Dumbing Us Down?
Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down was one of the first books I read when I made the decision to home school my kids, and many of the ideas in there are still very present in my view of education. I think that he was a teacher himself and saying the things that I had secretly felt but never examined was what made the book even more powerful to me.
I wasn’t the only one influenced by him of course. But it seems that besides urging new moms such as myself to want something different Dumbing Us Down also influenced a group of high school students to demand something different. After all, they are the ones having to deal with the dumbing down of their educational system. Check out this video I found online called Dumbing Us Down: The American Tragedy. It is inspiring in that some students are looking at the failing school system they are stuck in and asking questions, and also a little horrifying when you see the results on the screen. Teens who know who Paris Hilton is immediately but have little to no clue who Mahatma Gandhi is or why he is famous. The video is a couple years old, but still worth thinking about today.
Here is the video itself, I would love to hear (read) your thoughts on this.
If you are unfamiliar with Gatto I cannot recommend enough that you start with reading his “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher“ and watch this short documentary from the early 90’s called Classrooms Of The Heart.
education, schools, Dumbing Us Down, John Taylor Gatto, video
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