[ExI] "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto

[Edward Haigh]

"The Case against Education" by Bryan Caplan has a similar argument that
schooling should stop after the Three R's, but this education would still
be state led and compulsory.

Most of his arguments are based on human capital vs human signalling (e.g,
would you rather hire someone who has a degree from Berkeley but didn't
really bother with learning, or someone without a degree but attended
Berkeleys lectures for free for four years).

He also argues that the amount of stuff people forget from when they leave
school is so large that we may as well not bother teaching them in the
first place. Based mainly on results of surveys of Americans being asked
basic maths and history questions - such as on the civil war.

I think he is a bit too extreme with how far he takes his argument but I do
recommend his book.

- Ed

On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 8:54 PM, Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jul 9, 2018, at 5:39 AM, SR Ballard <sen.otaku at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps somewhat tangential to many of the things currently discussed
> on the list, but has anyone ready the book "Dumbing Us Down" by John
> Taylor Gatto?
>
> An overly abbreviated premise of the book is that compulsory K-12
> education basically removes humanity from people, destroys the family,
> and obliterates all meaningful community. The solution is
> homeschooling (?) and/or the radical reduction of structured schooling
> to only include "The Three R's" so to speak, after a child shows an
> interest in learning them.
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts of this book? As much as Mr. Gatto
> claims that schools instill anti-intellectualism in children, his
> repeated digs at evolution, and his seeming worship of a horrifically
> polluted river he grew up near, combined with his theories that public
> schooling is the only reason we need modern medicine, seem to me to be
> equally anti-intellectual.
>
> It's a short book which I found while house-sitting for my cousin.
> It's the first book in quite a few years which has made me feel
> irrationally angry. Perhaps I have just misunderstood some central
> argument or opinion which would make the whole thing more tolerable.
>
>
> Maybe you might sublimate your anger into a longer review essay... By the
> way, what about this book:
>
> https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>    Sample my Kindle books at:
>
> http://author.to/DanUst
>
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>


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