I've kept this slashdot link around for a couple of years.  The books is entirely 
readable on-line in the link (I actually purchased a hardcopy.)  I think it is one 
of those print-on-demand things.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: The Underground History of American Education
Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 23:10:53 -0400

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

from the mandatory-daycare-free-prison dept.
Chris Acheson writes "John Taylor Gatto is a former New York City school teacher.
During his 30-year career, he has taught at 5 different public schools, has had
his teaching license suspended twice for insubordination, and was once covertly
terminated while on medical leave. He has also won the New York City Teacher of
the Year award three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year award once
during the final year of his career. The whole time he has been an outspoken
critic of the school system. Nine years after leaving his career, he published
The Underground History of American Education (full text available here), in
which he puts forth his insider's vision of what is wrong with American
schooling. His verdict is not what you'd expect: the school system cannot be
fixed, Gatto asserts, because it has been designed not to educate. Skeptical? So
was I." Read on for the rest of Acheson's review.

The true purpose of schooling, according to Gatto, is to produce an easily
manageable workforce to serve employers in a mass-production economy. Actual
education is a secondary and even counterproductive result since educated people
tend to be more difficult to control.

Over the course of the book, Gatto exposes many of the individuals,
organizations, and crises (both real and manufactured) that helped to make our
public school system what it is today. Such architects as Rockefeller, Carnegie,
Ford, and a handful of teaching and management experts sought to benefit directly
from a dumbed-down citizenry. Others contributed in a naive attempt at Utopian
social engineering, mostly unaware of the harm that they were doing. There was
never any master plan, though. The author puts it best:

     With conspiracy so close to the surface of the American imagination and
American reality, I can only approach with trepidation the task of discouraging
you in advance from thinking my book the chronicle of some vast diabolical
conspiracy to seize all our children for the personal ends of a small, elite
minority.

     Don't get me wrong, American schooling has been replete with chicanery from
its very beginnings: indeed, it isn't difficult to find various conspirators
boasting in public about what they pulled off. But if you take that tack you'll
miss the real horror of what I'm trying to describe, that what has happened to
our schools was inherent in the original design for a planned economy and a
planned society laid down so proudly at the end of the nineteenth century. I
think what happened would have happened anyway-without the legions of venal,
half-mad men and women who schemed so hard to make it as it is. If I'm correct,
we're in a much worse position than we would be if we were merely victims of an
evil genius or two.

Gatto maintains throughout the book that all individuals have an innate curiosity
and desire to learn. Examples are given in the first chapter of prominent
historical figures who prospered with little or no formal schooling. But I found
the examples of desire for substantive education on the part of "the masses" to
be most compelling:

     When a Colorado coalminer testified before authorities in 1871 that eight
hours underground was long enough for any man because "he has no time to improve
his intellect if he works more," the coaldigger could hardly have realized his
very deficiency was value added to the market equation.

The real function of the school system is not to empower people by giving them
knowledge, but to crush this instinct toward self-improvement before it makes the
workers too independent and troublesome. Another compelling example is the
"Jewish Student Riots" described in chapter 9:

     Thousands of mothers milled around schools in Yorkville, a German immigrant
section, and in East Harlem, complaining angrily that their children had been put
on "half-rations" of education. They meant that mental exercise had been removed
from the center of things.

The book does have a few problems. Gatto is by his own admission somewhat casual
about citing his sources. This is important because there are some assertions
made that many will find dubious. For example:

     Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and
Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the
United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered.

This would be a great fact to toss out when trying to convince someone that
schooling is unnecessary. But where does this statistic come from? What does
"wherever such a thing mattered" mean? Some readers may be willing to simply take
Gatto's word for it and accept this assertion, but skeptics will be left
unsatisfied. According to historical census data from 1840, the national average
literacy rate for white adults was indeed approximately 93%, and the literacy
rate for white adults living in Connecticut was 99.67%. Why not simply say that
the statistic refers to white adults? The omission hurts the author's credibility
in the eyes of a skeptical reader.

The other thing that I found disappointing is that Gatto doesn't discuss
solutions to the schooling problem as thoroughly as I wanted. Throughout the book
examples are shown of educational methods which have worked well. As I read, I
mulled these over, and anticipated that the final chapter (titled "Breaking Out
Of The Trap") would be a comprehensive look at these methods and ways to promote
their implementation. But that final chapter is mostly a collection of anecdotes.
Gatto does provide a short list of positive suggestions and a promise to cover
solutions more fully in a future book.

The picture that Gatto paints for us of our school system and society is
frightening, but I also found it comforting to see evidence that ignorance and
apathy are not the natural state of humanity. I found hope in the fact that
things were once different. Having a clearly defined problem that can be solved
is preferable to having a vague suspicion that something is wrong, but no clear
idea what it is.

The ideas presented in Gatto's Underground History have the potential to change
our society and our individual lives for the better. Even when we are trapped
within the system, knowing how it works and what it is really up to can help us
retain our wit and our humanity. If you are a student, if you are a parent, if
you know or care about anyone who is in school, or even if you are just concerned
about corporate and government control versus individual freedom, you need to
read this book.

You can purchase The Underground History of American Education from bn.com.


-- 
BT

Tracy Johnson
Justin Thyme Productions
Ye olde free telnet games at:
http://hp3000.empireclassic.com/
BELOW LINK UNAVAILABLE DUE TO AN ISP THAT CAN'T MAINTAIN A NAT.
(Thanks for nothin' ... BROADWING.)






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