John Gatto Prussian Education

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John Taylor Gatto (born December 15, 1935) is an American retired school teacher of 29 years and 8 months and author of several books on education. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions. Gatto was born in the Pittsburgh-area steel town of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. In his youth he attended public schools throughout the Pittsburgh Metro Area including Swissvale, Monongahela, and Uniontown as well as a Catholic boarding school in Latrobe. He did undergraduate work at Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia, then served in the U.S. Army medical corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Following army service he did graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva University, the University of California, and Cornell.
From Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

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Education

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• John
• Gatto
• Prussian
• education
• conformity
• individualism

[CanadianBeaver]

Peace and Love!

[fringeelements]

I disagree a little bit. I think the "higher order thinking" that he refers to needs fact mastery. It is through the collection of facts that the higher order emerges. Trying to come up with a higher order theory without having enough facts leads to BS, or worse yet, coming up with the theory and then scouring for facts.

Of course, even knowing what facts to gather requires a theoretical filter.

[AngryHateMusic]

Dead on with the multiple choice questions. What a crock of shit they are.

[SailfishSoundSystem]

Superb! 

[zezeoli]

There is a philosophical way of looking at public schooling politics.

The theory goes like this: the future is for 'doers' not 'thinkers'. In fact, too much knowledge and thinking leads to unhealthy hesitance & inactivity. More practically, it would preclude a high percentage of jobs currently carried out by some citizens.

Our society is eminently a firm of 'doers'..if you point it in the right direction, they assures tangible results!

[ixtasis]

wonderful. thank you

[35mm35]

I wouldn't call it utopia. I would call it a slave state.

[cshah2]

brilliant stuff :-)



[DatDat56]

I definitely could agree on the topic of the literacy test, it came to a point where I realized I could breeze through a book but not actually take anything from it.