Dumbing Us Down

Gatto was New York City Teacher of the Year three times before quitting in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he announced he was no longer willing to hurt children for a living. This collection of essays is his indictment of compulsory schooling — not bad schools, but school itself. His argument: the seven lessons school actually teaches are confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and that you are always being watched. Not the curriculum but the hidden curriculum — the message delivered by the structure itself regardless of what any individual teacher does. The most radical education critique written by someone who taught in the system for thirty years. Essential companion to Deschooling Society and the book that most honestly names what school is actually for.