Great stuff here for everyone.
Intro + Hour 1 of 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8&list=PL463AA90FD04EC7A2]
John Taylor Gatto (born December 15, 1935) is an American author and former school teacher with nearly 30 years of experience in the classroom. He devoted much of his energy to his teaching career, then, following his resignation, authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. He is best known for the underground classic "Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling", and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, which is sometimes considered to be his magnum opus. He was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991.
What does the school do to children? Gatto asserts the following in "Dumbing Us Down":
It confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the "free" time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
It makes them indifferent.
It makes them emotionally dependent.
It makes them intellectually dependent.
It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.
He also draws a contrast between communities and “networks,” with the former being healthy, and schools being examples of the latter; in the United States, networks have become an unhealthy substitute for community.
