
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher - signa11
http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
======
araneae
"This is training for permanent underclasses, people who are to be deprived
forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And it is training
shaken loose from its original logic: to regulate the poor."

Having taught unruly 7th graders, I can tell you that the 6 things he teaches
are necessary to control a large number of children. And yes, you need to
control them, because otherwise the parents will sue you.

The unsolvable problem is that in this day and age, both parents work. It used
to be that the mother would take care of the kids, but now they have to be
passed off to a third party, who necessarily must take care of several times
the number of children found in the average American home.

What kids really need- and do best with- is individual attention. There's no
way to get that kind of attention with both parents in the workforce; the
numbers just don't work out.

That's your real problem.

~~~
jseliger
Like a lot of these articles, the author is half-right: although schools
aren't <em>designed</em> to make drones or conformists, but it can sometimes
have this effect.

The real question is how one would redesign school in a <em>realistic</em> way
to a) transfer knowledge to a large number of people who b) are compelled to
be in class even if they don't want to be. The latter point is crucial: I'm a
grad student in English lit, and the handy part about teaching undergrads is
that if they don't want to be in your class or they don't like you in
particular, they can try elsewhere.

Anyway, this article reminds me of an essay I wrote about the validity of
grades: <http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades> . Short
version: grades are problematic for all kinds of reasons. But there's no good
alternative to them.

~~~
shadowsun7
Gatto's argument goes a lot further than just education reform. He argues that
schools - as we know it today - should be abolished altogether.

There are two other links at the bottom of that article. Read those, and
you'll begin to see what he's getting at (that the school is a result of the
capitalist need for workers and mindless consumers). The alternatives he
offers, however, are rather scary alternatives to capitalism itself. Scary -
at least - to me.

As for alternatives to grades: see pg's essay After Credentials
<http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html>

Like most of these articles, he's half-right.

------
shadowsun7
I found this to be very crushing. If school really was invented for the sole
purpose of creating a generation of unthinking worker drones, then this means
that everything that we believe in - capitalism, the economies of scale,
marketing - hinges on the creation of a dumb populace. We have no alternative
to school, and John Gatto doesn't offer any other apart from the Amish and the
Mondragon Cooperatives (and perhaps homeschooling) - both of them far cries
from the economies of scale afforded to the capitalistic society.

<http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html>
[http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/john_taylor_gatto.htm...](http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/john_taylor_gatto.html)

On a related note, I find his description of an early America very
interesting. He observes that you couldn't get many employees back in the day,
before the Civil War - because they were all equally entrepreneurial - meaning
that they'll only stick with you for a year or two before striking it out on
their own. (Granted, they had slaves, but let's not go there).

It makes sense, really - and so I find it mildly ironic that things are coming
full circle, what with today's growing trend in startups.

~~~
lionhearted
> If school really was invented for the sole purpose of creating a generation
> of unthinking worker drones, then this means that everything that we believe
> in - capitalism, the economies of scale, marketing - hinges on the creation
> of a dumb populace.

Actually, our system _was_ originally created to produce unthinking worker
drones. It's built directly on the Prussian education system:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system>

"The Prussian education system was a system of mandatory education dating to
the early 19th century. Parts of the Prussian education system have served as
models for the education systems in a number of other countries, including
Japan and the United States."

"Seeking to replace the controlling functions of the local aristocracy, the
Prussian court attempted to instill social obedience in the citizens through
indoctrination. Every individual had to become convinced, in the core of his
being, that the King was just, his decisions always right, and the need for
obedience paramount."

"The schools imposed an official language to the prejudice of ethnic groups
living in Prussia. The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the
Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy. As the
German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system,
said, "If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than
merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that
he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."

But - no, I firmly reject that the Prussian system with its heavy importance
on obedience is necessary for a healthy society. I think if they announced
today that they're going to dump the entire U.S. education system at the end
of 2011, no transition, no new programs, nothing - a better system would
emerge by 2012.

> He observes that you couldn't get many employees back in the day, before the
> Civil War - because they were all equally entrepreneurial - meaning that
> they'll only stick with you for a year or two before striking it out on
> their own.

People _should_ move in and out of entrepreneurship and employment under
others, based on what their preferences are at the time. The fact that
starting your own business or working for yourself for a little while is seen
as this huge deal in the States is a problem. People are in awe - "you run
your _own business_? wow..." It shouldn't be such a big deal. You work for
someone else if they've got a good thing going and you want to learn from
them, or want more stability for a while. You save up some cash, and strike it
on your own for a while. If you sell or close the business, maybe you get into
working for someone else because you can make a meaningful contribution in
their organization and the pace of work is slower and more enjoyable, or you
want stability again. That's a more natural state of affairs. The current
educational system with its focus on doing exactly what you're told to do is
no good. We need something better.

~~~
anamax
> Actually, our system was originally created to produce unthinking worker
> drones. It's built directly on the Prussian education system

The welfare state was designed by Bismark to accomplish the same ends.

Beggars can't be choosers.

------
edw519
Please don't do this:

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Click the button on the right to download Firefox. It's free.

Continue without Firefox >>_

There are millions of us visiting hn and its links from corporate desktops
locked down to ie without the ability to install anything else. Save your
political commentary for your blog and learn how to deliver browser agnostic
client side content.

~~~
JayNeely
The same text displays as the summary when I try to share this on Facebook.
:-/

~~~
EricBurnett
You should be able to link on Facebook with the real text using the link
<http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html?seenIEPage=1> .

------
kiba
In some ways, I still found it hard to believe.

I taught myself computer programming, learn economics and political theory,
read a little bit of history, science, and other intersting subjects pretty
religiously, in addition to learning a whole lot about entrepeneurship(which I
have applied poorly or not yet tested or taken it).

As far as school goes? I hate mathematics and english. I didn't learn or
retain much of anything in physics and chemistry because I was struggling to
solve the equation and just survive.

Intellectually, I knew that the school system is "not working". But there were
some standout teachers that I genuinely like and respect, such as my Latin
teacher, and my government teacher.

I alway have a disdain for public schooling and thought that they were
inefficent and sucks soul dry.

But being outright sinister? It may be true, but I don't know what to think.

------
JayNeely
This part really hit me:

"With lessons like the ones I teach day after day, is it any wonder we have
the national crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world
and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of
toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything
for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are
mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they
hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in
the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction."

~~~
balding_n_tired
Great. We can afford fancier toys, but otherwise how does this differ from
pretty much any time in the past or anywhere else? Were we less violent before
mass schooling came in after 1848? Somehow we managed to make our writ run
from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, partly by purchase, largely by violence.
Were we less conformist? A reading of Tocqueville would suggest not.

------
xiaoma
The author, John Taylor Gatto is the former NY teacher of the year. I found
his against school piece more compelling.

[http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=tea...](http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=teacher+of+the+year+against+school)

------
idm
Yes and no.

I can only speak for myself, but I could see elements of his _Six Lessons_ in
my own public schooling. Yes, some of my classmates' souls were basically
crushed by public schooling, but I also know some people who were set free,
climbed socially, were brilliant/inventive, etc...

The so-called "bad habits" he fears we learn from those six lessons aren't
strictly bad at all, but they definitely become habits. We're talking about
habits like "school bell" based time segmentation, taking x amount of time to
[do work/go to next class/appointment], balancing homework with home life...

These habits could become tools for an employer/government/etc to control you
for life (then they would be called "bad habits"), but methodologies like GTD
co-opt the habits to return control to your own self-directed free will (and
suddenly it's a "good habit".)

Think of public school as being like an API.

------
Alex3917
FYI there was a three-hour interview with JTG that was just posted on Gnostic
Media:

[http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-05T00_01_15-...](http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-05T00_01_15-08_00)

[http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-15T00_11_48-...](http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2010-03-15T00_11_48-07_00)

I haven't listened to it yet, but most of his podcasts are really good.

------
unignorant
In my experience, this seems to hit its mark. However, among those I would
consider "good" teachers, there existed an extra layer of subtlety.

Teacher and student might know their respective places, but without explicit
discussion, they would together to subvert the system (in minor ways). This
taught the meta-lesson of "know how to play the system against itself."

------
albertsun
And yet, almost all of use are products of this school system without having
suffered too badly from the problems described in the article.

Rather than looking for any kind of radical reform, which would likely be
highly improbable, we should look for how to improve the system.

------
thewileyone
Perfect implementation of benevolent dictatorship ... as prescribed in The
Prince.

