
Against School - John Taylor Gatto - yters
http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
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fleitz
If you ever get the chance to read Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor
Gatto I highly suggest it, it's very eye opening as to the origins and reasons
for mandatory schooling.

Also when reading John Taylor Gatto, please ensure you do not conflate
schooling with education. You'll not like him very much if you conflate the
two. Unless you really are against education, in that case please reply :)

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tomjen3
I already read The Underground History of American Education. Is it worth
reading Weapons of Mass Instruction too?

Not that it greatly matters, of course, since there is absolutely nothing I
can do about it as I have already decided not to have kids.

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Alex3917
"I already read The Underground History of American Education. Is it worth
reading Weapons of Mass Instruction too?"

No. Weapons of Mass Instruction is basically just excerpts from Underground
History. I think there are a few new things, but mostly what happened is that
the publisher for Underground History backed out once they read the book,
which left Gatto allowed to self publish it himself but unable to find another
publishing deal. So Weapons of Mass instruction was basically just him going
out and repackaging Underground History and publishing the best of it.

~~~
euroclydon
I imagine any publisher would have strong disincentive to publish UHAE. He has
few good things to say about the scholastic publishing houses.

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InclinedPlane
The fact that home schooled children often end up having a higher quality of
education regardless of the educational levels of the parents seems to me a
pretty damning indictment of the public school system in general. There is
this perception (backed by laws, regulations, and taxes) that there is a
specific and elevated set of skills necessary to be a teacher, however all of
the evidence seems to indicate this isn't the case.

~~~
dereg
I'm all for the privitization of schools (voucher system). People recoil in
horror when I say this. However, it's not nearly as bad as what people make it
out to be.

Government should get out of the school/education provisioning business. It
hasn't worked, period. What I don't mind the government doing is providing
education _funding_ via vouchers.

Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding on how to allocate public
education money? Think about it this way, do you want to maximize parent
choice, and have them decide on the quality of a school, or do you want a
board of education member deciding on the quality of schools?

Do you trust the decisions of a swarm self-interested parents and children or,
or the decision of a self-interested government official? I trust the swarm.

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anamax
> Do you want a government bureaucrat deciding on how to allocate public
> education money?

We let govt decide where people can spend food-stamps and what they can buy.

Oh wait - we don't - there's not nearly the same level of govt control wrt
food.

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rgraham
That depends. Do agricultural subsidies count as control?

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anamax
> That depends. Do agricultural subsidies count as control?

Even the most extreme interpretation of govt food control doesn't approach the
amount of govt control in primary public education. (I find that folks who
talk about various subsidies tend to overstate them if they're opposed and
understate them if they support. Note how that lets each side claim that the
other is lying. Curious that they never notice that they're both correct about
that.)

Or, are you suggesting that all amounts of control are the same?

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pero
His magnum opus: <http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/> (free read)

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djm
Those who enjoy reading John Taylor Gatto may also like to read a great little
book called "The teenage liberation handbook" by grace Llewellyn. It's that
book you read as an adult and wish you'd read as a teenager.

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SHOwnsYou
I had a hard time reading this and I suspect I'm not the only one. What
particularly struck a nerve with me was the absolutely out of left field
mention of Columbine as if it somehow amplifies the impact of public schools
being bad (paraphrasing: "Schools are 2000-4000 child warehouses, like the now
famous Columbine highschool").

The alternative of large schools (and what is being championed here) is home
schooling children. Not only does that not scale, it also disproportionately
favors the wealthy as families with already limited means are unlikely to be
able to commit neither the money nor the time (on top of work everyday) to
teach their children.

Even if you fix the scaling issues and the disproportionate income problems,
you still have parents that simply don't care. When I was in school it was in
vogue (in my locale) to take your kids out of public school and begin to
homeschool them. But it turned out that parents' seemed to think that was the
magic bullet, and their children were largely left to their own devices to
figure out material, a schedule, and to somehow still be able to interact with
kids their own age.

Obviously, I am not a big proponent of home schooling. I actually liked going
through public school. I will forever wager my small town public school
education against any home-schooled person's education any day.

~~~
jimwise
I'm curious whether you think home schooling favors the wealthy more than the
public school system does? Recall that public school funding is a local
affair; the wealthier the local population, the better funded the school.

I'm also not sure what you mean by `scaling issues'? Many districts here in
New York State avereage 45-50 students per teacher. We have a large family by
the national or local averages, and our five kids have one homeschooling
parent all to themselves...

This doesn't mean that homeschooling is affordable for everyone -- especially
given that every parent (and non-parent, for that matter) is paying (directly
if they own, indirectly if they rent) for the public school system, whether
they use it or not.

~~~
SHOwnsYou
> homeschool vs public school I can't speak with any authority on the relative
> value of home school vs public school for children of wealthy families. But
> I will point out that simply because a school district is well funded does
> not mean the school district will necessarily be better than better than a
> slightly less funded district.

>scaling I did speak incompletely. I meant to to explain that school best
works at scale (I meant to say "not only does that not scale down"). You have
already explained this for me. Each family requires a parent to do the home
schooling, where as public schools can provide a teacher for multiple children
of multiple families.

>pay for it regardless Fortunately those that own, they realize an associated
cost of owning is taxation. The argument could also be made that in return for
paying for the public school system, those residents are able to live in a
place that has a compulsory education system.

I'd be willing to bet that no one would flock to (let alone stay there for a
significant portion of time) an area that did not require taxes that went to a
local school system.

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michaelchisari
I've always enjoyed Gatto's writing, although I disagree on some points: I'd
prefer to move public schooling towards a more liberatory model, than
encouraging home-schooling (something which doesn't favor people without the
bare minimum of means). I prefer to change institutions than to drop out of
them.

If you like Gatto, I'd also recommend reading up on Francisco Ferrer, A.S.
Neill, Paulo Freire, and Alfie Kohn.

~~~
joelhooks
Adjusting the government school model and encouraging home education aren't
mutually exclusive. It would seem that any sort of effective change in the way
government approaches education is extremely difficult.

We home educate our children, and you are correct. It has been a genuine
challenge on many levels. I've observed various families with the minimum of
means achieve success home educating, but in general it is folks that have a
solid single income and understand that they are making a "sacrifice". There
is very little in this life that favors those of bare minimum needs.

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greencircle
I look forward to reading his online book. There are quite a few interesting
books from the 60s on this topic, including Paul Goodman's "Compulsory
Miseducation" --- which you can read online at
[http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys%20from%20Trash/Resources/...](http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys%20from%20Trash/Resources/books/goodman.pdf)
\--- and A.S. Neill's Summerhill, and Dennison's The Lives of Children. All
three offer a formal framework for addressing this topic: how we learn and
develop is a psychological matter, not one of grades, nor figuring out how to
fill a kid's head with facts. Contemporary work on cognitive and psychological
development (unintentionally) corroborates this viewpoint (as far as I can
tell, which is part time research, since full time I write code).

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emit_time_n3rgy
Loads of Gatto audio at <http://tinyurl.com/2d9rqr>

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yters
What's my recipe for schooling, you ask?

1\. Teach kid to read 2\. Show him internet 3\. Kick him out of house

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epochwolf
And how do you plan to keep him from watching porn all day long?

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joelhooks
I tell mine that I do weekly log analysis of all traffic crossing the router.
It isn't true, but the bluff has held for years. Shit, now he'll find this and
have the keys to the pleasure garden...

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crpatino
How can you possibly know if the bluff has held so far or not, if not by log
analysis?

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hoop
I had to read this for a literature and composition class. Definitely an eye
opener

