Not long ago, George mentioned 3 books on education which he thought might have value. I was unfamiliar with one of these, Creating the Opportunity to Learn - Boykin and Noguera, so I got a copy & read it. As one thing always leads to another (a universal law?), in it I found a reference that sounded interesting. It was to a former teacher/author named John Taylor Gatto, so yet another book to read. Well, I got it, Dumbing Us Down, & I just started it over breakfast this morning & I'm stunned. This guy has something to say & right now, I'm almost afraid that I'm going to come to agreement with him - afraid because of the obvious Libertarian appeal of his thesis. And yet there are aspects of Libertarianism which are linked to anarchism & progressivism. Somebody, anybody, please read it & share your thoughts - especially if you care about education & learning, even if it's only your own education & learning. I'll post more as I progress. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.educationreformbooks.net/dumbing_down.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUqOZ6GsF7o
http://www.spinninglobe.net/spinninglobe_html/dumbingrev.htm
Continuing with Gatto & at the same time read Jonathan Kozol's The Shame of the Nation. I'd love to be present at a discussion or debate between these 2 guys but I feel like I'm doing the next best thing. The two books do seem to converse with each other. Sadly, they also enrage anyone who cares about kids & learning. The big difference seems that Kozol believes the system to be reformable. He says we have a system of apartheid schooling with acceptable to enviable results for the "haves" & appalling methods & outcomes for the "have-nots". He espouses ending de-facto segregration & bring all schools up to the level of the present middle to upper classes. Gatto believes that the system itself is so rotten that it needs to be dismantled. I have not yet learned how it might be replaced but I still have more reading to do. I'm surely not inclined to believe that home-schooling is an answer for any but a very small minority of students & families.
Here are a couple more links:
http://www.users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/27806948-Dumbing-Us-Down-by-John-Taylor-Gatto.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/books/review/the-shame-of-the-nation-separate-and-unequal.html?_r=0
Finished with Gatto & have concluded, as George stated, that he's way off base, an ideologue for a system that would leave the 99% totally at the mercy of the 1% & we already have a damn good idea of the quality of that mercy. There is, however, one argument of Gatto's that, I believe, requires our attention. Gatto cites Wendell Berry (a current hero of mine) in asserting that to succed, local institutions need the participation, support, & ultimate control of their constituencies. In other words, fiats from on high (the federal government) are counterproductive. There is some truth to that assertion.
Now, back to the comparison with Kozol. Jonathan Kozol knows education. Check this out:
https://prezi.com/abficnm0pze5/soci-177-kozol-presentation-chapter-9/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
I have read a bit of the first chapter of Gatto's book (more than enough to assure me that I don't want to waste my time) and I can assure you that any discussion between Gatto and Kozol would be a heated debate. Gatto's approach is definitely libertarian and unfortunately this puts him on the wrong side of the most important issue facing education in this country - whether we should work to reform public schools or privatize education (at least for those who can afford it). Gatto's condemnation of public schooling give fodder to the privatizers.
ReplyDeleteAre there serious problems with education in the US. Yes, but the system is not failing and it is not designed to produce helpless automatons. Many of the factors that have resulted in "dumbing down" our culture are the direct product of the mass media, and every teacher that I know (and I know a great many) constantly battles against that, teaching young people to evaluate what they see and hear with a critical eye.
As to Gatto's "conspiracy" theory - that all of this is consciously designed to promote happy Walmart greeters - if it wasn't so dangerous I'd have to laugh. It's precisely the folks who Gatto thinks have designed the system, who are trying to tear it down (or reform it in the wrong direction).
Gatto's prescriptions are not new; they were tried in the sixties and early seventies. They were a failure then and they will be a failure now. He fails to understand that for education to be liberating, it must impart the knowledge accumulated by society and promote the development of skills to absorb, analyze and use that knowledge. Human beings are social animals; our progress has, throughout history, been tied to the development of society. We can achieve our individuality within the society and we can change the society, but only if we understand our social context.
The libertarians are wrong; "no man is an island".
I was in process of writing a long response which I thought was pretty damn good. I was almost finished when I opened a new window to find a source I wanted to reference & I clicked the wrong tab & !!! the whole goddamn thing was GONE! I hope I can reconstruct or maybe even improve upon it but for now I need to regroup.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of education, I'm currently read (& nearly done with) Fareed Zakaria's In Defense of a Liberal Education & I like it a great deal & agree with the premises. I just came back from my morning coffee outing where I read his chapter on "The Natural Aristocracy" where he discusses, among other things, recent technological advances, the internet (of course), & particularly MOOC's. This is an especially hot topic with me right now because I am currently enrolled in several free online courses thru Coursera. This has been going on only since our recent get-togethers in Silver Spring & DC. In fact, I only just completed my first one month long course. The coursework I've been undertaking is also related to our political concerns. I'm trying to learn some new ways to put my computing skills to use - like in creating charts & graphs, building blogs, etc.
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