On Nov. 8th we had the honor of speaking with educational expert, John Taylor Gatto, about the current state of the American educational system.
Some startling (and scary) educational statistics to consider……
1 in 5 American Children Drops Out Of High School
Some schools the graduation rate is only 50% ….. or worse. Some a whole lot worse (Detroit 25%, Indianapolis 30%, Cleveland 34%).
Every year approx. 1.2 million students (that’s 1,200,000 children) drop out of school.
If the minority student drop out rate were ONLY as bad as the white student drop out rate our GDP in 2009 would have been $310-525 Billion Dollars higher.
Why are the rates so bad?
Why can’t we fix it?
You can’t say it’s money. We’re spending more money than ever before on education (both in terms of real dollars and as a % of our GDP)
Those questions are hard enough, but what about the kids that aren’t dropping out? What about the kids that ARE sitting in the classrooms ….. are they getting quality educations?
What REALLY is the point of the modern American education system?
These are some of the same questions that we had when we spoke with John Taylor Gatto ….. and he’s not exactly a huge fan of how we’re educating our kids these days.
Now, who is this John Taylor Gatto? Some crank who sits on the outside and throws stones at those really doing the work?
Nope.
He was a teacher for over 30 years, 3 time NY City Teacher of the Year and retired as the New York State Teacher of The Year.
He taught in poor and affluent schools and in 1991 … he finally had enough and quit in a pretty unusual way. The letter below is what he submitted and saw published on July 25, 1991 in the Wall Street Journal.
I Quit, I Think
Originally published in The Wall Street Journal, July 25th, 1991
by John Taylor Gatto
I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think.
I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.
I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can,t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.
An exaggeration? Hardly. Parents aren’t meant to participate in our form of schooling, rhetoric to the contrary. My orders as schoolteacher are to make children fit an animal training system, not to help each find his or her personal path.
The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the faith that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.
That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its “scientific” presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of biology.
It,s a religious idea and school is its church. New York City hires me to be a priest. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.
Socrates foresaw that if teaching became a formal profession something like this would happen. Professional interest is best served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating laity to priesthood. School has become too vital a jobs project, contract-giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be “re-formed.” It has political allies to guard its marches.
That’s why reforms come and go-without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.
David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can,t tell which one learned first — the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I will label Rachel “learning disabled” and slow David down a bit, too.
For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won,t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, “special education.” After a few months she’ll be locked into her place forever.
In 26 years of teaching rich kids and poor, I almost never met a “learning disabled” child; hardly every met a “gifted and talented” one, either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by the human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.
That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation.
There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen–that probably guarantees it won’t.
How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum, or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn, or deliberate indifference to it.
I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work, I think.
If you think that’s interesting you’ve got to hear our interview with Mr. Gatto where we cover this letter …. and a whole lot more.
Politicians are always talking about education and the sacrifices we need to make for future generations. Mr. Gatto fought these fights in the trenches (both classroom and school politics) for over 30 years and was regarded as one of the best in the business. His thoughts and opinions are worth listening to.
John Taylor Gatto Related Links
- John Taylor Gatto Biography
- Against School, by John Taylor Gatto
- Multimedia – John Taylor Gatto
- John Taylor Gatto – Prologue
- The Underground History of American Education
- John Taylor Gatto – Challenging the Myths of Modern Schooling
- John Taylor Gatto – Dumbing Us Down
Related Articles & Stories We Used As Reference This Week
- Report: Low Graduation Rates in Many City School Districts – ABC News
- ‘High school dropout crisis’ continues in U.S., study says – CNN.com
- Editorial – Dropout Factories – NYTimes.com
- High School Dropout Crisis Threatens U.S. Economic Growth and Competiveness, Witnesses Tell House Panel | Press Releases | Committee on Education and Labor
- Miller: New Report Shows Too Many States Weakening Education Standards | Press Releases | Committee on Education and Labor
- Economic Scene – U.S. Colleges Are Failing in Getting Students to Graduate – NYTimes.com
- The Condition of Education
- National Center For Education Statistics: Fast Facts
- National Center For Education Statistics: Highlights
- Archived: 10 Fact About K-12 Education Funding
- Education Spending Chart in United States 1994-2014 – Federal State Local
- USATODAY.com – U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores
- Expenditures of educational institutions related to the gross domestic product, by level of institution: Selected years, 1929–30 through 2005–06
- Education Spending 1929 – 2007
- 2 months into school year, many Detroit students remain without textbooks, teachers lack supplies | Detroit News – - MLive.com
After the interview I was able to speak with Mr. Gatto a bit off air. In our conversation (more of which I’ll discuss in a later post) he HIGHLY recommended the following book by James Bach (son of Richard Bach ~ Author of, amongst other titles, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
I’ve added to my Amazon Wish List and look forward to grabbing it soon ….
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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