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sakusha's review
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
A Different Kind of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto is a collection of essays, with all but one being by the author. They are about how current required schooling does a bad job of true educating. The purpose of schooling is not to give intellectual training, but to produce robots who are easily controllable and predictable (Gatto, 73). Compulsory schooling created “loyalty to a principle of abstract central authority, and no serious rival—whether parents, tribe, tradition, self, or God would be welcome in school” (Gatto, 176-177). In contrast, the purpose of educating is to create whole human beings. “To be educated is to understand yourself and others, to know your culture and that of others, your history and that of others, your religious outlook and that of others” (Gatto, 55). For the most part, I agree with Gatto’s opinions. Throughout this paper, I will discuss the things I agree and disagree with.
In Gatto’s essay called “School Books and the Hidden Curriculum,” he discusses the origins of compulsory schooling. Americans invented compulsory schooling because they feared Irish and Italian immigration; those cultures valued family closeness over material rewards. Compulsory schooling would teach kids that they (the kids) did not belong to their parents, and therefore should not obey them (their parents), but the state instead. The New England Primer (circa 1680) instructed children that “one of the three signs of true salvation was adoption,” so “the changeover from children as property of God to children as property of the state was easy to make” (Gatto, 153). Gatto believes that the reason families are falling apart is because parents are contradicted by the state.
Schools today are bad because they are compulsory and monopolized by the government (or at least the public ones are). Almost everyone in the U.S. could read, write, and do math at the time of the American Revolution. Now kids read less fluently, and only a minority of kids in New York can add, subtract, multiply, and divide by the ninth grade (Gatto, 24, 60). Compulsory schooling works like compulsory military; there is less interest and more of a discipline problem when the people are forced to be there. By forcing learning, compulsory schooling has the effect of getting kids to hate learning and be less likely to ever try it again after they graduate. “Only one person in ten reads more than one book a year after they graduate from our schools” (Gatto, 95). I was forced to read many books in college. Sometimes I would have to read for twelve hours a day just to get my daily assignments done. So when summer vacation came each year, I didn’t want to have anything to do with reading. I had a list of books I wanted to read, but I wouldn’t read them until after I graduated; college made me so sick of reading that I didn’t want to spend my summer breaks doing more of the same.
Gatto says that the purpose of school must be changed from a place that teaches obedience to a place that teaches adventure and independence. One day a week should be devoted to each of the following: independent study, community service, and field curriculum. “The two days spent in the classroom should be dedicated to tackling great themes” (Gatto, 19). He thinks it is unlikely that schools will ever be reformed in this way, because too many people will be threatened by the change. As a teacher, Gatto himself practiced what he preached.
One of the essays in the book was by a thirteen year old student of Gatto’s who wrote about what it was like to be in his class. It was interesting that the student agreed so strongly with Gatto, saying that education means self-discovery, and one can’t discover one’s real self by following orders or imitating what’s on TV. I was surprised that Gatto’s school allowed him to let kids go out on their own so much. It was not mentioned what subject Gatto was supposed to be teaching. Was he an English teacher? If so, what time was there for learning English if his students were out of the classroom three out of five days a week? And I wonder how Gatto can be so confident that the kids will actually be doing educational activities while they are out and not doing drugs or vandalizing property? Many of Gatto’s essays preach about the benefits of independent study, community service, and field curriculum. That’s fine and dandy for kids who already know reading, writing, and arithmetic like Gatto’s seventh graders, but what about seven year olds? He doesn’t mention at all how he expects younger kids to learn the three R’s.
The third grade teacher at the school I work at gave her students an independent study project. She told each of her students to come up with something they were interested in, research it on their own outside of school, and give a presentation to the class about it. When I first heard of this, I thought it was too hard for third graders to do. Filling out daily worksheets for homework is so much easier; I know I would probably prefer doing worksheets to doing an independent project, no matter how old I was. But the point of school work shouldn’t be about what is easy to do. It should be about actual learning. And independent projects certainly teach more than filling out mindless worksheets. Independent projects encourage kids to find out what they are interested in, to learn more about it without being dependent on a teacher to tell them what to do, and to display what they learned in a presentation.
Even when kids “are offered real work to do, most drift back to the secure meaninglessness of busy work. . . . ‘Just tell me what to do,’ they say through gritted teeth” (Gatto, 94). I can relate to that even as an adult. I feared getting a job for the first time, because there was so much uncertainty about what I would be doing and how. I felt like I wanted to be given commands, because it is so much easier to just do what I am told. Doing things on my own and making my own decisions has the frightening possibility of mistakes or failure, embarrassment or humiliation. I would have liked my school to actually teach me how to make it in the real world instead of teaching me to be obedient and submissive. Then I might have been more prepared and confident when I actually did strike out on my own to make a living.
One of the major problems with students today is their inability to hold interest in anything for very long. Gatto believes that this is caused by school’s “cacophony of ringing bells and announcements, and by endless interruptions for testing, counseling, and special events” (Gatto, 159). All of us know of the bell system in middle school and high school—how it forces us to go to one subject and learn it for about fifty minutes, then at the ring of the bell, go to the next class and learn that one for another fifty minutes. It does not matter whether students are done with their current assignment or not; they are all forced to move to the next class and start working on another assignment. Sometimes if a teacher catches students working on something from another class, s/he scolds them. I do not remember being interrupted a lot in my elementary school, but I sure notice it at the elementary school I work at now. Elementary schools do not have bells for anything but recess, but the teachers still interrupt students from working on whatever they are working on so that they can move to the next subject. Unlike the higher grades’ fifty or so minutes per subject, I have noticed that the elementary kids at the school I work at now sometimes only get fifteen minutes to work on something before they have to stop and move on. They usually never finish their work because of the frequent interruptions. In addition to the interruptions of three to four recesses a day and the teacher teaching different subjects, the kids also have to leave class for things like private tutoring, special education, music lessons, physical education, assemblies, library visits, and lunch. It’s a wonder how the kids learn anything at all!
Gatto believes that it is wrong to force kids to learn a certain subject when they really want to learn something else. Television and school control children’s lives and reduce the wisdom they could have. Because of that, kids grow up to lack curiosity, kindness, and interest. Most of them do not want to be in school (Gatto, 26). That is one reason why they do not learn. People learn best when they are interested. I agree that modern kids lack interest and curiosity because of compulsory schooling and television, but also because of video games. Kids in the past learned to read because reading books was the major form of entertainment. Today that is not the case. Modern kids are exposed at a young age to the instant gratification of TV and video games. Kids probably feel that they do not need to read in order to have fun, so what is the point? Electronic fun is immediate. Reading takes work. It is obvious why kids lack interest and curiosity.
I didn’t start watching TV until I was seven years old, and I didn’t start playing video games until I was thirteen. I was a highly imaginative child. I was good at reading, but I didn’t like it. I preferred to make up my own stories and act them out, whether with my Barbies at home or by myself at recess. I only read when I was bored, but I was rarely bored. For the most part, that is still true today. Throughout school, I didn’t see the point of learning most of what I was taught. I didn’t like the other kids I was forced to be around. I would have rather written books, which I started doing at age ten. My fondest memories in school had nothing to do with what went on in the classroom at all; instead they were recess adventures, writing my books when I was done with an assignment, and frolicking in the fields during P.E. when I should’ve been playing team sports with my classmates. I was also interested in many things, like astrology, astronomy, and world religions—so much so that I made time to research them on my own. When I was in high school, I hated how I didn’t get to take electives like psychology, philosophy, or guitar because my schedule was too packed with required academic subjects like math, history, and science.
In contrast, my younger brother has watched TV since he was born, and he has played video games since he was six. He has practically no imagination and no interest in anything. When he does not have TV or video games, he is completely bored and feels like doing nothing but sleeping. He cannot decide on what he wants to get a degree in when he goes to college, because every subject bores him. And unlike me, he doesn’t like himself; kids dislike themselves because they are made useless; they become addicted to things to escape their uselessness (Gatto, 39-40, 194). So while I agree with Gatto that it is not right that kids should be forced to learn things that they do not want to learn, I also think that kids in this modern time period will not want to learn to read on their own; they will not see the need, and they will be too busy with TV or video games to bother. A solution to this problem would be to not allow kids under age 10 or so to watch TV or play video games at home, or to ban them all together. But we all know that will never happen; they generate too much money, and even adults refuse to part with them.
Gatto says that school often “leaves children worse off in terms of mental development and character formation than they were before being 'taught' . . . . It's not intellectual growth that grades and reports really measure, but obedience to authority” (69, 74-75). I agree with this because of my own childhood experience. When I was age eight and below, I was free, smart, outspoken, and true to myself. But after so many times getting shunned by my classmates and scolded by my parents and teachers for the things I said and did, I forced myself to conform to be a quiet, obedient little girl. “After struggling at the bars of the cage for a few years, most kids just give up and settle into the low-grade vocational activities of the school” (Gatto, 192). That is very true for me. I was literally silenced by school, made to obey. And it was only after I began to do that that I started getting good grades. Both my brother and I were squelched by school. I used to be the most talkative student in my first grade class. Now I never talk. My brother used to giggle for minutes on end when someone did or said something funny—until his elementary school teachers scolded him on numerous occasions for laughing. Now he never laughs.
I agree with Gatto that community service is valuable to do. For one thing, there are plenty of ways that our world could be improved. There is always dirty work that no one wants to do. Even though kids would probably resent being forced to do community service—as they resent being forced to do anything—they would most likely learn important concepts from the experience: One, that they should not do things like pollute the earth, because some poor innocent soul would have to either suffer because of it or clean it up; and two, it is more satisfying to be rewarded with knowing that you made a difference instead of being rewarded with money. “Real learning is always its own reward” and putting a monetary value on things cheapens them (Gatto, 95 & 188). If a person is getting paid for doing work, they are most likely doing the work for the money. If the person does the work without getting paid, it is more likely that they’re doing it for intrinsic motivation. The same could be said for rewarding schoolwork with grades versus researching a topic on one’s own without it being required. The problem is that one can never be sure that kids will be interested in anything enough to learn about it on their own, just as one can never be sure that kids will want to do community service enough to do it without it being required. Another problem is that if community service became “compulsory” for kids, then adults would probably use it as an excuse not to clean up their own messes.
Gatto criticizes child labor laws, because they took kids out of work and into school; the government wants to keep kids “idle and passive” (131). But in my opinion, child labor laws are partially good. During the time when American kids were working, they did not do it out of choice. They did it because they needed to help support their family financially. In addition, the working conditions were very bad. Kids need to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic; they do not need to work unless they need the money. But the question is do kids really want to work for the sake of working? Who works because they want to? I think most people would rather be “idle” and have fun. I know I would. Adults already work—mostly out of necessity and not because they want to—from ages 18 to 65. People work for the majority of their lives; they should get to have the first couple decades to enjoy themselves. If the child labor laws were removed today, the kids who would end up working would be the ones from poor families, working out of necessity rather than genuine desire to work. And this new ability to bring in more money with more kids would encourage poor families to have more kids, which would in turn raise the human population which is already too high! However, I also see the good in Gatto’s opinion that child labor laws hurt the kids who actually want to work by preventing them from working. But I still think that not many kids would actually choose to work for work’s sake. Not many would choose to go to school either, of course. What they would choose to do is play or watch TV.
Gatto says that family should be more involved with students, and students should be more involved with their families. “Families are the basic institution of human life” (Gatto, 100). Compulsory schooling takes kids away from their families. It enables the government to brainwash kids with ideas and opinions that it wants them to have, robbing them of their values. Thus, kids grow up to have no values at all. I agree with Gatto on this, except that families also brainwash their kids. If kids are constantly around their parents, then the kids will probably think that their parents are always right, and grow up to be just like them. Is this better than government brainwashing? Gatto also says that one can only truly learn if one does so independently. Being taught by parents is no more independent learning than being taught in school.
According to Gatto, having school assignments that involve students’ families would be good, but families actually teaching their children would be even better. He says that school reform would need to involve teaching each child individually based on each child’s unique needs.
“To have a kind of education that served individuals, families, and communities we would need to abandon forever the notion—learned in school and reinforced through every institution—that ordinary people are too stupid, too irresponsible, too childish to look out for ourselves. We need to admit finally that knowledge is a useful thing but that it is a far cry from wisdom, and without wisdom we wander like lost sheep” (Gatto, 59).
It is safe to assume that Gatto is an advocate of homeschooling. Homeschooling has two benefits: It costs the tax payers nothing; and kids are instructed by someone who teaches out of love instead of for a paycheck. But Gatto does not take into consideration the parents who do not care about their kids and who are not educated enough to teach their kids. What about the parents who are abusive or addicted to drugs? What kind of teacher are they? For their unfortunate kids, school would save them from their family.
In an essay titled, “Why Do Bad Schools Cost So Much?” Gatto states that homeschooled kids in New York “read and do math years ahead of their grade level” (Gatto, 22). Many successful and famous people have lacked schooling: Ray Kroc, Ben Franklin, Coke Stevenson, Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, George Washington, Admiral Farragut, Thomas Edison, Shakespeare, and Margaret Meade. Many elite private schools do not have certified teachers. And yet public schools require certified teachers but do not perform well. Teacher certification is one reason why bad schools cost so much. It is also the reason why teachers are prevented from becoming whole people. “Whole people resist being told what to do” (Gatto, 163). Teachers then teach their incompleteness to their students, and that is why kids today are so lost (Gatto, 161). Gatto suggests that schools should compete in the free market instead of being monopolized by the government. This would improve schools and drop the price.
Gatto discusses the differences between public schools and public libraries. Public schools hoodwink, control, force you to attend, and force you to conform. Public libraries revolve around individuality, choice, common welfare, and freedom (Gatto, 83). A school is not really public if it commands attendance and obedience. Schools are a compulsory monopoly; they are public like freedom is slavery. On the other hand, libraries
“do not segregate by age nor do they presume to segregate readers by questionable tests of reading ability. . . . The librarian . . . doesn't grade my reading. . . . Everyone is mixed together there, and no private files exist detailing my past victories and defeats as a patron. . . . It is a very class-blind, talent-blind place. . . . You almost never see a kid behaving badly in a library or waving a gun there. . . . Bad kids seem to respect libraries, a curious phenomenon which may well be an unconscious response to the automatic respect libraries bestow blindly on everyone. . . . The library never makes predictions about my general future based on my past reading habits. . . . The library tolerates eccentric reading habits because it realizes that free men and women are often very eccentric. And finally, the library has real books, not schoolbooks. . . . [Real books] are the best known way to escape herd behavior, because they are vehicles transporting their reader into deep caverns of absolute solitude where nobody else can visit. . . . Real books disgust the totalitarian mind because they generate uncontrollable mental growth—and it cannot be monitored! . . . When you take the free will and solitude out of education it becomes schooling” (80-82).
I have noticed at the elementary school I work at that the kids seem to be better behaved in the library than they are in class. Although, this school’s library does test kids' reading ability (on the computer), make each kid pick a book to read that is in their reading level, and make them take a test (on the computer) on each book they read. The scores they get on the tests let teachers know whether students are reading or not; and the level the kids are at tells the teacher who needs additional help with reading. Some of the kids seem to enjoy taking the tests; but usually they’re the ones that get good scores. I know when I was in elementary school, I always liked taking tests. I looked forward to the state testing I got to do in school every spring. I liked filling in the little bubbles, being graded on how well I did instead of just being credited for finishing, and getting free juice and a snack. I have always liked to see how good (or bad) my knowledge was. But I am an exception to most rules. Most kids probably do not like tests. But tests are the only way to determine whether kids are actually learning or not. Children checking books out at the library does not guarantee they will read it, especially when the school (like the one I work at) requires they check out books. Doing an independent project also does not guarantee that the child learned anything, because there is no proof that the child did the work him/herself.
I agree with Gatto on his opinion that if workers or students “are unable to make decisions, grow food, build a home or boat, or even entertain themselves, then political and economic stability will reign because only a carefully screened and seasoned leadership will know how things work” (Gatto, 75). We need school to actually teach us how to survive in a world without technology; technology is not always going to be around, like it or not. Knowing math or history is not going to help us when our houses gets bombed. Some people claim that the one thing that makes humans better than other animals is the human’s ability to create fire. Well, I never learned how to create fire. I doubt the majority of Americans know how to do it either. Does this mean we are now dumber than we were in the cavemen days? That may be. And we can thank our precious technology for dumbing us down. When we have things like matches, phony fireplaces, and central heating, who needs to learn how to create fire? Technological devices “are meant to defeat what would otherwise occur naturally without them” (Gatto, 203). Similar things could be said for building homes, making clothes, cooking, and even thinking. After 12,000 hours of compulsory schooling, high school graduates “can’t change a flat, repair a faucet, install a light, follow directions for the use of a typewriter, make change reliably, or keep their marriages together. . . . Owning a home is the foremost American dream but few schools bother with teaching you how to build one” (Gatto, 201-202). Other people or machines do those things for us, so the widely held belief is that we do not need to learn to do them ourselves. Most people cannot even entertain themselves; they use television and video games to do that for them. Technology does not improve intellectual performance; it just increases indifference and passivity (Gatto, 114).
Gatto praises the Amish, who are mostly all owners of a farm or business. Their community has almost no crime, violence, alcoholism, divorce, or drug taking, and they have no government health care, old age assistance, or school after eighth grade. They have a 95% success rate at small business (compared to the national U.S. success rate of 15%). And 85% of grown Amish kids choose to remain in the Amish community (Gatto, 56). They “farm so well and so profitably without using tractors, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides, that Mexico, Canada, Russia, France, and Uruguay have hired them as advisors on raising agricultural productivity” (Gatto, 57). Because of those facts, Gatto believes that the Amish are a perfect example of how children can grow up to be successful, happy, and healthy without much schooling, technology, or government intervention. I think it would be great if the entire world could follow the Amish example, but without the gender roles, plain clothes, and religion. Those three things are examples of conformity, and so they are no better than the blind obedience compulsory schools teach. But I wonder if the Amish community would remain so great if conformity to religious morality was removed, since probably a lot of their good behavior is because of believed rewards and punishments in the afterlife.
Gatto defended Protestant Christianity a great deal in his essay titled “In Defense of Original Sin: The Neglected Genius of American Spirituality.” Out of all the essays in the book, I disagree with this one the most. He says, “The American tradition of argument—our God-given right to damn the king, whoever that king may be—is a precious legacy handed down to us by British Protestants, not the Church of England, nor any secular tradition, either” (173). I disagree with this for two reasons: For one thing, God is also a king we should be arguing with and not blindly obeying; secondly, a person does not need to believe in God in order to believe in the right to argue. People can always do whatever they want. It is only government laws or private morals that hold them back.
Gatto says, “As valuable a tool as rational thought is, it doesn’t speak to the depths of human nature—our feelings of loneliness and incompleteness, our sense of sin, our need to love, and our longing for immortality” (177). In my opinion, one can still be aware of those feelings without being religious. Feelings can be learned, explored, and conquered in everyday life experience. They do not need to be taught in schools or anywhere else.
Gatto believes that science’s truths are only partial, because science does not teach about responsibility or dignity. Those two things are grounded in original sin, because original sin “identifies the core problems of living as the fundamental bases for inner peace and happiness. Rather than suggesting strategies to combat or flee these problems, American Christianity demanded they be accepted willingly as conditions of human life in a fallen world” (178-179). I do not think that original sin teaches responsibility. It places blame on women and Satan instead of taking responsibility for our own actions. And it also is not right that we are all damned just because our parents (Adam and Eve) sinned. What about forgiveness? If God was merciful and practiced what he preached, he would forgive Adam and Eve, and their children even more so! Kids are no more to blame for their parents’ mistakes than they’re to blame for the world wars.
Gatto states that no one can escape the penalties God gave for original sin: work, pain, free will, and death. The modern world tries to escape them with their technologies, wealth, medication, etc. But the reality is that people will never escape those four penalties no matter how hard they try (Gatto, 179-180). I disagree with free will being a punishment from God, because Adam and Eve already had free will; it was their choice to eat the fruit of knowledge. Satan did not force them to. Gatto says that “work is not a curse but a salvation,” because it develops independence, self-respect, character, resourcefulness, and self-reliance; “work has value far beyond a paycheck” (181-182). In my opinion, that is only true for people who work at a job they enjoy and are allowed to make decisions in. Is a person working at McDonalds going to develop those skills? No! Even God thought work was a punishment! If He thought it was good, He would not have used it as a penalty!
I agree with Gatto when he says that becoming attached to impermanent things is only setting oneself up for misery. However, I do not believe that God is needed to be happy. One can be a believer in science and still acknowledge the truth that all things will die. I do. Gatto says that the Christian tradition would say that you can win against death by believing in God (182). But that is only true if one blindly obeys God. One also “wins” in mortal life if one blindly obeys school and government authorities completely. For them and God, one still does not know the reasons behind the orders. Buddhism tells us to accept death too, and it does not have a God in its belief system. Gatto says, “Awareness of mortality gives relationships an urgency, makes our choices matter. If we were immortal, how could it possibly mean a hill of beans whether we did something today, tomorrow, or next year?” (183). But it is Christianity, not science, that guarantees immortality!
Gatto criticizes people who believe that right and wrong are relative. I agree with those people. Why should we believe that one book’s morals are the correct ones? That is blind obedience, the same thing Gatto is against when it comes to teachers and government officials. Then Gatto says that American Christian Spirituality teaches that we must sort “out right and wrong for ourselves” (184). That is not true, because good Christians do not try to find answers for themselves; they look to the Bible for all the answers and blindly obey it without question. “The things we consider truths have been inserted there by others whose motives are not our own. . . . After you fall into the habit of accepting what other people tell you to think, you lose the power to think for yourself” (Gatto, 184 & 205). That is Gatto’s criticism about secular society. But in my opinion, religion is guilty of the exact same thing. Throughout Gatto’s book, he is clearly against blind obedience to teachers and government officials, but in regards to religion, he says: “If you bend your head in obedience, it will be raised up strong, brave, indomitable, and wise” (181). So he is anti-obeying schools but pro-obeying religion. He claims the latter leads us to be those four good things, but at other times he says that only knowing self and experimenting on our own will lead to those four good things. In my opinion, he cannot have it both ways. One should either obey everyone blindly or not obey anyone blindly. Not pick and choose. Blind obedience to anyone is not strong, brave, indomitable, or wise.
I caught Gatto contradicting himself when he spoke about other topics as well. Throughout the book, one of the reasons he denounces compulsory schooling is because it decreases creativity, which is bad. Then he says that heavy doses of teaching is related to detachment from reality and flights into fantasy, which he also thinks is bad (Gatto, 11). But fantasy is creativity, so shouldn’t that be good?
Another contradiction is this: He said that schools maintain and create a caste system, separating kids by their social class, which is bad. On the same page (115), he says that “efforts to draw a child out of his culture or his social class has an immediate effect on his family relationships, friendships, and the stability of his self-image.” He does not elaborate on that point, but it sounds to me like he thinks it is a bad thing. If separating kids by their social class is bad, then how can it also be bad to try to get kids to mix with kids from other social classes?
A third contradiction is that Gatto denounces textbooks for having more to do with self than community or family (128); but other times, he praises independence. In my opinion, conforming to community or family is just as bad as conforming to the government. In the Chinese culture, the people value those who act for the family or community; people are discouraged from acting for themselves, because that is considered selfish. But China is far from being more free or independent than the U.S. Acting for the benefit of the community is the same thing as acting for the benefit of the government, which Gatto is so against. Family too is just another thing kids have to obey.
A fourth contradiction is that Gatto says to forgive self, family, and even people who hurt us (210). But then on the very next page, he says, “Hold the authorities who clear-cut our forests and poison our water in contempt, not awe. Sabotage their undertakings in any way you can, even ways as small as misfiling their papers or dragging your feet on the way to jail” (211). Gatto is being inconsistent by advising to forgive one group (family) but not another (authorities).
A fifth contradiction is when Gatto says, “Cherish what is yours; protect it; defend it; never accept the false evaluations of outsiders in regard to it” (210). Then he says a few paragraphs later, “Past a modest point your possessions, your machines, and your titles begin to own you” (211). He probably meant that what needs cherishing, protecting, and defending are not things like possessions, machines, or titles. Still, it is contradicting to cherish, protect, and defend some items and not others. Regardless, all things are impermanent, so one is only setting oneself up for misery by trying to cherish/protect/defend anything!
Overall, I enjoyed reading A Different Kind of Teacher. What he had to say was always interesting, and sometimes moving and funny too. The flaw of his writing was that he tried so hard to paint schools as completely evil that he ended up contradicting himself quite a bit in the process. Despite that, I found most of his points to be valid. I highly recommend this book to all teachers and anyone else working in a school.
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