Gatto in turn praises homeschooling, believing children schooled in the home to be “five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers” (p. Gatto points out how little the public schools are accomplishing, referencing a Ted Kennedy paper saying that the state literacy rate was 98% “prior to compulsory education” (p. As he says, “In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church” (p. Not only do they teach a secular worldview, but they also seek to function like a church. Gatto also suggests that the school system interferes with church. That’s why I say we need less school, not more” (p.
What kids truly need is time with their parents: “The feeding frenzy of formal schooling has already wounded us seriously in our ability to form families and communities, by bleeding away time we need with our children and our children need with us.
Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop-then they blame the family for its failure to be a family” (p. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other’s lives. “a major cause of weak families and week communities. The schools are so bad in this regard that he says “the central function of schools” has been to “break children away from parents” (p. Gatto believes one of the main problems with public schooling is that the state locks children away from community and family-“No large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force open the idea of ‘school’ to include family as the main engine of education” (p. Though only five chapters and 95 pages, Gatto forcefully makes his claim that America’s public school system is a complete disaster that needs to be done away with.
Originally published in 1992, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schoolingis a collection of essays and speeches by Gatto on public education. Having seen things firsthand, Gatto is in a position to understand just how bad America’s public schools are. For that reason alone, Dumbing Us Down is an intriguing book. John Taylor Gatto is a critic of America’s public school system who comes from an interesting perspective, as he taught in New York City’s public schools for over 30 years.
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