
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher - Alex3917
http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
======
Alex3917
Anyone who likes this essay would probably enjoy Gatto's book, The Underground
History of American Education. It's about the historical forces that shaped
the evolution of compulsory schooling it America and in other industrialized
countries. The book makes some pretty bold claims. For example, "Ninety-six
and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where
deciphering print is concerned."

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm>

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm>

An annoying quirk of Gatto is that he usually doesn't cite his sources
formally because he thinks making the reader peruse the entire primary text to
fact check him encourages intellectual curiosity and independent thinking.
That being said, many of the excerpts he uses are now in public domain and
take about 30 seconds to Google. (For example Gatto is using the 1993 National
Adult Literacy Survey to make the above claims, which you can download as a
PDF from the National Center of Education Statistics.)

Anyway the whole book can be found here:

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm>

~~~
KiwiNige
Another good one is John Holt's How Children Learn, in which he says something
along the lines of "It's just as well that we don't try to teach children to
walk and talk" or else they would struggle to learn that as well.

My wife and I are homeschooling our children for sure...

------
teaquaffer
My 6 year old neighbor keeps getting in trouble for asking questions in
school. His dad asked the teacher, "aren't you supposed to ask questions?" The
teacher's response: "I don't like being questioned."

~~~
D_T
What a terrible thing to have happened. I hope your neighbor can switch
classes or at least schools.

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gruseom
It occurred to me some time ago that many things are confusing because they
are improperly named. For example, the label "Education System" is confusing
because it implies that the system in question is primarily about education.
Having accepted the premise, you now have many paradoxes to explain.

But if you change the label to, say, "Child Processing Factories", most of the
paradoxes disappear.

Edit: I originally wrote "child processing system". But I prefer the stronger
formulation.

~~~
Alex3917
There is a book called The Addictive Organization that touches on this. Below
are a couple thoughts and excerpts cut-and-pasted from my notes:

"What makes the organization addictive is the promise it makes to every
employee about the future, which takes them out of the here and now." These
promises involve power, money, influence, and social acceptance, the same as
the promises of pop culture made-for-TV society.

Having a self-important and grandiose mission statement can make an
organization addictive, even if it has little or nothing to do with the actual
work being done. "The very fact of having goals can be enough to con employees
into believing that everything is all right in the organization."

"One of the ways employees react to this addictive process is by changing
their perceptions and thinking, therefore deluding themselves. They try to
make themselves believe that the stated mission of the organization is really
what is happening, even if what they are seeing and feeling as they work is
quite different. When organizations function as the addictive substance, it is
in their interest to keep promoting the vision of the mission, because as long
as the employees are hooked by it, they are unlikely to turn their awareness
to the present discrepancies. They choose to stay numb in order to stay in the
organization. The mission is a powerful source of identification for workers.
It is a type of philosophical orientation that appeals to their values.
Through the mission they find a link between themselves and the organization."

BTW, the sociologists refer to these hidden agendas as the "latent functions"
of the organization, in case you ever want to search through the academic
papers about this.

~~~
gruseom
It seems we have similar interests. I've run across The Addictive Organization
too, in addition to Gatto, though in his case I read _Dumbing Us Down_ , not
the book you cited. Gatto seems courageous to me; a real freethinker.

Was it Durkheim who said that the first purpose of any large organization is
to perpetuate itself, and only secondarily to accomplish whatever mandate it
may have?

~~~
Alex3917
Not sure about that specific quote, but I know that one of Durkheim's main
interests was how organizations, institutions, and culture reproduce
themselves, so it would make sense.

I haven't read Dumbing Us Down yet, although I think Underground History was
meant to supersede it. I'm sure I'll check it out eventually though.

There is a cool video series with him here too:

<http://www.edflix.org/gatto.htm>

It starts off with a rather poor summary of the book, but then he eventually
makes a few important novel points. He comes up with a list of patterns that
separate the nation's elite boarding schools from our public schools. Pretty
important stuff, albeit you need to sit through the rest of the video to get
at it.

~~~
gruseom
Just popped into my mind: do you know the book "Systemantics" (also known as
"The Systems Bible") by John Gall? It's not on education but is very much in
the space we're discussing. It's a brilliant (and hilarious) underground
classic. I think you would like it. A lot of people here would. It's
irreverent and subversive and incredibly smart and not rigid.

One of its more famous aphorisms (relevant to the software startup crowd) is
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that worked".

[http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-
Large/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-
Large/dp/0961825170)

~~~
Alex3917
Thanks for the tip, I added it to my Amazon cart. (Although I already have far
too much reading I need to do for my startup at the moment.)

~~~
gruseom
Heh. This is light reading, the sort of thing you can have fun with for a few
pages before falling asleep.

------
nazgulnarsil
I think schools need to be more economically focused. Teach kids about the
realistic options in their future and what they can do to give themselves more
choices (avoid premature optimization).

also: I hate when people whine about how hard "the poor" have it. I'm
technically living below the poverty line and I live the way an emperor might
have lived in ages past.

I have my own personal transportation to take me wherever I want whenever I
want. I eat delicious food shipped to me from all around the world. I have
fantastic opportunities to make riches beyond what 99.9% of the human
population has ever been able to.

I'm sorry what's the problem? Oh, right...school is kinda boring. boo hoo.
self starters have always taught themselves what they wanted to know anyway,
regardless of the institutions of the time. Our forefathers achieved more with
less. I don't think blaming poor schooling excuses us from anything.

~~~
pixcavator
I wish I could give 10 points.

~~~
pixcavator
I was downvoted on this comment. That's so funny! I am giving this person an
opportunity to downvote me again. Help yourself!

~~~
pixcavator
And another one...

~~~
pixcavator
And one more...

~~~
pixcavator
More?

~~~
pixcavator
No problem.

~~~
pixcavator
Take this one.

~~~
pixcavator
And this one.

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astine
Not personally a huge fan of the Public School system. Whether they are
intentionally meant to turn students into sheep is one question I don't have
the answer to, but I don't think that a centralized system can ever work to
create an independent and informed citizenry.

Personally, I've always taken issue with the approach that the government
should be directly responsible for the formation of its citizens rather than
the reverse.

~~~
Alex3917
>Whether they are intentionally meant to turn students into sheep is one
question I don't have the answer to

Gatto's book makes a pretty good argument that this is the case, although
mostly accidently as opposed to the result of any secret conspiracy. Gatto
does dig up some pretty telling quotes though. For example,

"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another
class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the
privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific
difficult manual tasks."-- Woodrow Wilson, from an address to The New York
City High School Teachers Association, Jan. 9th, 1909

I actually went to the New York public library a couple of years ago and found
a copy of the speech in the collection of Woodrow Wilson's papers. Here is the
full quote in context:

"I do not wonder at it. I think it is hardly just to blame those who have
brought this situation about, because this change in modern life has come upon
us suddenly. It has confused us. We are in an age so changeful, so
transitional, I do not wonder that this confusion has come into our education,
and I do not blame anybody. I do not see how it could have been avoided, how
we could have avoided trying our hands at a score of things hitherto
unattempted to determine at least if they were possible or not. Therefore this
is not a subject for cynical comment, this is not a subject for criticism. It
is a subject for self-recognition. The present need is that we should examine
ourselves and see whether this be true or not; and, if it is true, ask
ourselves whether the air has cleared enough, and whether our experiment has
gone far enough, to make a definite program, to make a radical change, in the
things we have attempted. This is the moment for counsel. The thing that is
imperative upon our conscience is that we should ask ourselves whether it be
possible to do it differently and better." [...]

"Let us go back and distinguish between the two things that we want to do; for
we want to do two things in modern society. We want one class of persons to
have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much
larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a
liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual
tasks. You cannot train them for both in the time that you have at your
disposal. They must make a selection, and you must make a selection. I do not
mean to say that in the manual training there must not be an element of
liberal training; neither am I hostile to the idea that in the liberal
education there should be an element of the manual training. But what I am
intent upon is that we should not confuse ourselves with regard to what we are
trying to make of the pupils under our instruction. We are either trying to
make liberally-educated persons out of them, or we are trying to make skillful
servants of society along mechanical lines, or else we do not know what we are
trying to do."

~~~
astine
I'm not going to say that the case can't be made, or that it is wrong, but
that I'm not the one to make it or defend it.

------
PieSquared
It's unpleasant how many of his points just ring true in my mind instantly. I
connected it with PG's essay, too, where he asks why students should have to
ask to go to the bathroom.

But my theory is that a school system cannot be designed in a one-size-fits-
all sort of way. There are students who will take advantage of lenient
teachers, instead of learning. It is because of them that the rest of the
students cannot progress as they could have.

I've wondered about it often. I have no idea what to do. None.

~~~
gruseom
_I've wondered about it often. I have no idea what to do. None._

I sympathize. It seems to me that part of the block comes from defining the
problem monolithically: how can we take the standard system we have and make a
better standard system out of it? Nobody seems to have a good answer to that.
Maybe we should stop asking it and instead go through a period of
decentralization and even destandardization. Let all sorts of experiments be
tried. There's a study I read about that showed that when great schools or
great teachers achieve amazing things, attempts to reproduce what they do
almost always fail. The problem seems to be in the systematizing impulse
itself. Can there even be a bureaucracy that sustains life, joy, creativity?

Here's an example of what I mean (I may have even got this from Gatto). In the
traditional one-room farm schoolhouse, there weren't enough children to
segregate by age, so by necessity they would work side by side on different
things. This has interesting effects. You no longer have the problem that not
all kids are at the same level; each is working at his/her level anyway. So,
no reason why a bright 9-year-old can't study math with the 15-year-olds (but
play with kids their own age at recess). Another example is that because one
teacher simply can't address all the different subjects at once, older kids
end up teaching and mentoring younger ones. Think of the organizational
contortions required to set up things like this in most schools. Of course,
I'm not saying that everyone should go to a one-room farm school. My point is
that we need a great deal more diversity and that maybe policy should support
this instead of trying to fix everything the same way (or even at all).

People will cry out about the risks of destandardization but really, if you
stop to think about it, kids _want_ to learn. Passionately. They're hard-wired
to do it. What we should be asking is not how we can get them to learn but how
we ever manage to program the desire out of them. Personal anecdote: when my
daughter was in the third grade (and had a teacher she loved), she would get
up in the morning and literally jump for joy that she was going to school. I
don't mean little bunny hops... I mean she would jump up and down bigtime and
sing "I'm going to schooooool!" Just a short time later (after the teacher she
loved was fired and not even allowed to say goodbye to the class... different
story) a pallor that I can only call depression came over her about everything
associated with school. It took years for signs of intellectual excitement to
return.

~~~
PieSquared
Whoa. Your story is pretty... well, unpleasant, I suppose. Especially at such
a young age. It's all too often that people give up on education just because
the school system sucks.

At my school, I'm branded as a "nerd", often because I don't think I've joined
that group of people who have given up on intellectual curiosity just because
the school system is inadequate. What bothers me, though, is that such an
attitude is pervasive through a very large portion of my school, even though
it is an advanced program school.

Ah well. I hope it will become better. Maybe I'll be able to do something
about it someday. I'd certainly love to.

------
raju
Alex3917 - Thank you sir. I really don't have any words to describe what I
felt after I read this article. And thank you for the book references. I will
be sure to follow up on those.

Mr. Gatto - I certainly hope we can see some of the ideas you suggested in our
lifetimes. I am sure it will make for a much better world.

------
DmitriLebedev
In childhood, in early years of school, I perceived teachers as evil and good.
In the last years of school we used to label them as "normal" and "crazy" (or
"idiots", if one preferred).

My grades were exceptionally high with "good" teachers and low with "evil"
throughout all the school. Only recently I liberted myself to start seeing
that as a good sign.

I guess, "good" or "normal" teachers in our perception were those who
procrastinated from teaching these lessons.

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boredguy8
Additional reading: "The Idea of a University" by Newman
(<http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/>)

To see the roots of many of the pernicious practices: "Democracy and
Education" by Dewey
([http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/...](http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter02.html))

------
goodspeed
I'd love to send my kids to this school instead
[http://go0dspeed.multiply.com/video/item/32/Schools_Designed...](http://go0dspeed.multiply.com/video/item/32/Schools_Designed_for_Learning)

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gojomo
Gatto is like the 'red pill' for understanding American education.

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rumblerob
For the first few "lessons" I thought he was making an analogy to computers,
with the students as individual bits.

Great, we're trained to be automatons.

