required. Another problem is that if community service became “compulsory” for kids, then adults would probably use it as an excuse not to clean up their own messes.
Gatto criticizes child labor laws, because they took kids out of work and into school; the government wants to keep kids “idle and passive” (131). But in my opinion, child labor laws are partially good. During the time when American kids were working, they did not do it out of choice. They did it because they needed to help support their family financially. In addition, the working conditions were very bad. Kids need to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic; they do not need to work unless they need the money. But the question is do kids really want to work for the sake of working? Who works because they want to? I think most people would rather be “idle” and have fun. I know I would. Adults already work—mostly out of necessity and not because they want to—from ages 18 to 65. People work for the majority of their lives; they should get to have the first couple decades to enjoy themselves. If the child labor laws were removed today, the kids who would end up working would be the ones from poor families, working out of necessity rather than genuine desire to work. And this new ability to bring in more money with more kids would encourage poor families to have more kids, which would in turn raise the human population which is already too high! However, I also see the good in Gatto’s opinion that child labor laws hurt the kids who actually want to work by preventing them from working. But I still think that not many kids would actually choose to work for work’s sake. Not many would choose to go to school either, of course. What they would choose to do is play or watch TV.
Gatto says that family should be more involved with students, and students should be more involved with their families. “Families are the basic institution of human life” (Gatto, 100). Compulsory schooling takes kids away from their families. It enables the government to brainwash kids with ideas and opinions that it wants them to have, robbing them of their values. Thus, kids grow up to have no values at all. I agree with Gatto on this, except that families also brainwash their kids. If kids are constantly around their parents, then the kids will probably think that their parents are always right, and grow up to be just like them. Is this better than government brainwashing? Gatto also says that one can only truly learn if one does so independently. Being taught by parents is no more independent learning than being taught in school.
According to Gatto, having school assignments that involve students’ families would be good, but families actually teaching their children would be even better. He says that school reform would need to involve teaching each child individually based on each child’s unique needs.
“To have a kind of education that served individuals, families, and communities we would need to abandon forever the notion—learned in school and reinforced through every institution—that ordinary people are too stupid, too irresponsible, too childish to look out for ourselves. We need to admit finally that knowledge is a useful thing but that it is a far cry from wisdom, and without wisdom we wander like lost sheep” (Gatto, 59).
For the rest of my review, see my comment(s) below.
March 18, 2024
Reading, writing, and arithmetic only take about 100 hours to teach as long as the student is willing to learn. The truth is that school doesn’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. Schools are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They seem to serve mostly as a sorting mechanism. Children and old people are locked away to a degree without precedent. Without them,communities have no future and no past; only a continuous present. Does it matter that our parents die among strangers and our children are penned-up with strangers? Do we believe that has no effect on the middle? Superficial associations and constant repetition of thin human contact ultimately produces the odd sensation familiar to city dwellers of being lonely in the middle of a crowd.
Children are so over scheduled that they only have about 12 hours a week to create a unique consciousness; to process feelings and information. Solitude leads to depth of intellect, depth of heart, and piety. I feel ashamed that we cannot imagine a better way to teach than locking children up all day instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, and striving to be independent and free.
Children are so over scheduled that they only have about 12 hours a week to create a unique consciousness; to process feelings and information. Solitude leads to depth of intellect, depth of heart, and piety. I feel ashamed that we cannot imagine a better way to teach than locking children up all day instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, and striving to be independent and free.
November 25, 2017
If you struggled in public school, or felt like you couldn't accomplish enough, or if you work in the school-system, or even if you enjoyed public school, this book will reveal worlds to you.
If you think school is a failed institution. Think again. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, and it does it fabulously. Find out the history of public schooling, why it takes around $7,000 tax dollars, per year, per student, to produce a population with a lower literacy rate than back in the days of slavery in America.
If you think school is a failed institution. Think again. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, and it does it fabulously. Find out the history of public schooling, why it takes around $7,000 tax dollars, per year, per student, to produce a population with a lower literacy rate than back in the days of slavery in America.
June 2, 2020
These essays question compulsory schooling from multiple angles, a thing we should, in my opinion, be doing continuously until the compulsion no longer exists. These essays are also full of other opinions I don't necessarily associate with the problem of compulsory schooling; some of which were intriguing and others which were disagreeable and nearly all of which seemed like conspiracy talk.
At times I nod my head in agreement, but much of the time I think, where does he get these facts and figures and associations? Definitely a crazy man who cares.
At times I nod my head in agreement, but much of the time I think, where does he get these facts and figures and associations? Definitely a crazy man who cares.
December 19, 2020
Leon: A bright light is shined in the pages of this book. John Taylor Gatto was named teacher of the year in New York. John Taylor Gatto work vindicates all students who feel hurt by the school system. You will be surprised that a teacher holds these sentiments. You will be hooked by the first page!
Find it in our Library Catalog
Find it in our Library Catalog
February 14, 2025
The beginning of the book was very insightful, however unfortunately I feel like many of the points were repeated too often without much novelty. Personally I found it hard to finish the book since the same ideas are played again and again.
Although- the first part of the book I would highly recommend to read however, towards the end it becomes repetitve.
Although- the first part of the book I would highly recommend to read however, towards the end it becomes repetitve.
November 30, 2021
WOW this guy is pissed at public education. He has some neat ideas, but I'm not sure the lying he did is justified. Made him into a bit of a vigilante, and I'd hate it if people I disagreed with acted like that.
August 27, 2025
It's absolutely stunning. I'm happy with the choice to keep a notebook at my side while reading, I'll be referring to it. I will be thinking about this book for a long time. If you have children or have been a child, read this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews