What made the experience of listening to Dumbing Us Down the most enjoyable? Required reading to see why kids hate school A sane and rational approach to the problem is definitely needed, but that is something that this book does not provide. Yes, the public education system is broken. I contend that Gatto (and society in general) would be better if he joined Glenn Beck and his fellow anarchists in Beck’s planned utopian city of Independence, USA where young’uns would know how to make their own rocking chairs and crossbows and education is strictly home-grown. He is tormented by modern society and has appealed to the reader to do what they can to sabotage schools, as he admits to have done and, one can only assume, continues to do. He expresses a longing for the good ole days when kids had mischievous fun – he is proud to have been a juvenile delinquent having been arrested three times – and people didn’t have non-propagatory sex. The next three hours are dedicated to asserting (although not explaining nor backing with statistical evidence) the author’s main argument that school is the root of all evil including, but not limited to, the breakdown of family, community, and society in general. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem). It teaches them to accept their class affiliation. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.

Apart from the tests and trials that programming is similar to the television, it fills almost all the 'free' time of children. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. (I think that most of us can agree that the public school system has problems.) They are: 1. John Taylor Gatto does start well by enumerating seven true enough points about school.

Given the opportunity to return this book to for a full refund, I declined so that I may write this review, thus hopefully saving others from wasting their time and money. On the outset, I will disprove the author’s contention that no good deeds can emanate from a publically-schooled person. This book was so dreadful that I hardly know where to begin.

John gatto dumbing us down