posted January 08, 2012 01:00 PM            

by John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction, now available in paperback, focuses on mechanisms of traditional education that cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto’s earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.

Gatto demonstrates that the harm school inflicts is rational and deliberate. The real function of pedagogy, he argues, is to render the common population manageable. To that end, young people must be conditioned to rely upon experts, to remain divided from natural alliances, and to accept disconnections from their own lived experiences. They must at all costs be discouraged from developing self-reliance and independence.

Escaping this trap requires strategy Gatto calls “open source learning” which imposes no artificial divisions between learning and life. Through this alternative approach, our children can avoid being indoctrinated—only then that can they achieve self-knowledge, judgment, and courage.

John Taylor Gatto is an internationally renowned speaker who lectures widely on school reform. He taught for thirty years in public schools before resigning on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal during the year he was named New York’s official “Teacher of the Year.” On April 3, 2008, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard credited Gatto with adding the expression “dumbing us down” to the school debate worldwide.

About the Author
John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. A much-sought after speaker on education throughout the United States, his other books include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000).
http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteachers-Compulsory/dp/0865716692/ref=as_li_tf_mfw?&linkCode=wey&tag=specthealinat-20

posted January 08, 2012 01:08 PM            

I hated school with a vengeance, left several and eventually refused to return lol

Luckily in my country there are much better alternatives to traditional school, and by the time I got to college, I was light years ahead of my "normal" school peers

Id seriously consider, home schooling or a self schooling method if I have kids myself

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Proud Member of the Vatican Assassin Warlock Attack Squad!

posted January 08, 2012 01:32 PM            

Caught this interesting article the other day:

might interest you Elizabeth - yes, it is an expensive commodity.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

also

The Children Must Play
What the United States could learn from Finland about education reform.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-Finland-US

posted January 08, 2012 02:31 PM            

quote:

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Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."

This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not.

Sahlberg knows what Americans like to talk about when it comes to education, because he's become their go-to guy in Finland. The son of two teachers, he grew up in a Finnish school. He taught mathematics and physics in a junior high school in Helsinki, worked his way through a variety of positions in the Finnish Ministry of Education, and spent years as an education expert at the OECD, the World Bank, and other international organizations.

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quote:

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As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Puronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.

Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't exist in Finland.

"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."

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quote:

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Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

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posted January 08, 2012 09:36 PM            

I was 8 years old and had my first menstrual period, a gusher to boot......whilst at school.
I will not post the details or the horrid humiliation which followed.
I was afraid in gym class too that I would leak blood....and did....
These were the days before self stick pads and one had to use safety pins and an elastic thong strap.
And the female teachers were not understanding of my plight, and would not let me use the bathroom in private.
The stalls were doorless and I the short fat bloody kid would acquire an audience of curious and freaked out 7 and 8 year old normal sized little girls.
On top of that I was nearly blind but oddly no one realized that.
My last name began with "W" so I was placed in the back of the room and could not see what the teacher wrote on the blackboard at all.
Out of boredom I read every book I could get hold of and wiped out the small libraries in a short time.
I became bored with school.
I was so far past their kiddie books.
But then after getting raped a year and a half later,
I could barely speak and stuttered badly.
I finally got glasses but bullies immediately broke them.
So yeah, nearly blind, stuttering, embarrassed bleeding fat kid with whiskers....
I got put in the retarded class and forgotten for a couple years.
Enough for now, but suffice it to say, school was awful....but home later was worse.....so....
yeah....
almost killed myself as a depressed teen.
How the hell did/can a system miss a kid like me with an IQ of 180?
I mean why did no one see the kind of books I was reading? Plato, adult SciFi, biographies.....did they think I was just toting them around?
Did no one see me reading my dictionary seriously?
OK rant over for now.

posted January 08, 2012 09:50 PM            

Some of my worst memories are from school, too.

Being kicked in the shins for my reaction was one of them in prep, I maintained a straight face, until they weren't looking. I did not like the toilets because I would pee right through the gap in the bowl on to the floor. Hard to explain. But it happened a lot, no doors on the toilet so everyone pretty much saw.
Being a double phlegmatic introvert with delicate emotions I was often fighting back tears with a lump in my throat, being teased about wearing a singlet and whatever was funny that day. Most kids could shake that stuff off, but because I showed the most sensitive dramatic reaction I attracted more of it, the more it hurt the more the bullies were pleased with themselves over it.

That's not that bad but i think it had something to do with my aweful self esteem as a teen, but that's bygones now.

posted January 09, 2012 09:54 AM            

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So many familiar stories.

I didn't have it that bad. I tested early as "above average/superior" and was placed in supplemental gifted classes, but continually "didn't live up to my potential" - for the most part, probably, because I'd get bored to tears and sneak in books to read while the teacher spoke. I was moderately depressed and had nearly continuous headaches in middle through high school, but (even barely "there") pulled in As and Bs, so I skated by.

My husband, on the other hand...I'll just say that it seems like there was a heady combination of his parents and the schools failing him.
In elementary school (Florida), he went through a battery of tests and was recommended for advanced individualized (accelerated one-on-one) study. Keep in mind that he tested like this after periods of homelessness and very unstable living situations with his addict "parents". His parents refused the school's recommendation, his father telling him (derisively) that he "had a brain on him like his Grandpa" (a professor at UNC and, at the time, a leading researcher in the field of inorganic chemistry).

When they moved back up to North Carolina (middle school), he went through another battery of tests and was recommended for the North Carolina School of Math and Science. His mother refused because she didn't want to "stunt his social growth" - that may be read as "she didn't want to be inconvenienced by his not going to school right down the block" and "she wanted a 'cool' kid". A small example of her parenting style: He was in his bed reading one Friday night when he was 14. She, drunk, stumbled in and demanded to know if he was a "faggot" because he wasn't out chasing girls.

Then, because he pulled in Bs and Cs (he had a truly awful home life and was, like many, bored at school) while his IQ tested as just below "genius", they placed him into "learning disabled" classes.

He didn't fit into their categories (or wouldn't be allowed to), so they pushed him into one.