I Guess We'll Have to Home-School

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
by John Taylor Gatto

Josh came across this book and I convinced him to let me take it on my trip last weekend even though he hadn't read it yet. (I'm interested to see what he thinks.)

The main points (and some interesting tidbits) of the book seem to be (much abbreviated because I don't have much time to chat nowadays):

1. Contemporary education is doing exactly what it was designed to do: teach kids to do what they're told, when they're told, as they're told, so they can work for the man (my paraphrasing).

2. Contemporary education doesn't need to be "fixed"; it needs to be thrown out completely. Apparently, Mr. Gatto believes the whole model doesn't work and will never work. He did make a good point. We've been "educating" kids in schools (age-based classrooms, teacher certification), etc., for 100-150 years. If we're to believe the media and politicians, it's failing our kids. If they haven't gotten it right, perhaps the problem is the whole model is flawed.

3. Between school and TV, kids don't have any time to learn anything about themselves.

4. No one cares more about your child's education than you, the parent.

5. Teacher certification is designed to make parents believe they are unfit to teach their own children.

6. As a society, we compartmentalize people too often based on age. Kids are "locked" in schools and the elderly are "locked" in nursing homes (or isolated in their own homes).

7. The main job of institutions is not the "purpose" for which they are created; it's to provide for a future for the institution itself. All the teacher colleges, textbook publishers, standards consultants, administrators, etc., have a vested interest in keeping schools running and giving them even more money - because that's how they stay in business.

It's a series of speeches and essays, no hard scientific evidence or studies, but I did find most of his arguments compelling. Josh and I have talked often about sending our kids to parochial schools or home-schooling them. My sister-in-law is going to home school her kids at least through 8th grade. (She's trained as a middle school math teacher and says administrators often require a certain number of grades so teachers would assign worksheets they hadn't even reviewed as homework, just to get another grade in the book - how awful is that?)

I'm still not convinced I'll have the patience to home-school, but I'm beginning to see the advantages may be worth the effort. In particular, I like the idea of making learning part of all life, not confined to 8 am to 3 pm. I also like being free of bells to end a class period, avoiding homework, covering topics with kids of different ages, family field trips (with other home-school families, probably), and decreasing opportunities for bullies, drugs and alcohol to hurt my kids.

The debate about how the Papsdorf kids will be educated continues; I'm sure you'll hear more about it. In the meantime, I'd like to know if anyone can read this book and not wish the tiniest little bit that you could home-school (even if you have absolutely no intention of doing so).

I also really liked that it's printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. You don't see that very often.