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The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher (cantrip.org)
79 points by signa11 on March 31, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 23 comments



"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.


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.


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.


There is certainly a case to be made that the U.S. school system was designed to make "drones or conformists":

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

Or for a more detailed argument:

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


Use asterisks to get italic.


The unsolvable problem is that in this day and age, both parents work.

Usually links to the Onion don't belong on Hacker News, but in this recent case

http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parent...

jest is truth.


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...

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.


> 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.


> 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.


"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."

No! It means that over a hundred years ago, people with attitudes we would today call fairly socialist, communist, or perhaps most likely fascist thought their success depended on the creation of a dumb populace. (Regardless of how successful they were and how that came from capitalism, they were very casually command-and-control people, with no belief that it could be any other way; exactly which style of command-and-control you ascribe to them hardly matters, really.) It does not prove they were correct.

Even today people commit the crime of thinking the next 20 years will be just like today, but people suffered from this problem even more so 100 years ago. No concept of an information or service economy, just factory drones forevermore into the future.

You can see this all over the literature; for one classic example see Brave New World.

"We have no alternative to school, ... far cries from the economies of scale afforded to the capitalistic society."

Self-directed learning with heavy computer involvement and individual tutoring follow-ups and check-ups without masses of children in lockstep. Serious re-thinks of the core curricula, which can only be described as inherited, not carefully-considered. The tech for this is currently rapidly developing, but we aren't there quite yet. But it'll be there long before society adjusts to the idea.

Interestingly, while schools have been out-of-step with what the economy needed for at least the last 30-40 years if Gatto is correct, it is arguable that we had no practical choice; there is no way that the sketch I provided above could have worked in 1980, the tech was simply not there no matter how much money you threw at it.

Yes, I am fully aware this is little more than a sketch. But this is just a HN comment, after all.

I'd also prescribe a healthy recognition of the fact that what matters is what sort of adult pops out, and not what stuff was "covered". The fact that geometry is in the curriculum is virtually irrelevant if effectively nobody remembers it when they are even 4 years out of school. A serious rethink should be based on this fact. Obviously, geometry is not critical to a society because regardless of how hard we cover it is school the citizenry in fact does not remember or understand it.

(Note: It is distinctly possible that when Marx claimed that capitalism would be dehumanizing and evil, that to the extent it was true, it was true because people read his works and figured if they weren't dehumanizing their workers they weren't doing it right. Was it all a self-fulfilling prophecy? Your knee-jerk answer is too simple, regardless of which way your knee jerked.)


Please don't do this:

You seem to be using Internet Explorer. I strongly suggest downloading Firefox. I think you'll like it better:

      · Firefox blocks pop-up windows.

      · It's more secure against viruses and spyware. 

      · It keeps Microsoft from controlling the future of the internet. 

      · It's better for web designers and developers. 

      · Features like tabbed browsing make reading webpages easier. 
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.


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


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


I just tried this on vanilla IE8, and the "button on the right" doesn't display at all, only the link to continue without Firefox. Perhaps they should have tested in IE?


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.


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."


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.


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...


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.


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/2010-03-15T00_11_48-...

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


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."


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.


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




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