
Underground History of American Education - ramchip
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3a.htm
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tokenadult
I think Gatto's heart is in the right place, because he (a winner of the
teacher of the year award in New York State more than a decade ago) wants
children to avoid the worst effects of industrialized schooling. I'm more than
a little put off by some of his sketchy, amateur historical research, which I
think leaves him with too much credence for conspiracy theories. I have met
Gatto in person something like eight times at various conferences on education
reform (my field of occupation and research) and he is an interesting
raconteur with more than a little ability to adapt his speeches to differing
audiences. His central thesis on the bleak effects of industrialized schooling
is worth a read for hackers who have never considered such issues before.

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Alex3917
Do you know of anything that Gatto specifically gets wrong, or do you just
that that Underground History would leave one with a less useful understanding
of our educational system than, say, Equality and Achievement?

I notice that he is at odds with Kohn on whole language, and I would tend to
agree with Kohn, but other than that Gatto seems factually accurate.

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Radix
He says this on section 14: _Until 1965 no one bothered to check Cattell’s
famous experiment with the tachistoscope. When they did, it was found Cattell
had been dead wrong. People read letters, not words._

I'm not sure why he claims people don't read whole words. We read groups of
letters not the letters themselves.

Relatedly, I met a man who claimed to be a speed reader. When pressed he
insisted it was true and that he read lines and paragraphs at a time with good
retention and understanding. He went on saying he and a group of kids had been
taught to speed read by their elementary school principal for his PHD thesis.

~~~
tokenadult
I've read a fair amount of the eye-tracking literature, and it's true that
people read letters or (small) groups of letters if they are reading.

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delackner
I haven't read any of the literature, but can't both claims be true?
Experienced readers may mentally first become aware of whole words or blocks
of words, but they could easily just not be aware of the finer-grained eye
movements that are going into that perception.

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cpr
Not only is his heart in the right place, but I think he's diagnosed the
problem with industrialized mass education extremely well.

And I don't think he's very wrong about the "conspiracy theories," either.
Certainly the industrialists of the late 19th century were heavily invested in
creating a new "mass man" that they could then employ more effectively for
their own purposes, if the schooling were directed to dumbing everyone down to
the same low level of un-independent thought and mindless compliance to
authority.

(We figured out the same problem 20 years ago, and that's why we're educating
our 8 kids at home through high school.)

But, like Neil Postman, another great societal critic, he doesn't really know
what to do about the problem, other than "don't do that". It may be there's no
real solution, other than to have parents much more involved in their kids'
education, which is certainly the ideal.

But even if you posit a need for group schooling, one could do worse than
returning to the "little red schoolhouse" approach of the pre-Horace Mann
(Prussian-style mass education in Mass.) era, where parents band together and
hire teachers/tutors for a smaller group of kids, and really keep their hands
on the tiller.

(Yes, there are problems there, too, but certainly much less than the problems
that Gatto identifies so well.)

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tpyo
If that comment was in response to tokenadult, you might want to contemplate
using the reply link below his comment next time.

~~~
cpr
Sorry, it was both a response to tokenadult, and a general commentary on the
link. I probably should have done what you said.

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gdickie
Gatto uncovers the underlying intention for public schools to produce docile
factory workers. Once you make your goals clear and explicit, much of the
argument over how to educate becomes moot or even silly.

Sudbury Valley School in Massachusets (and other offshoot Sudbury-model
schools) are one answer to the "ok, what then?" that comes after reading
Gatto. If you set a goal of producing thoughtful, self-directed citizens of a
democracy, you end up with a school which is democratic and self-directed.

~~~
gruseom
_Once you make your goals clear and explicit, much of the argument over how to
educate becomes moot or even silly._

It's interesting how many controversies evaporate if you stop assuming that
the labels on things are accurate. For example, if instead of the "education"
system we spoke of the "child processing system", the world might make more
sense. And instead of "health care" we could talk about "disease management".
And so on!

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Alex3917
IIRC The version on the website is the text as of the first printing. The book
is now on its third printing, and there have been substantial corrections,
revisions, and additions to the text. It's really worth buying a copy of the
third printing from either his site or else from Amazon.

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ramchip
Also on scribd: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/10957390/John-Taylor-Gatto-
Undergr...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/10957390/John-Taylor-Gatto-Underground-
History-of-American-Education-1-93)

~~~
gojomo
Scribd (and the 'Easy PDF' spam links on each page of this PDF-ication of
HTML) is subtracting value here.

If the canonical version of an author's work is already online as HTML, leave
it be!

~~~
unalone
I love dissing Scribd for being lame as much as anybody, but this link lets me
get a copy for my Kindle for little inconvenience. I like that.

