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Apr 20, 2008

Umm Layth rated it:

Before reading this book I really thought I was 100% sure about my reasons to homeschool. Boy, was I wrong. I guess I was only half way there because now that I have finished this book, I realize that I never really saw the harms of the public school system 100%.

Our children are being limited every day by being locked away. Our children are struggling with learning more than they did before the system was in place like today. The role models they take on during school really are har More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Claire rated it:

Don't read this if you have or plan on having children that you won't be able to home-school, but a must read for everyone els. This is a damning indictment against the public school system written by none other than a teacher who lived it. Sure to cause riots once more people realize that twelve to thirteen years of their lives were utterly wasted.

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2008

Kristy rated it:

This was an excellent book written by a NY teacher of the year who taught for 26 years in the "government controlled monopoly school system". It is an eye opener that what is needed is less money, not more. More choices, more freedoms, more time with children home, more time for children to be children, allowing them to learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think. Interesting to learn that the literacy rate in colonial America was close to total, and hasnt been that high since just befo More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Jul 26, 2008

Mel rated it:

Written by a man that taught in the monopoly called public school system, won awards for it, and lists what he taught;
confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, and provisional self-esteem.
The national curriculum is a joke. And what is different from this book compared to others; he doesn't just list the things that are wrong with the system or bash the system, Mr. Gatto gives suggestions of tearing the institution apart and rebuilding it More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 11, 2008

Elizabeth rated it:

After reading this book I was reassured that homeschooling my children was the best answer. The author is a teacher, and writes why he feels the school system is failing our children and our family. He is very big on interacting as a community rather than a network. He mentions things that had happened in the past, as far back as the time of Plato. The last chapter, did focus on religion, which made me a little uneasy. If it wasn't for that, then I would have given this book 5 stars. I wou More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 24, 2008

Viv rated it:

Excellent. As with all my favourite books, I have lent it out and it is still out there! This book is proof that home educators are not obsessive nutcases, as he provides inside information on schooling in New York which spanned over 30 years. When I first got this book it followed me everywhere until I had finished it, even into the bath. This author can share my bath anytime, as long as I don't drop the book in, of course!

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2008

Jen rated it:

This book gets a big "meh" from me. First of all, it's not so much a book as a group of essays. And I had to laugh when I opened the book and the print was freaking 18 point. (Like maybe we're not bright enough to follow along with typical 12 point print?)

I also have a problem with someone who spent his whole career in New York school systems making broad sweeping statements about public education in general. I have a hard time believing that a New York City educator un More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

Ben rated it:

While worth reading as an wake up call to all who think the only problem with our educational system is that it needs more money it should be taken with a grain of salt, or rather a slat block. Gatto is correct that schools act as mainly propaganda for the elite class and he may even be correct that compulsory education should not be the law of the land. (At least at the high school level) What he is not not good at is showing the whole picture.

He says that he wants a fair More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 14, 2007

Heather rated it:

When I finally found time, I read this in one sitting. Gatto is really a brilliant writer. I may not agree with each and every point that he makes, since I find him to be a bit extremist in some situations, but he is beyond thought-provoking. I keep a notebook for research purposes with quotes that I think I might use for future articles, and even after I finished reading this, I had to reopen it to copy down quotes that were still on my mind. AND I'm going to have to check it out of the library More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2009

Katie rated it:

"...the idea I began to explore was this one: that teaching is nothing like the art of painting, where, by the addition of material to a surface, an image is synthetically produced, but more like the art of sculpture, where, by the subtraction of material, an image already locked in the stone is enabled to emerge."

"People have to be allowed to make their own mistakes and try again, or they will never master themselves, although they may well seem to be competent when t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 12, 2009

Janet rated it:

I’ve had this one on the shelf for some time and needed today that extra bit of Homeschooling High School encouragement to keep proper parental vision, especially as winter has returned to visit with bitter winds and blinding rain.

John Taylor Gatto, an award winning public school educator for over 30 years reveals how compulsory schooling indoctrinates students with secular liberal ideologies creating a society designed for “total state control of human life.” The most frightening a More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 27, 2011

Seth rated it:

No other book has shaped my view about public school as much as this one. Gatto's analysis of the damage done to a student's curiosity is so incisive as to wake any educated parent to our failing school system.

I decided that normal people can home school their children after having read this book. Very influential and formative to how I want my children's education to be administered.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 14, 2007

Rebecca rated it:

John Taylor Gatto's response to the educational system has long been an interest of my father's. It was recently that I decided to pick up his work and dive into his take on the educational system. I found myself appreciating his insight into the ways in which the traditional school system stifles creativing and personal educational progress in our students- I think I underlined something of note every few minutes! I would certainly recommend this book; particularly to teachers looking for so More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 10, 2007

Kaecey rated it:

This book is must-read for anyone with children, and it's a valuable book for everyone in general. John Taylor Gatto is an award-winning teacher and this book is a collection of some of the speeches he has given when receiving teaching awards. It is a book that makes you think, makes you question, and makes you wonder. You may not agree with everything Mr. Gatto has to say, but what he has to say will make you reflect back upon your own education and the education of your children. For that alo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Megan rated it:

Let me just begin by saying that I am fully aware of the failure of the public school system. In fact, I am 95% sure that I will be homeschooling my son for the first few years because I don't think a 5 year old needs to be in school 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. Oh, and his school is, by definition, failing. I am 100% for school reform and school choice.

That being said, this was, generally speaking, a TERRIBLE book. For a man who laments the lack of logic taught to schoolchildre More...

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Aug 02, 2011

Jesse rated it:

This is definitely a 3.4 star book. A very quick read: I finished it in a good bit less than an hour of actual reading, and it's easily worth ten times that. It is tremendously subversive, and in a very wholesome way.

The author, John Taylor Gatto, is a fairly big deal in the NY state school system--Teacher of the Year and all that jazz--and his thesis is that our school system actually hinders learning. One of the analogies that he uses is the difference between a painter and a scul More...

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Sep 10, 2010

Jerry rated it:

Thirty years of award-winning teaching in NYC's public schools led Gatto to conclude compulsive government school has nothing to do with education, as the back blurb says. Gatto sees a little too much evil in things like classrooms, schedules and peer groups, but on whole his critiques are helpful.

"One form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massuchusetts around 1850. It was rsisted--sometimes with guns--by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts p More...

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Apr 14, 2010

Angela rated it:

After reading this book, I never want to send my kids to school - at least not government schools. This book regarding schooling really seemed to fit with my political philosophy of non-agression/voluntary cooperation. I have been thinking lately about how schools can be "reformed" - but have always been uncomfortable with the fact that, by nature, school is a compulsory institution. This book helped me sort out my own feelings about school, my own intuition that it is somehow inher More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2009

Krista rated it:

OK... so, if not for Gatto's keen (IMHO) appraisal of the real purposes behind state schooling, it would've gotten only two stars. I appreciated a lot of the principles he discusses, but there are a couple rough edges that I couldn't get past.

First, it's a collection of speeches. As such, it's practically a transcript (if not precisely) - written in colloquial way that is actually downright awkward on occasion, for reading. Several times I had to stop, go back, and sort through the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 23, 2009

Sharleen rated it:

Gatto was an award-winning public school teacher of thirty years, but developed a distaste for the conformity and agenda that has become a part of our common American school system. He argues that long hours, forced learning, and teaching our children that there is only one right answer (not allowing them to question and come to their own conclusions) is actually hurting our childrens minds and will keep many from achieving their dreams and becoming independent thinkers. He also argues that o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 06, 2009

Jmswtsn rated it:

The two speech excerpts were pretty muchthe only parts of this book worth reading - in those excerpts, he does a good job of outlining the deficiencies of public schooling as it currently exists, and many of his ideas fall in line with other, more well researched authors when I comes to the destructive effects of standardization, bell schedules, segregation by age and ability, competetition, and all the other stuff that really hinders any sort of learning.

While he does not really us More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 19, 2008

Kelly rated it:

My dear friend who homeschools absolutely insisted that I read this book because of our ongoing and frequent conversations about the multitudes of problems with schools.

Before I start let me state that I agree with most of Gatto's scathing criticisms of how schools function. However, I felt like he took these criticisms just a bit to far to be argumentative and/or persuasive amongst the mainstream middle. The tone came off as scathing, condescending, and overly zealous. This is More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 17, 2011

Cori rated it:

I really thought I would like this book more. I liked the forward, introduction, note from the publisher and "about the author." I found the seven lessons of "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" to be wonderfully eye-opening. We homeschool so I had some idea about this but had not thought about it exactly that way. I got really excited about the book and the direction it was going.

Then he almost lost me to the point where I didn't want to finish the book because of More...

3 comments like

May 26, 2009

Godlarvae rated it:

John offers quite interesting ideas concerning the state of education in the U.S. His ideas may also be allegorical to many other monolithic institutions which would seem to exercise some control on our lives. His "Seven Lessons" organizes the friction/dichotomy of old world, traditional thoughts on most anything and modern practice/practice of most anything.
He advocates change in return to "congregational" thinking which would include less institutional schooling and More...

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Feb 19, 2009

Dennis D. rated it:

Author John Taylor Gatto is a two-time NYC Teacher of the Year whose treatise here takes exception to the quality of compulsory public education in America. He suggests that public education’s primary purpose these days seems to be the perpetuating the institution of public education. I can see his point here. As with most government programs, once they get rolling, you can add to them, you can tweak them, but you’re never going to blow them up, even if you’d like to start over from scratch. More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2008

Travis rated it:

This is not for public school participants. The truths in this book are too rough for non-homeschool subscribers. The 'seven things that I teach' is the best chapter. The book goes down from the first chapter. The rest are separate essays telling the same lesson/story in different ways. Basically unnatural social networks never work and only make incomplete people - only subscribe to a fraction of your humanity. Public school is the ultimate broken and unnatural social network.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 28, 2011

Adriane rated it:

John Taylor Gatto, awarded New York City’s and New York State’s teacher of the year in the years of 1991 and 1990, discovered in his 26 years of teaching experience that the inherent problem of our schools is not teachers or bad kids or bad parents: it’s the fact of compulsory education in its current form, which has only existed since the Civil War and has failed miserably as a social experiment. He purports that kids are inherently intelligent and curious, and given the proper parameters, cou More...

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Aug 03, 2010

Angela rated it:

This book was an incredibly enlightening read, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who is on the fence about homeschooling or who believes that public school should be the ideal route to education.

That said, I cannot in good conscience give this book five stars, because the last essay, "The Congregational Principle", was an absolutely ridiculous piece of writing. It includes too many wonky ideas to list, but the one that pissed me off the most was:

" More...

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Dec 08, 2009

Rachel rated it:

I highly recommend this book, whether you're interested in the education debate or not! After 30 years as a New York public schoolteacher, Gatto has incredible insights into our culture's obsession with consumerism, production and efficiency, the breakdown of the family, how "networking" has miserably failed to meet the need for true community, and the kind of culture our method of schooling produces.

Until we change our definition of "education" and leave the gov More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 02, 2008

Gregory rated it:

I read this book AFTER reading A Thomas Jefferson Education and AFTER deciding that we wouldn't send our kids to public school.
I suppose you could say this book was a real brow wiper.
In other words, it caused me to wipe my brow and say "Phwew!!! Glad I Didn't Buy Into That Mess.."

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

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