Thanks to Ramin for sending me a link to this great article about John Taylor Gatto - a "education saboteur" as he like to call himself.
I love how Gatto explains the education system! I use almost exactly the same arguments to persuade people about the problem we face today in education. To read from a 65 year-old former teacher with tremendous experience about the school system is just too cool...
Here is a short summary of the real lessons that he and other teachers impart to their students according to Gatto:
Confusion. Schools attempt to teach too many things. And they present most of those things out of context, unrelated to everything else that's being taught.
Class position. Students must stay in whatever class they're assigned to and must "endure it like good sports." From that, they learn how "to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes."
Indifference. Children learn not to care about anything too much. When the bell rings, they stop whatever they've been working on and proceed quickly to the next workstation. "They must turn on and off like a light switch.... [T]he lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing."
Emotional dependency. "By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces," kids learn to surrender their will and to depend on authority. Intellectual dependency. "Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do." Conformity triumphs, while curiosity has no place of importance.
Provisional self-esteem. Self-respect depends on expert opinion, measured down to a single percentage point on tests, grades, and report cards. Parents would be "surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these mathematical records," but the system teaches children to measure themselves based on "the casual judgment of strangers."
Conspicuousness. Children are always under surveillance, in the classroom and even beyond. There are no private spaces for children and no private time for them. "Changing classes lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels." Teachers assign "a type of extended schooling called 'homework,' too, so that the surveillance travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or a mother or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood."
Click here to read the article at fast company about Gatto
Click here to watch videos at video google about John Taylor Gatto
You have to love the saboteur - don´t cha? ;-)
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