This book was a collection of speeches. See JohnTaylorGatto.com. Gatto recently passed away.

Introductory note on Gatto: I like Gatto’s message, he promotes home schooling, reconnecting to the family and community, the importance of work, and helping youth pursue their interests. This said, he probably takes things a little far sometimes. Throughout my notes on Gatto’s work I will add analysis from my perspective, making what I think a more balanced approach to the message that we must make significant changes in how we approach education. Gatto is left wing on some points, right on others, but often more left than I’m comfortable with. In his calls for freedom, he may leave us with not quite enough structure and direction. He might overly-undermine our institutions. As a fellow homeschool advocate I appreciate the call for homeschool and changes to the public education system, but I also recognize that tradition and society are important and not to be lightly brushed away. In many ways, Gatto calls for a return to when education in America was great. I don’t support all the ideas in this book, but I’ll share a few I particularly appreciate, and expound on a few things.

Now for highlights & commentary:

 

Students need traditional education including privacy choice and freedom from surveillance. They don’t need a bell schedule. We need to get out of the kids’ way and give them space time and respect. These kids are unique and being genius is common.

Note: Gatto makes a lot of fuss about bell schedules and grades but there’s a positive side to those points as well. The kids can learn some responsibility to be at a certain place at a certain time and to do efficient work. Yes, the grading is quite arbitrary and that’s a big problem. In the real world you don’t get an A for effort, sometimes schools do that. Your employers will expect you to accomplish the task assigned to you. They don’t care why you couldn’t do it. So students do need to learn to execute tasks based on a set of instructions. Of course, as Gatto points out, there are drawbacks to being interrupted by bells all the time and to being graded on everything. End note.

Government schools are beyond saving.

No, kids don’t resist learning and no, learning to read is not hard

 

Dumbing Us Down: The Seven (Bad) Lessons You Get from Your School Teacher

(Ch. 1)

Lesson 1 is confusion. The way we teach is out of order, overwhelming and confusing.

Note: Perhaps ironically, it gets more complicated and scattered the more centralized it is. End note.

Rather than letting kids pursue an enthusiasm, we put on them all kinds of stuff.

Note: Kids need basics, and things of interest. They don’t need all the crazy stuff we push now. End note.

Teachers don’t teach kids the tools by which teachers and schools could be criticized, because students are being taught that everything said in school must be accepted.

Now home is only a ghost because both parents work. There’s too many job changes and too much ambition.

Note: Lots of job changes can indeed wear down a family causing more training requirements and extended hours to move into the new career, etc. At some point people can be satisfied financially and pursue other things, unless they have a mission to add something in that world beyond just increasing personal comforts. Life is more than meat. The secular world doesn’t recognize the value of non-material things. End note.

 

Lesson 2 is class position. The kids must stay in the classroom where they belong. Kids learn to have contempt for the lower classes and envy and fear for the higher classes. In schools today we have age segregation unlike anywhere in the world.

Note: And the one room classroom actually had several benefits we are missing out on. And youths do not interact with adults enough, and are intimidated by non-same-age peers. Homeschoolers are often famous for being able to look adults in the eye. End note.

They teach kids that the employers care about test scores or grades. But they don’t.

 

Lesson 3 is indifference. Kids are taught not to care much about anything. The lesson of a bell system is that nothing is worth finishing. They quickly drop whatever they’re doing and go on to the next station.

Note: Thomas Edison spoke about how he would focus on one thing, not lots of things. His schedule was quite sporadic, continuing on when he was onto something. The scripture comes to mind to seek the Lord while He is near (Isa. 55:6). End note.

 

Lesson 4 is emotional dependency. The kids have minimal rights seeking small moments of freedom on bathroom and water breaks. They operate on whatever the teacher says.

 

Lesson 5 is intellectual dependency. Students wait for the teacher to tell them what to do. Students learn that we must wait for other people better trained than ourselves to make the meaning of our lives.

The teacher says that evolution is a fact rather than a theory. Anyone who questions it is punished.

Of all the things we could study, we only study what the higher-ups say we can. There’s minimal curiosity allowed.

Parents never think their school is one of the bad ones because they were trained in the same bad way as their kids are being trained.

If our kids actually learn properly, they will learn how to make their own fun and the entertainment industry would suffer. Therapists would be out of clients. The food industry would suffer with people learning to make their own food. Much of law, medicine, engineering and clothing industries as well. Same with the teaching profession. If kids learn to be independent and not look to other people for their solutions, it’s in the best interest of the child, but not the best interest of those whose careers are built on dependency.

Note: I wouldn’t say that the industries themselves would go down but they would be innovated to better suit people’s needs. We would have a much more intelligent society in every way. People would learn to not rely on others all the time. The free market would still be in operation, but we would be less like sheep and prosperity would increase on every hand. But many with a limited view resist these positive changes as they would be nudged out of their comfort, and back into a competitive market. End note.

 

Lesson 6 is provisional self-esteem. The kid’s self-respect depends on expert opinion. They look to their exact percentage point grade. We tell the parents how satisfied they should be with their children. The report cards seem objective but they’re not. Kids judge themselves and their futures based on the judgments of strangers. The child’s personal philosophical system is not considered.

Note: Judgement is an important part of society, but he is right that grades are overly emphasized, learning under-emphasized, and that grades are often subjective. End note.

Lesson 7 is you can’t hide. You’re always watched. No private space, no private time, and minimal class change time. Children are required to tell on each other. Parents are required to tell on children.
Note: And children are encouraged to tell on parents in an Orwellian fashion.  End note.

Homework makes any unscheduled time to be directed so they can’t go learn about other things. No exploration, no apprenticing to someone wise in the neighborhood.

Originality and variety used to be commonplace in the United States a few generations ago. Social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross. Our citizenry was confident, independent, able to do much for themselves. They did this without the government being involved in every aspect of our lives, without institutions telling us how to think and feel.

Note: They did have the important and voluntary institution of religion. Religion has always played an important role in preserving liberty, promoting intelligence, and fighting selfish tendencies of the natural man. America has also always had the value of small government so they can  branch out and progress as they see fit. End note.

Literacy at the time of the American revolution was close to total.

Reading, writing and arithmetic only take about 100 hours to transmit as long as the audience is eager and willing to learn. The trick is to wait until they ask and then move fast. Millions of people teach themselves these things.

Rhetoric books from the 1850s were written in what today would be called the college level.

Since the civil war society has become increasingly under control. Large compulsory institutions want more and more.

Schools destroy communities by relegating the training of children to certified experts. That’s not how we grow up to be fully human. Aristotle taught that without an active community life, that there is no hope to become a healthy human being.

Note: When Aristotle spoke of man as a political animal, political referred to being involved in the local community. We need to be an important part of the community, not a number in a vast sea of people. Man will not be happy if we does not have meaning, and meaning comes from contributing to something one deems meaningful, such as one’s local community he interacts with the most. Of course today those communities can look different, but geographically local participation still brings significant meaning to life. End note.

Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography shows he was a man who had no time to waste in school.

Socrates’ Republic advocated for complete control.

We teach youth that there’s this mysterious good life if they compete to the fullest, but it’s quite divorced from normal life.

Note: It’s okay to teach that you can have certain comforts and privileges and opportunities by working hard, but it’s not right that we should entirely obsess over the career ladder and always be in a competitive state focused on materialism. End note.

Family, friends, seasons, ceremonies, curiosity, service, this is where we find happiness more so than some endless (monetary) competition.

Casual schooling has always been around, but now we have something else.

Note: Now we have highly intensive schooling which claims a monopoly on all truth and values. End note.

One big reason we made public schools was because we didn’t like the Catholic bias that a lot of immigrants brought with them.

Note: America has always been religious, and the state of Maryland was made by Catholics specifically. End note.

The school bureaucracy has grown immensely.

Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach. He did not like the professionalization of teaching, knowing the direction it would take. We don’t preempt the teaching function; it belongs to everyone in the community.

Note: Several accounts in the Book of Mormon say the learners and teachers all freely gave their time for each other and they all had day jobs aside from teaching. See Alma 1 for example. The passages are often specifically about preaching and teaching the gospel, but it’s not a stretch to broaden that to other kinds of teaching, particularly that of a moral or non-material nature. End note.

Schools teach kids to be indifferent to the adult world.

Kids now can’t concentrate on anything for very long and they have a poor sense of past and future.

We have divorced children from significant parental attention.

Kids now hate solitude and are cruel, dependent, passive, timid in the face of the unexpected, and addicted to distraction.

Schools exploit the fearfulness of children.

Note: We do need to train children to get good morals and character, but some ways of doing that are better than others. What we must not mistake is the idea that they’re already good and need no training. The natural man is an enemy to God. People do need to be trained. End note.

In our secular society school is the replacement for church and requires that its teaching be taken on faith.

Children should volunteer for the type of education that suits them even if that’s self-education like Benjamin Franklin.

Note: But if the child is faking it and just sits around all day, parents must intervene. End note.

Government schools now have a monopoly.

Note: This is basically true because monopolies are born when government is involved, preventing others to compete. In a free market, monopolies are never absolute, and can always be competed against. End note.

Schools prevent kids from keeping important appointments with themselves and with family to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity, love and service to others. Thirty years ago these lessons would still be learned in the time after school but now TV eats up a lot of that time. And the stresses of two parent incomes get in the way of natural child development.

Note: Often, even in today’s hard times, two parent incomes are not necessary when we’re willing to downsize our lifestyles in big ways. Like house size, number of vehicles, gourmet foods, number of subscriptions, etc. End note.

The problem is that we think we have a need to provide a certain level of lifestyle. But what we need is family time and so forth. It’s okay to make financial progress but make sure you don’t let go of what matters most.

School is a 12-year jail sentence where bad habits are learned.

Note: Learning bad habits and bad attitudes are likely the greatest risks of public education.

 

Dumbing Us Down: The Psychopathic School

(Ch. 2)

America is at the bottom of 19 industrial nations when it comes to school basics.

America’s teenage suicide is highest in the world and it’s mostly from kids of rich households.

American marriages are breaking up.

Without children and old people mixing in daily life, the community has no future or past. The term community hardly applies to how we interact; we live in networks and we’re all lonely because of it.

Schools are increasingly irrelevant in modern society. No one believes that great politicians are trained in those schools. No one believes that great builders or great poets are made because of classes they took in public school. No one really learns anything in school but to follow orders.

Note: It is good to learn to follow orders on some level, good to learn to keep a schedule, good to learn to turn things in on time, but there’s much more that we could be teaching them. School is supposed to be different than just a job. End note.

The school is psychopathic without a heart. The child in the middle of writing a poem must close his book and move on to the next class and learn that humans came from monkeys.

Note: Teaching kids they came from monkeys is particularly harmful, and can easily sap the motivation and meaning out of all they would have done. It is a lie and produces bad fruits. End note.

Compulsory public education has not led to an increase in overall literacy.

In their ability to think, children who school at home are typically 5 to 10 years ahead of their peers.

School cuts children off from diversity and variety. It cuts them off from their past and future. It forces them to live only in the present, like television. It even follows them into the sanctuary of the home making them do homework.

Kids today see that we value talking, so they talk all the time. The teachers talk all the time, and the TV talks all the time. Reading, writing and arithmetic are easily learned in cultures where that’s an obvious thing to do. (But we aren’t showing by our actions that we value those things.)

People used to be involved in nature and real adventures, but now we have school and television.

Note: Of course there is more to life than nature, cultivating the mind beyond basic senses is important, but schools often block children from learning many natural things they otherwise would learn.

At school children have no private time or space and are disciplined if they try to have individuality in how they use their time and space.

Note: Some limits and discipline are appropriate, but we are going entirely wrong directions and handling things often in entirely wrong ways. End note.

Family dining is a lost tradition.

Rich kids also have limited free time, taking lessons in things not their choice. (Kids need free time, no matter how good the lessons are.)

Life devoted to buying things is the worst pornography of all.

Note: He’s onto something here because pornography at its core is about buying unmitigated pleasure. Of course it destroys the soul and is worse than worthless. Our souls were not meant for constant pleasure consumption, not mindless stupor focused only on getting the next pleasure. The pornographer and the materialist both reduce all of life into the here and now, into the basic senses, and they live for the moment without concern about longterm consequences their actions have on themselves and others. End note.

Kids can’t focus very long on things. These days they can’t even on things they like to do, and this is in part because of the bell system, forcing them to go rapidly and repeatedly from one thing to the next rather than diving deep into anything.

Note: On a somewhat unrelated note, I’m reminded of the hilarious study that showed kids tend to fidget more when involved in uninteresting things than in interesting things. Go figure! Must be a mental illness. End note.

Kids are living only in the present now, not understanding how the past influences their lives. They are unable to focus on anything but the present moment.

Kids can’t deal with normal human intimacy because they’re trained on television bits programming them how to behave in unnatural ways.

Teachers materialistically grade everything, and the students become materialistic. The television mentors offer everything in the world for sale.

Note: It is correct that we should have some parts of life that are not highly scrutinized and calculated. And it’s true that constantly selling everything as we see on TV is unnatural – we need not be exposed to that much selling. This is one reason why TV watching is unnatural and dangerous. I would say there is a place for grading students in some circumstances, that there is a healthy amount of pressure that can and should be applied, but the schools have a habit of making everything about grades. This is probably because the kids aren’t interested in what they’re doing, so the grades area laid on heavily to operate as a threat to get them to comply with the intimidation of their whole future being on the line. End note.

Note: It’s better to have a collection of good family movies to be enjoyed from time to time than to turn on the TV and have the luck of the draw on what’s going to be shown with the endless manipulation of commercials. Of course the allure of television is that it’s basically free, whereas getting a collection of family movies does cost a little bit and could mean you don’t always get the newest thing right away. But when we get things for free it’s often just at a different cost. Cheap and free things are often more dangerous and expensive in the long term (like fast food). End note.

We rightly blame school and television on our kids’ problems because most of their time is spent with these things. We must debate the school issue until it is fixed or abandoned. We must address what we want our kids to learn and why. More money being pumped into this sick institution will only make it more sick. (More money just means it’ll do the wrong thing even more than it was previously.)

The ruling classes of Europe have used a functional education system for thousands of years. It is that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. The children often study alone, unguided, with problems to solve. Sometimes the challenge is risky, like getting a horse to gallop and jump. Learn how to do things like this and you’ll have great confidence in your ability to do anything. Children need to be trusted from an early age with independent study which takes place away from the institutional setting. Curriculum must be developed where children can develop private uniqueness and self-reliance. It works for rich and poor. We give the kids tools to make their independent time meaningful, not to just idle the time away with abstractions. One great practice is to get kids with workers to learn what life is like in various adult roles.

Note: Long have we bashed on children working with labor laws, minimum wage laws and so on. For whatever good we may have gained, we have lost the family business. We have lost meaningful apprenticeships, and we have probably made a lot of kids lose their sense of meaning and direction in life. We have cut off natural opportunities and funnelled children further into the one-size-fits-all institutions. End note.

When kids have hard community service, hundreds of hours of it, they appreciate it. It teaches them to see new ways and rethink goals and values.

School needs to include family as the main engine of education. Since 1650 people have been announcing that the purpose of schools is to break children away from families. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life.

Note: Another tool required to make the family more involved in education is to shorten the school-day, lessen the emphasis on extra-curriculars, and allow children more time at home. This time at home is particularly important for children under 8, who should probably not be away at school at all. End note.

Note: On the college level, many have specifically boasted about their goal to rid a boy of the beliefs of his father. End note.

Experts in education have never been right. Their solutions are expensive and self-serving and always involve further centralization.

Note: I remember taking education classes and the theme of the classes was always to point out that the solutions to societal problems always involve more centralization, bigger government, more taxation. End note.

We need democracy individuality and family in education, not the experts.

 

(Ch. 3 On Gatto’s Journey:)

In his childhood he learned from others in the community, and he had to be responsible and work.

In his early teaching career as a substitute he found a child who could read well but was in a lower class. He suggested that she should be in a higher class but the professional teachers scoffed at him and said he didn’t know things like the experts did. He insisted on having her tested and the administrators begrudgingly moved her up.

 

Dumbing Us Down: We Need Less School Not More

(Ch. 4)

Networks are no substitute for communities and families. They get mechanical, mass-produced solutions. Slow self-directed solutions are superior. A community is a group of families who are highly involved, not just relying on experts. The network is about suppressing most parts of yourself. When people in networks suffer, they suffer alone. Communities are where people face each other in various circumstances throughout life. You’ll forget classmates, but you’ll never forget family members.

Aristotle differed from Socrates in that Socrates was about experts. Aristotle was about individual experience, arguing with professionals and telling them what you want, not just getting what they give you.

Mass commercial entertainment is as addictive as any drug, and whatever the schools don’t mess you up with, the TV will do the rest.

We grade people the way we grade vegetables.

Note: It is true that when we adopted the Prussian method of education, we left behind other more natural and human methods. End note.

No one survives the public schools with their humanity intact – not the kids, not the teachers, not the parents.

Networks can get a job done but they can’t nurse people emotionally. It’s why the therapist industry is booming. Computers are condensed to be rational and therefore very limited and therefore will never replace humans. (Note: And whenever computers try to replace humans they do a terrible job at it.) Networks make a pretense that they are communities so we will use them, but they are not communities. In a network you feel lonely even while standing in a crowd of people. (Note: Many songs today point out this 21st century irony of standing alone in a crowded room.)

Note: This is why the Bible calls for smaller cities where you have a name and a role. End note.

The network and the people you associate with don’t really care about your life. All they care about is what they get from you. Real caring is more than simple companionship in shared interests.

Note: Many people are now approaching romantic relationships in a networking style. Or rather, they are approaching physical intimacy as more of a business transaction than a symbol of permanent and complete unification. They are together, but they are not ‘one flesh.’ They are not one in mind and heart. They have not created a new thing in their union, and not just in the sense that they haven’t had children together. Children are the symbol of complete unity, and its no wonder children are falling out of fashion in this culture of emotional isolation and spiritual agnosticism. End note.

First there was family, then there was community, then there were institutions made to serve communities. But now these institutions are commanding us like kings. At least under kings you can do what you want out of their reach. But now with technology not even the sanctuary of the home is private and safe. Institutional fathers are treating us like children.

Gatto doesn’t like the saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” Note: He thinks this is putting the institution above the family. I don’t think that’s what it means. I think it’s a way of saying, ‘Don’t rely on the state to be your daddy. Instead, be helpful and independent. When people need help, don’t point at the government, point at yourself.’ End note.

The institutions isolate us by age and other separating mechanisms. We now have a nation of institutions, not a nation of communities.

Note: It is the strangest thing to live in a town where you don’t know your neighbors, and everyone just drives off to work every day. Some of them will show up to church on Sunday out of moral religious obligation, but they’re not really interested in knowing who you are, they’re just doing their time. We aren’t used to socializing anymore. This could be what Russel Nelson intended when he changed ‘home teaching’ into ‘ministering.’ Get away from checking the boxes, and get your heart turned toward the welfare of your neighbors. End note.

When you’re alienated from community life you develop an indifference to just about everything. One evidence of this is that most of us live in urban areas, only 50% are registered to vote, and only 50% of those actually vote. What used to be a duty is now very optional.

Note: People very interested in the community will be very interested in voting. Another peculiarity is that most people only focus on national elections, when lots of work, indeed most political work, is to be done on a more local level. End note.

Both the schools and the workplaces now have minimum human variety. Institutions don’t have a conscience because they measure by counting methods.

Note: It’s okay to have institutions focused on turning a profit, and sometimes its no tea party, but most employers recognize the need to treat their workers fairly and as generously as possible. In a free market, word will spread about which company is better to work there, and people will vote with their feet. Ford was known for the generous wages he gave his employees voluntarily, and his workers were committed to doing good work for him to keep their jobs. End note.

Many of today’s institution’s goals are not to accomplish what they’re made for, their goal is to survive. To keep people’s jobs. The postal service’s goal is not to deliver mail but to exist. The military’s goal is not to defend but to exist. This is why Socrates condemned teaching as a profession.

Note: Socrates was on to something here. Professionalizing teaching often saps the life out of teaching, fills the profession with people who are just there to collect a paycheck, and ultimately turns places of learning into ineffective detention centers. And it pulls children more and more away from their natural and most vested teachers, their parents. End note.

Note: Many great thinkers including Socrates and Aristotle have not charged for their teachings, but have had a day job to provide for their needs, and chose to live a very humble modest lifestyle with little money in order to properly carry out their teaching role. They had sufficient for their needs, but not for every want, because they focused on their chief wish, to find and spread important truths. Whether that be working as a tutor or a builder, etc., they shared their philosophies and their ideas freely. End note.

School systems don’t educate, they ‘school.’ Despite the great failures of the public school system, we keep it alive just because it gives jobs and stuff. They focus on grades more than skill, which doesn’t prepare them for the real world. Yet the schools to keep pushing for their message of school as a recipe for economic success.

Note: Naturally today we have an inflated market for college degrees in the workplace, but it remains true that having that degree does open employment opportunities, even if it is based on the game rather than real skill. Many employers are heading in the direction of loosening requirements for college degrees and are favoring on-the-job training for people who can demonstrate good work ethic.

Businesses use performance and private judgment when they decide who to hire. They look for skill, not grades.

What is the purpose of mass education? It’s not reading, writing and arithmetic because when done well, those things only take a hundred hours to learn and each is readily self-taught at the appropriate time. So why are we locking kids up with strangers involuntarily for 12 years? Is it so a few of them can get rich? It doesn’t even do that.

Education is about self-discovery and for that you need to be attached to a place. And how is mass education going to accomplish this by locking us away from the world?

Note: We also need to get to know the community to see which services are in demand so we can see where we are going to contribute. So it’s harder to get an idea of your vocation if you’re stuck in a building all day. End note.

In communities, everyone is a special person who has an impact on the others in the community. Fake community is where you live surrounded by strangers. You are anonymous and you want to be anonymous in case of danger.

In a fake community, the young and old are regarded as a nuisance. And the community problems are someone else’s problem that someone else should fix.

True communities have limits. But fake communities, like institutions, always expand. More is not always better, but it’s always more profitable for the networkers.

In the community, if you don’t keep your word everyone finds out and there’s consequences. In the institution lying and cheating are the norm.

Whistleblowers don’t get hired because having served the public interest once, they might do it again.

In the community the family is extended to include honorary brothers and sisters. The obligation to others extends beyond the home. Institution groups like fraternities appear strong but they’re really quite weak. They advertise themselves as being what we need, but they aren’t.

They want to extend school to make the school into a family. But the school is already the reason we have weak families separating children from their parents and taking family time. Schools cause family failure and then the schools blame the family. It’s like someone taking an undeveloped photograph too early and blaming photography.

Whatever education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist. Education should allow you to find values that will be your roadmap through life. Education should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves what he’s doing and where he is.

There shouldn’t be any single idea that dominates all the time of the young.

Interrupt kids with bells all the time and they’ll learn that nothing is really important.  Make kids beg for a right to use the toilet and they’ll become liars. Ridicule them and they’ll retreat from association. Shame them and they’ll find ways to get even.

If we are to develop original expression, we need some relief from government surveillance.

Schools are about intimidation and suppression. It’s about reward and threat – carrots and sticks. Grades are about servitude, not education or freedom. (Note: At least, that’s often what it devolves into. End note.)

Mass education is picking our pockets, just as Socrates predicted. You can recognize real education because it doesn’t cost very much. It doesn’t depend on elaborate gadgets.

Note: Hiring tutors and finding good materials can have a high market value. But yes, ultimately, the main thing one must invest to become educated is time, not money. End note.

Bertrand Russell saw that mass schooling was a scheme to artificially deliver national unity by eliminating individual variation and by eliminating the forge that produces variation, namely the family. He saw that schooling makes kids anti-intellectual, superstitious, without self-confidence, and generally with less inner freedom.

Mass education is a shortcut to artificial unity that we began around the time of the civil war. There was fierce opposition to it for about 30 years but in the late 1800s they accomplished it. They said mass education was the one right way and ever since been trying to figure out what to do with the children, and they still don’t know.

Robert Frost said fences make good neighbors. The only way we can learn to live together in a community is by knowing how to live apart. Only when you feel good about yourself can you feel good about others.

Note: And on a somewhat related note, GK Chesterton pointed out the motif of the beauty and the beast story: that for someone to be lovable they must be loved. End note.

We have no choice but to privatize the entire education system. Decertify teaching. Let anyone who has a mind to teach bid for customers. Trust the free market system!

 

Dumbing Us Down: An American Solution to the School Problem: The Congregational Principle

(Ch. 5)

They say there’s one right answer for everything. Homogenization. But that wasn’t the case in colonial New England. (It still isn’t.)

In the free market, bad ideas about education are quickly and naturally corrected.

The people who went to church chose their own leaders. It wasn’t some high up person. That was the sole criteria of governance. You made people want to go to church.

Note: Each church or each stake or group of churches in a region should operate with much more authority and independence, with less centralization. If we’re not all forced to be on the same level, we can naturally go to the level that best suits us. It’s a hard balance, you do want unity throughout the church as a whole, but there must be local flexibility, and I fear we have swung too far in the direction of ‘I just go by the book’ (as in, the centralized handbook of policies and procedures). If a group of saints wants to build up Zion, let them do so. If a different stake wants to live like Babylon, let them do so. There are basic rules about what can get a person kicked out of the church and what can get a person into a temple, but allow local flexibility. A new congregation in Cameroon Africa shouldn’t be identical to a veteran stake in Utah County. Let the veterans get bold, and let the new converts sip milk. Don’t enforce a worldwide policy of milk, or you lose those who need meat. God’s unconditional love isn’t the only message (or the only truth) a Christian ever needs to hear. And the missionary message to the Baptist and the Buddhist need to be quite different. And a curriculum that works well in one place might not do the job in another. End note.

Note: On a related topic, if we want to separate students, they should be with peers of similar skill, not just of similar age. Many kids stop trying because they are embarrassed that they don’t know what their peers do, and would be better off learning with a younger group on their level, then they would actually make progress. But the trendies think age is the single most important factor. In this failure, the administrators base things on feelings (they don’t want to hurt a kids’ feelings by having with with non-same-age-peers), rather than facts (the fact of where the child stands in his educational level). End note.

In the American colonies a new aristocracy of expertise arose. It wasn’t about who you were, but what you were good at.

The Congregationalists in New England eventually embraced the Unitarianism. (They were open to change in the right direction.)

In New England there was local preaching about local issues.

Note: Preaching about local issues solves many problems. But today people separate their religious lives from their day-to-day lives. It allows people to completely remove religion from their life by just going to a church on a Sunday. At the pulpit you can allude to something, but you can’t ever say it outright. It’s the era of politically correct church. Don’t talk about any real human shortcomings or any real pressing issues that the people are facing. Just make general platitudes and feel good statements. We all sit there and wonder about current issues, and its the one thing no one is allowed to talk about. We need revival, we need boldness, we need applicable sermons! We need those filled with the spirit of God to get up and preach, and let the spirit convince the congregation that the path they have outlined is indeed the will of God! It seems the home is our last refuge, the one place we can still do this. Society used to be more religions, it used to allow publicly now what is largely only tolerable in the home. Of course the left is coming for our homes to, always attacking the family, always giving cash and privileges to those who want more daycare, more divorce, and less home educating. End note.

When everyone is involved, like being their own priest, it leads to truth. There needs to be dialect. Central planners don’t like dialect because it gets rid of the ‘one right way’ of doing things. Bertrand Russell said the modern United States is the only country that deliberately avoids teaching its children to think dialectically.

Note: Moses said would to god that everyone were a prophet. God’s system is to empower each home with priesthood, with the Holy Ghost, with independent direction, and to give some basic guidelines from the church. Often we aren’t ready for that, but we are running out of time, and many will fall as we move away from more structure outside the home. End note.

You need dissonance for quality of life. You need to be able to deviate from government rule. You need private ownership and individual choice. New England towns were able to exclude those they didn’t like. You chose who you worked with. They sorted themselves into a way that worked for them. They shut out people whose dispositions were hurtful to them, whose society did not work well with them. These early towns were like selective clubs or colleges. They narrowed down human differences to a level that could be managed humanely. If you have to accept everyone, then an operation quickly becomes paralyzed by fatal disagreements. This is why everyone needs to be their own priest, their own ruler. Individuals who can make decisions.

By taking care of your own business, you magically take care of public business as well. (Adam’s ‘Invisible Hand’) Global thinking is not possible. Hardly anyone knows about the whole planet. You can’t think about something you don’t know. What we do know is little parts of it. Tyrants do global thinking and it leads to chaos. The only real way to do good is to think and act locally. For an act to be good it must be in accordance with the genius of the place. It requires local knowledge, skills and local love that almost none of us have and can’t be obtained by thinking globally. You get local love only by local fidelity.

Yes, there was religious discrimination in the New England colonies but eventually they figured out how to be quite liberal. And they did this without any government legislation. They changed without being forced. Local choice is self-correcting. Government schools today make a monopoly, insisting on certain rigid structures. When people can vote with their feet about where to attend, the free-market fixes everything. Rotten congregations or towns soon empty as people don’t want to be there, and good ones grow as people do want to be there.

Note: We see what actually matters to people by how they act when they are free, much more than supposed values the left says people have. The left uses force because they don’t actually represent the value of the people. End note.

Yes, there’s local tyranny but you’re a lot better off dealing with that than dealing with a centralized juggernaut tyranny. A nationwide curriculum, even though well intended, has the opposite effect, stifling creativity, stifling innovation, and preventing local adaptation.

When the government gets in the way, things get worse. The government trying to help the black community has made them worse off now than in the ’60s.

Women entering the workplace has its consequences, such as sterility and suicide and mental illness. When only men worked, families had the same buying power as when both mom and dad worked in the 1990s. The biggest problem is it destroys the home when women are in the workplace, the children are raised by strangers.

Note: When women entered the workforce, people saw the family had more money, so they charged more money. So the cost of food, homes, and everything else went up to match the new workforce. If we would have kept mother raising her children rather than raising some boss’ profits, things wouldn’t have become so unaffordable for a single breadwinner. End note.

Narcotics were never an epidemic until legislation came prohibiting their use. Compelling people to do something guarantees they will do it poorly or indifferently. Unless you’re willing, as the army is, to suspend human rights and use any degree of intimidation necessary. Don’t legislate something unless you’re willing to enforce it by the sword.

Now education is a big bureaucracy. Hundreds of agencies prop up the government monopoly on schooling. Despite colossal failures, the schools keep growing. They are not responding to the market. Our schools only succeeds because they use the police power of the state to fill their classrooms. The prohibition of choice has torn down our moral fabric. The negative consequences of alcohol prohibition are nothing compared to the school choice prohibition we are currently living in!

Those who profit from the compulsory schooling program ensure that our children will not get an education. People like those who write the textbooks and supply school materials.

Congregationalists understood that profound things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone. People needed to work out their own local destinies.

When you have time to think about it and work it through, you’ll find a better way to deal with differences then exclusion. But if people are ordered to change, to abandon their culture and have compulsory schools, the people get hardened and seek revenge. They turn into mindless people fit only to build the pyramids for someone else or to watch simplified television fantasies.

The congregational principle which we keep missing is that people are less than whole unless they voluntarily gather themselves into groups of souls in harmony. People must pursue individual family and community dreams consistent with their private humanity. Only slaves are gathered by others.

The dark side of the American dream is the hope for a quick fix and easy way out. That some government policy will fix everything. (Note: Looking to government to take care of us is the opposite of the original American dream. End note.) We believe there’s easy money, easy health, easy beauty, easy education, if only the right incantation (or government policy) can be found. Behind the magic is an image of people as machinery that can be built and be repaired. We think all we have to do is fire a few villains, either symbolically or literally depending on the century. If people are machines, then the schools are just to make the machines more reliable with standard interchangeable parts. American schools teach the people are machines by their methodology. Bells ring. Qualities are reduced to a numbering system.

The civil war demonstrated the futility of regimentation.

We cannot grow to maturity in little flowerpots. We wait for someone to tell us what to do but no one does. The government lies as a matter of policy.

Our school system is based on the lie that there’s one right way and experts can be awarded the permanent direction of the enterprise of education. This is inaccurate because the changing times and places and such render expertise irrelevant as soon as it is anointed.

The caste system we use in schools is repugnant to America’s founding principles. (Note: When we advance kids based on age rather than merit, this looks more like a caste system one can’t alter. We must recognize the limits of the age-segregation system. End note.)

Education and schooling are two separate things. Today we have schooling but not education. Our kids are failing at even basic educational skills.

Kids used to be able to escape school after school but now television is the second school and there’s almost no escape. Even if we find a way to fix all this, we’ll suffer for generations from the damage that’s already been done.

Good friends make good neighbors. Encourage experimentation. Trust children and families to know what’s best for themselves. Stop the segregation of the children and the aged-structured walled compounds. Involve everyone in the community in the education of the young. Look for solutions and always accept a personal solution in place of a corporate one.

Everyone has a private appointment with themselves to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. The mandatory school policies don’t short circuit this – much of learning must be individual. In less than 100 hours a person can become totally literate and a self-teacher. Don’t be panicked by scare tactics into surrendering your children over to experts. It’s a fraud and a scam to claim that a teacher needs to be certified. Let anybody teach who wants to. Give families back their tax money to pick and choose. The parents are the best shoppers for their children’s education – all they need is their money back to do it.

Note: I meet mothers who are afraid to homeschool because they don’t have a teaching license. Gatto is right, that is a scam to limit competition! End note.

Note: On the point of letting children choose for themselves this is correct. But you must understand it in context. It doesn’t mean that a kid should go wild and crazy. It means guiding them and setting limits and offering them a variety of good choices while restricting inherently vulgar and vain pursuits. For some great examples of how to apply these principles, see the collapse of parenting by Dr Leonard Sax. End note.

 

Afterward:

Bells insult, and standardized tests plague the schools, breaking people down from being their best selves.

Note: There is a place for standardized testing, but perhaps not a universal place, and perhaps something to be more based in opportunity, less based in stigma of economic consequences akin to a criminal record if you don’t do well on them. End note.

The schools are working very well at their intended purpose of being a mass production centralized economy. You can’t grow up under total management. The school system makes people fragmented so they’re easier to manage.

This used to be a land where every person knew how to build a shelter, grow food and entertain one another. But now. thanks to public schooling, we are permanent children.

Gatto credits his usefulness to his parents and to growing up in a place where anybody who got into someone else’s business was punched. He calls it a libertarian upbringing.

Note: Children need structure as well. But it is fair to say that in many cases, our children’s lives are over-scheduled, and and streamlined into a one-size-fits-all path to success. End note.

Gatto calls for essential solitude and for making educational retreats for such. No scheduled agenda, classes or planned recreation.

Note: You don’t see kids doing as much spontaneous sports organized and regulated by themselves anymore. Now it’s mostly all managed and controlled by the adults, and it’s wearing us all out. Unplug them from electronics, cancel formal extra-curriculars, and we might be surprised at what they come up with and the skills that come from that.