John Taylor Gatto - review & discussion of his ideas

[PokerDad]

Many of you are familiar with John Taylor Gatto, and therefore this post might not be as compelling as it would be for others. If that's you, feel free to jump into the conversation with your insights on both sides of the debate.

I've just finished reading Weapons of Mass Instruction following my prior reading of Dumbing Us Down; the latter of which was deemed a classic by DadDude (hence my introduction to the author). I certainly recommend Dumbing Us Down for anyone with kids, and even those without kids. It's concise, succinct, and articulates several topics that I had latently been thinking but hadn't put to formal thought. It's a very easy read. WMI, on the other hand, is more comprehensive and polemic as a result.

Between my two readings, I watched or listened to no fewer than 15 hours of Gatto. Because of this, I have a very good grasp of where he's coming from as an author and school reformist. I use the term reformist loosely - Gatto is hell bent against public school despite a thirty year tenure in the institution and various accolades including teacher of the year for the city of New York and the New York State. It seems just as he reached the apex of success, his disillusionment of the school system was complete. In the years that followed his awards, he quit teaching and began researching. What he discovered was that school's main purpose was mass control and not educating.

There are a few things I disagree with Gatto on. For instance, he's shockingly anti-intellectual even as his erudition is so abundantly clear. Gatto might just be the most erudite author I've ever read - and I've read the likes of Hawking and Greene. Gatto might not be able to explain M theory in great detail like those authors, but his diverse conversancy is nothing short of impressive. In one sequence of the WMI, he argues that there's little difference between a child that learns to read at age 6 and one that learns at age 12 (or ages similar). I certainly disagree with this. He also claims that learning to read or perform math does not take more than 100 hours total; though in WMI he does qualify this claim by saying it needs to be in the proper environment to achieve. I can agree with the caveat though in general I will disagree that either of these skills can be mastered in 100 hours or less. His hatred for college is also one I'd disagree with strongly, for unlike the examples he cites, my college experience was truly liberating in the classical sense. Apparently his experience at Cornell wasn't as liberating, though he does say one of the universities he attended was positive; my guess is he's referring to Reed College, DadDude's alma mater!

I truly cannot summarize these works here. His arguments are far too in depth to do them any justice with a review. I can tell you a few of his conclusions. He's against public school as constructed. I'm sure he'd be against it even if altered, though I could conceive of elements that would make school more palpable to him. He doesn't mention unschooling, but it seems as though he advocates it - and used unschooling in the classroom. If you put in the time to listen to him and read his works, I'm sure you'll see why he was able to succeed as he did, even though the children entrusted him were at the very bottom of the academic pool. I've been critical of unschooling in the past, and he doesn't convince me to go that route exclusively (nor did he go extreme unschool in his classroom; his assignments were all very well thought out and required actual "work").

One of his arguments is that school functions as a growth stunting agent. I alluded to this in one of my recent posts here when I repeated something I said on a blog post, "I'm not here to raise a child, but to raise an adult". In Gatto's opinion, the rise of adolescence is purely a function of school and that there's a causal relationship. In my mind, this seems obvious, but his argument isn't really based on data or the like, but rather observation. Gatto loves to cite famous historic figures to make the point, and I do believe he's spot on in this particular conclusion. In WMI, the artificial expansion of childhood is the greatest weapon.

There are too many ideas of Gatto to really do justice here, but I wanted to post a semi-review and to perhaps have a thread where we can discuss the merits and demerits of his viewpoints. If you have a spouse that is against homeschooling, then I highly recommend Gatto's works in an effort to open the eyes of your spouse. His book, Dumbing Us Down, has converted people by itself.

While not necessarily an early learning advocate, Gatto considered Glenn Doman a friend and was nothing but positive about the works of IAHP. On page 33 of WMI, Gatto goes into detail about his experience with Doman. I'll leave you with a quote from the book:

"What are you doing this evening?" he said. An hour later I was driving to Philadelphia , where I met Glen in the late evening, stayed in a guest bedroom, and next morning was watching his school in operation. It was a place with no entrance requirements. Glen took anybody who applied. It was a place where seven-year-olds read real books and grown-up magazines for pleasure. Impromptu, the kids decided to put on a scene from The Mikado for my pleasure, complete with song and dance. I left with a heightened sense of just how far official schooling has dumbed us down.

Thoughts?

[Tamsyn]

I agree completely, both in your praise and reservations about Gatto.  He seems to be a hero among many homeschoolers, and indeed he has done much for the movement, but like you I wonder if he's thrown the baby out with the bathwater with his anti-intellectualism.  Nevertheless, I am extremely grateful for his book, and his charismatic powers of oration.  When I first married my husband, he was agreeable to homeschooling in general, and we went to a convention where he was the keynote speaker.  My husband bought "The Underground History of American Education", and has since become an advocate of homeschooling.
I have mixed feelings on Gatto, because whenever I talk about him with other homeschoolers, it inevitably turns into a discussion on why we should be unschooling.  I'm not terribly anti-unschooling because I have seen it work in some cases, there are some amazing unschoolers in my neighborhood in fact, but I myself am not an unschooler and I doubt I ever will be.  That said, I have "unschooled" certain subjects, simply on account that I see my kids learning those things on their own without my help.  This because I enabled them to do it.  But you can bet that I would "school" those subjects if that weren't the case.  But I digress.  In short, I think Gatto's teachings about the little difference between learning to read at 6 vs 12 is in part why so many homeschoolers aren't learning to read until they are 12, and that's unfortunate.  This teaching has spread to other homeschooling methods, like the Thomas Jefferson Education so popular here in Utah.  I can't blame Gatto alone for that, John Holt taught that too.  I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot, as a homeschooling movement, when/if we are unfazed that our children are reading so late.  Fortunately that's usually not the case.  Overall homeschooling is thriving in our nation.
I agree with what Gatto says about the agenda to dumb kids down, that mass control supersedes education in their priorities.  For that reason, I disagree with Mr. Levy when he said that unschooling is akin to child abuse.  I think it would be better for a child to be unschooled by loving parents even if it meant they didn't learn algebra, than for that same child to go to public school if they would be indoctrinated.  Besides, there are plenty of public schoolers who don't really learn algebra anyway, is unschooling really that much worse?  Public schools should be there to assist parents in educating their children.  Parents aren't there to assist public schools.  I think parents should have the freedom to give their children whatever kind of education they want, even if it means that the education they receive is sub-par.  That's part of what it means to be free. 
But I think that as homeschoolers, we aren't faced with that either or decision.  I don't want to leave the education of my kids to chance.  I suppose Gatto's books are like any other book, take what you want and leave the rest.
I appreciate your insight, pokerdad.  I didn't know about his visit to the institutes, thank you for sharing that. 

[teachingmykids]

I haven't read his books but I read articles and watched stuff of his and I am not really impressed to tell you the truth. I disagree that public school as a whole will not work. I disagree with a lot of his claims about public school and education. Some of it is some what true but a lot of it is just fear mongering. All the things you mentioned I definitely disagree with. I don't find him that great of a source. I don't agree with unschooling as this great thing for all kids. I think a lot of kids will be failed by unschooling. My own child would be severely failed if I implanted it. I used to think it was great but it would not work with my oldest at all. She is thriving now at a public school that he would probably especially hate.

[PokerDad]

I think unschooling is a tiny fraction of Gatto's philosophy. In fact, he never mentions the term, but it's obvious he would approve of unschooling. Now, I should point out, there are shades and degrees in any endeavor. Aside from his student "Tony" that worked at family businesses all day, the tasks that he assigned the kids were actual work and actual assignments. It's not like he just said, "go do what you want, I'll sit at my desk reading" - there was quite a bit of thought that went into it. I'm not advocating unschooling but rather acknowledging that traditional school has significant shortcomings and ultimately, that's Gatto's primary message.

I don't really need fear mongering; I just need to look around at all the people clamoring for more junk in society to start wondering where all these backward ideas came from and ask why they are so popular.

I will acknowledge that Gatto is libertarian (classical liberal), and in this day and age, shades of Marxism is in vogue. If anyone reading this thread is more into the collectivist train of thought, then Gatto probably won't sit too well with you, IMO. I'm saying this separately from anyone in particular here, just my impression of where he's coming from.

EDIT: I realized that perhaps I might have come off a bit haughty in my response. That is not my intention. I acknowledge that Gatto will not sit right with everyone, hence my description of his writings as polemic. I just wanted to point out where some disagreement, IMO, is likely to come from, but I could be wrong in that. My hope is that enough people will feel compelled to discuss the topic in this thread. Sometimes discomfort is the spark that ignites a new train of thought...

this author writes nothing but sparks... it just so happens that many of them seem to have lit me up
 

[PokerDad]

Anyone care to chime in on the idea that school, on its own, extends childhood artificially?

I already agreed with his notion in the OP. The argument goes something like this: school dictates from the top down and disregards initiative. Over the course of years, people grow accustomed to this sort of thing and, on some level, stop developing. Very little in school is self-initiated and for this reason, children become a bit more crippled than they would have been had it not been so unbalanced. As part of Gatto's class, for example, the student had to write out what they would hope to accomplish - with very little restriction on what they write. Gatto would then think of ways to see the accomplishment through. The end result was an empowered child that learned real world and real life lessons, interacting with real people. This strategy won him several accolades, but none of it was by the book sort to speak. I will add that there are many threads here at BK that illustrate that typical school seems drawn out - if it were not so, "acceleration" would not be possible because the classrooms would be moving too fast for anyone to get significantly ahead. If school is drawn out unnecessarily, is that not a form of extending childhood?

I definintely think the idea of extended childhood could use some discussion here. 150 years ago, teens were out working. Now you can't rely on them for much at all, because they're too busy posting to twitter, emulating the latest meme on youtube, or sexting some cute kid in class.

Before I ever read Gatto, I realized that school was at the crux of teen rebellion. I offered eschewing it as a means to avoid the problem before my wife during a conversation a few months ago and she just about lost it on me (she definitely has a fondness for school)

Perhaps where Gatto really won me over was in Dumbing Us Down (I don't have the book handy to reference, so going off of memory here) - in one of his speeches, he describes the end result of school. I start thinking, "you know, it really is Procrustean what he's describing here".... I turn the page, and Gatto then says something like, "you know, in Greek Mythology there was a villian just like school. His name was Procrustes"....

I was sitting on the plane and laughed out loud. Perhaps my more extreme views here are showing
 

If none of this resonates, perhaps give me some opinion on why you think it is that more and more of today's youth (in almost all western cultures) seem progressively more inept? Or, do you disagree with my premise that the youth have become and are continuing to become inept? Why or why not? Thank you in advance!
 

[Korrale4kq]

I haven't read Gatto so I can't contribute there. But I have some musings..... Not convictions or even opinions about public school. Just some ideas I am trying to formulate in my mind.

Public education was created to build productive citizens. During the post  Industrial Age up to the 50s or possibly even the 70s regimented public schooling worked. It worked because those children grew up to work regimented jobs. Many in a factory setting. Realistically, how many of these jobs exit today? Jobs where you have to follow order and do the mundane? I can't tell you but I suspect a great deal of the working population still have these jobs. Most people I know personally have these jobs. They work in factories, the hospitality industry, Administrate and healthcare work.
Bucking trends, being innovative, free thinking, problem solving just aren't necessary skills needed for many jobs. Being able to follow regiment, do hard menial work are more highly valued.

As a country I understand the need and desire for brilliance and innovation. But everyone can't be the next Bill Gates or Temple Grandin or Stephen Hawkings. We need those entry level workers. Those garbage collectors, those fry cooks, those shippers.

My husband works in a soft factory. They build windows and doors. As his workplace brings in young employees they are having a harder time retaining them. 18 year olds schooled with "reform math" are unable to measure window parts, and do basic geometry. They are unable to follow implement simple instructions. They argue, they backchat and they quit. Most of them last 2 weeks.  Out of 9 young new hires that were hired in the last month only 1 remains.

When I went to school I was given my work, our teachers taught it, we did it. We graduated and went to college or went into the workforce. We worked hard and did what we were told. Our parents didn't seek accommodations at school for us. We didn't have individualized lesson plans. They didn't fight our low grades or help with our school work. If we failed. We repeated. I hated that we taught to the lowest student. But the brighter kids took it upon ourselves to do extracurricular. We didn't act out because we were smart or gifted. We doodled, we did other work, we mostly read. Or if they were anything like me we helped the struggling students or read the dictionary. I loved dictionary time.
Oh and we tested all the time. Beginning of math class for as long as I remember we had a quiz, we had spelling tests weekly, we have reading tests fortnightly. We had listening tests, we had test after test after test. Then we are arduously long exams at the end of each section or term or month. 
And we didn't have excuses or even complain. We didnt have "test anxiety." It was just what we did. It was how our teachers knew if we were learning what we were being taught.


Now people are fighting to eradicate testing. How will teachers know what the student knows? I tutor a 10 year old and I can't tell you what my student knows unless I test her. I test on a variety of things to get a baseline. Then I have the luxury to sit down with her and find out why she does not understand something. 

A teacher does not have the time to sit with 25-35 kids daily and figure out what they do and don't understand. They have to review the old content, teach the new content and spend time with the dozen IEP students that she has to plan different lesson plans for, that she has to write a different test for. She has to help little Jackie that is incapable of writing down her homework assignments by sitting with her as she writes them in her agenda. She has to give Tommy his extra spelling words because he is so advance. And she has to write a lesson plan becasue he is reaidng at 3 times the level of the rest of the class. And it is her responsibility to push him. She has to give Patty a break every 10 minutes so he can walk around becasue he is incapable of sitting still. She has to nix the explorative science experiment dealing with Neutonian solids becase little Tammy has a sensory processing disorder and she can't be excuded. She has to deal with the constant disruptions of Maxie who has ODD or Susie that is gifted but acts out because she s bored. If anyone has read an IEP or a 504 plan you will find an amazing array of accomadations that teachers need to fulfill for dozens of students in their class. How does a teacher do ALL of this. And hold the attention of a class raised in a society of hyper stimulation?. It is near impossible to compete with video games and cartoons.
Another challenge is that little Jose may not speak English. Or Becky can't contribute to class discussion or project because it is against her beliefs or customs.

So of course there is a lot of focus on the things that are on standardized tests. Reading, math and writing. Teach the basics, then help the kids that have specialized plans.
1 teacher just can't cater to all this. It is just not feasible. Especially in the higher grades where they see the students for a few hours a week.

[Mandabplus3]

I have no doubt that school extends childhood artificially.
However over the years my views on wether this is a good thing or a bad thing has been continually challenged.
Is it so bad to get a couple of extra years of low to no responsibility in our kids life's?
Is it all that bad that these days a 7 year old is not considered responsible enough to mind their baby sister while mum milks the cow/ goes to the shop?
Do we want the children of today out of school any earlier? Considering what they are like?
I am currently thinking ( subject to more change in future I am sure!) that keeping kids as kids until grade 8 (age 13/14) is a good idea. Keep them sheltered, keep them safe, keep them stress free and learning. ( note I did not say don't test them  )
After that grow them up! Fast. A 15 year old should be responsible and capable. They should be able to run a household, make a positive contribution to their world, work, earn, or continue directed studies. They shouldn't be wasting time in home economics classes unless they have an interest in becoming a chef, they shouldn't be learning to sew unless that's their life passion and they shouldn't be surrounded by same age teens who offer them nothing but more of the same ( ie walking around in a school full of mirrors!) they should be reading a variety of literature to broaden their horizons, they should already know enough math to get through life easily, they should be able to hold an interesting conversation with a stranger.
Sadly schools don't really cater for growing kids up. They keep them submissive until the day of graduation then throw them out blind. Kids grow up in the workforce or at university whee they are forced to look out for themselves and show initiative or leave. It hasn't always been this way in school but it does seem to be getting worse.
Curiosity has me looking for the book now....

[Korrale4kq]

My husband was telling me about one of the young new where he works tonight. He said that he was called over because a certain part was measuring incorrectly. It is meant to measure 5 7/8in. My husband checked it, it was right. He asked the young one what he thought it was. The young one said it was 5 and 7 strokes on the measuring tape. :s

[Kristiina]

-Has youth become inept?
-Well, Yes! And no.

Yes, they are inept:
Current school system is teaching our children to be great factory workers. They start working at 8 o'clock and keep 10 minute breaks when the school bell rings. I think it was in this forum where someone wrote that the most important thing is a school to to make sure everyone graduates on the same day! Wouldn't for example computer skills and creativity be more useful in life?

Also many young students (something I see in my friendships) are give great executions for not performing in school based on medical terms like depression, adhd or reading disabilities. It is hard to learn good studying habits if you are constantly told you are not going to learn because of your disability. Of course these diagnoses are useful to many people but they are often used as the reason to work less. What they are missing is that they are the persons responsible of their own life and success.

Many students are studying to get an education on a subjects like multimedia technique, dress making, exotic languages or philosophy and they end up being unemployed right after their graduation. Are society or companies responsible of offering them a job on the area they want to work on?

Well, maybe they are inept:

My parents lived their early years in countryside where they lived quite poor live and have to participate to farm work. I doubt their parents had any time to spend with them. Probably they were raised by their older siblings. When raising large families, my grandparents probably didn't even have the time to _think_ how they were raising their children!

We now have to luxury of having time and possibility to think and education our baby as we wish. Does this result our baby growing up to be inept? Hopefully not! I wish that this will result our baby growing up to be an intelligent and proactive person.

Well, no current youth is not inept:

So far, in each generation overall IQ has been raising. I have been reading a lot and in the books written 100 years ago, I get strong feeling of passive attitude towards life. In the newer literature the overall attitude towards personal life is in most books proactive. I believe this is an symptom of cultural change where people are perceived being responsible of their life. That said, I think that even 100 years ago persons who started factories or shops or become presidents were also proactive to be able to succeed.

Compared to the previous generations, young person in work life are now thinking more what they want instead of being afraid they are seen as bad employees if they tell what they want. Young persons in work appreciate a lot of things like their free time and training new skills. It is something that older employees often has problems understanding that denying a vacation, not giving enough information or not educating young employees is against the values of young employees and will force them to quit in the job.

Regardless on comments pro and against, I have my hope in the future generations. We have to all do our best to support them! 

[penguinpet]

My two cents. I'snt schooling really unschooling.

I taught in some schools in UK, and barring the schools in inner London (if we continued to live in London and start our family there, we would have sent our kids to a private school, the schools there are really difficult with high incidences of violence, bullying and cops assigned to monitor, wonderful cops though), most other schools are good. We  talk so much about empathy, but nowhere is it more evident than in the classroom, where  Down Syndrome kid, a gifted kid, an ADD kid, a dyslexic kid sit together, play, learn(?) , argue. Kids learn a lot of empathy, than I would think in any other setting. They have to manage the bully, run for that next class just to reach in time, at times ride the public transport, manage their lunch money...lot of skills in exercise. It is debatable how much learning takes place in a school but life skills are definitely learnt, so in a way is unschooling not happening in schools?

We now live in the US, where homeschooling is an option. Both me and my husband are from India, and have been schooled. I loved my school and my husband didn't. We have twins who are 2 years old, so schooling is yet couple years away, and we have not yet decided whether to homeschool, send them to a public school or a private school. But schools do serve some purpose, and I wouldn't be too negative about them.

[nee1]

Someone from one of the yahoo groups I frequent forwarded the 1895 exam for eigth graders. Here goes the mail/exam:

Could You Have Passed the 8th Grade in 1895? Probably Not...Take a Look:

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from  Salina, KS. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky  Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895

Grammar  (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie,
lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you
understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic
(Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and
3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it  worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4 District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.


U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849,
and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

------------------------------------------------------
Imagine a college student who went to public school trying to pass this test, even if the few outdated questions were  modernized.*

* Imagine their professors even being able to pass the 8th Grade! :-) With fluency and agility we could do it. We could get Americans, student and professor alike, back up to the 8th Grade level of 1895!

Happy Teaching!

QUOTE ENDS.

This exam shows how far standards have fallen.

[Korrale4kq]

Wowie,
That exam is fascinating!

[teachingmykids]

Snopes does a good job with that one. http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp The literacy rate was 90% in that time period. We were heavily racist. Black kids were not even going to high school. We have gained so much knowledge from that time period in many subjects especially science. We fail many many students especially poor and middle class students but ending public schooling is not the answer.

I think we have gone too far with the responsibilities we expect of our children and teenagers but I don't think the past was an ideal either. We don't reach our full maturity until later. The helicopter parenting trend is not good. Kids need to take responsibility for their own actions and be given age appropriate freedoms little by little. Teenagers can take on responsibility but I don't want to go back to the days when they are on their own at start their families then. I wouldn't want kids to work in hard manual labor again.

Not everyone is going to home school. It isn't a solution for everyone. There is definitely a lot that needs to be fixed but it isn't as bad as he makes it out to be. Gatto embellished to make his point and downplays the other side. That is fine but it isn't for me. We don't have the best our country has to offer in my county but we do have a lot of good choices and good charter schools. We have schools that are child directed, that are classical like, Montessori, Waldorf  and schools that let students work at their own pace. One charter starts placing kids at their level and doing gifted enrichment right from kindergarten. We have another profoundly gifted school that kids need to test into. These schools do test really well.

I'll be lazy but this blog post is similar to how I feel about him. http://gaither.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/gatto-on-the-evils-of-public-education/

[teachingmykids]

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/a/1895exam.htm#.UZ_Hb7VQGSo

Here is another one. They don't even know for sure it is an exam for 8th graders.

[nee1]

I disagree with the Snopes argument. Earlier this year, I read ``The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stufies Young Americans and Jeopardises our Future (http://www.amazon.com/The-Dumbest-Generation-Stupefies-Jeopardizes/dp/1585427128)

This is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year. In chapter 1, the author cites statistic after statistic showing that even though the current generation have been in school longer than previous generations, they are not necessarily smarter. At least when it comes to factual knowledge.

I quote an excerpt from Chapter1:

Most young Americans possess little of the knowledge that makes for an informed citizen, and too few of them master the skills needed to negotiate an information-heavy, communication-based society and economy. Furthermore, they avoid the resources and media that might enlighten them and boost their talents. An anti-intellectual outlook prevails in their leisure lives, squashing the lessons of school, and instead of producing a knowledgeable and querulous young mind, the youth culture of American society yields an adolescent consumer enmeshed in juvenile matters and secluded from adult realities. The meager findings force the issue as researchers form an inescapable judgment, one that will dismay anyone who cares about the health of U.S. democracy and the intelligence of U.S. culture. The insulated mindset of individuals who know precious little history and civics and never read a book or visit a museum is fast becoming a common, shame-free condition. The clueless youths Leno stops on the street aren't so different from a significant and rising portion of teens and young adults, the future of our country.

That sounds like an alarmist claim, and the fact that the average 18-year-old cannot name his mayor, congressman, or senator, or remember the last book he read, or identify Egypt on a map seems impossible. But the results are in, and they keep accumulating. Here are examples, broken down by discipline.

History. Students reaching their senior year in high school have passed through several semesters of social studies and history, but few of them remember the significant events, figures, and texts. On the 2001 NAEP history exam, the majority of high school seniors, 57 percent, scored "below basic," "basic" being defined as partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that allow for proficient work at a selected grade level. Only 1 percent reached "advanced." (The NAEP has four scores: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic.) Incredibly, 52 percent of them chose Germany, Japan, or Italy over the Soviet Union as a U.S. ally in World War II. The previous time the history exam was administered—in 1994—the exact same numbers came up for seniors, 57 percent at "below basic" and 1 percent at "advanced." Younger test takers performed better, and showed some progress from test to test. In 1994, fourth-graders stood at only 36 percent below basic, and in 2001 they lowered the number to 33 percent. In 2006, NAEP administered the History exam to 29,000 fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders, and a mild improvement emerged. For twelfth-graders, the "below basic" tally dropped four points to 53 percent, and for eighth-graders it dropped from 38 to 35 percent, although both groups remain at 1 percent in "advanced," and only 12 percent of the older students fall into "proficient." More than one-third (37 percent) of twelfth-graders did not know that the 1962 Soviet-U.S. dispute arose over missiles in Cuba. Two-thirds of high school seniors couldn't explain a photo of a theater whose portal reads "COLORED ENTRANCE."

Diane Ravitch, education professor at NYU and former member of the NAEP governing board, called the 2001 results "truly abysmal" and worried about a voting bloc coming of age with so little awareness of American history. Many believe that college can remedy the deficit, but the findings of another study belie their hope. Commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Losing America's Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century (2000) reported the findings of a commissioned survey aimed at measuring the factual historical knowledge of seniors at the top 55 colleges in the country. Many of the questions were drawn from the NAEP high school exam, and the results were astonishing. Only 19 percent of the subjects scored a grade of C or higher. A mere 29 percent knew hat "Reconstruction" refers to, only one-third recognized the American general at Yorktown, and less than one-fourth identified James Madison as the "father of the Constitution."

The feeble scores on these tests emerge despite the fact that young people receive more exposure to history in popular culture than ever before, for instance, best-selling books such as Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend and John Adams by David McCullough, movies such as Braveheart and Troy and Marie Antoinette, the History Channel and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Wikipedia. Many mass entertainments have historical content, however much the facts get skewed. And yet, if teens and young adults consume them, they don't retain them as history. In spite of ubiquitous injunctions to know the past by George Will, Alex Trebek, Black History Month, Holocaust survivors, Smithsonian magazine, and so on, the historical imagination of most young people extends not much further than the episodes in their own lives.

Civics. In 1999, according to the U.S. Department of Education, more than two-thirds of ninth-graders studied the Constitution, while fully 88 percent of twelfth-graders took a course that "required them to pay attention to government issues" (see What Democracy Means to Ninth-Graders). As they pass through high school and college, too, they volunteer in strong numbers. Despite the schooling and the activism, however, civic learning doesn't stick. In a 1998 survey of teenagers by the National Constitution Center, only 41 percent could name the three branches of government (in the same survey, 59 percent identified the Three Stooges by name). In a 2003 survey on the First Amendment commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, only one in 50 college students named the first right guaranteed in the amendment, and one out of four did not know any freedom protected by it. In a 2003 study sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislatures entitled Citizenship: A Challenge for All Generations, barely half of the 15- to 26-year-olds queried agreed that "paying attention to government and politics" is important to good citizenship, and only two-thirds considered voting a meaningful act. While 64 percent knew the name of the latest "American Idol," only 10 percent could identify the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Only one-third knew which party controlled the state legislature, and only 40 percent knew which party controlled Congress.

In the 2004 National Election Study, a mere 28 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds correctly identified William H. Rehnquist as the chief justice of the United States, and one-quarter of them could not identify Dick Cheney as vice president. A July 2006 Pew Research Center report on newspaper readership found that only 26 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds could name Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, and only 15 percent knew that Vladimir Putin was the president of Russia. On the 2006 NAEP Civics exam, only 27 percent of twelfth-graders reached proficiency, and 34 percent of them scored "below basic." Since 2004, the Knight Foundation has funded "Future of the First Amendment" surveys of high school students, and in the last round nearly three-fourths of them "don't know how they feel about the First Amendment, or take it for granted."

In civics, too, higher education doesn't guarantee any improvement. In September 2006, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute presented a report entitled The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions. The project tested more than 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges across the country in American history, government, foreign relations, and the market economy, with questions on topics such as separation of church and state, federalism, women's suffrage, the Bill of Rights, and Martin Luther King. Once again, the numbers were discouraging. The respondents came from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford as well as lesser-known institutions such as West Georgia College, Eastern Kentucky, and Appalachian State. The average score for a freshman was an F—51.7 percent. And how much did seniors add to the score? A measly 1.5 percentage points—still an F. With both class levels measured, the ISI study also allowed for assessments of how much progress students made at each institution. At Harvard, freshmen scored 67.8 percent, seniors 69.7 percent, a minuscule gain after $200,000 in tuition fees. At Berkeley, the students actually regressed, going from 60.4 percent in their first year to 54.8 in their last year.

Given the dilution of college curricula and the attitudes expressed in the Citizenship study, we shouldn't be surprised that college students score so feebly and tread water during their time on campus. A statistic from the American Freshman Survey, an annual project of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA (sample size, approximately 250,000), echoes the civic apathy. In 1966, the survey tabulated 60 percent of first-year students who considered it "very important" to keep up with political affairs. In 2005, that figure plummeted to 36 percent, notwithstanding 9/11, the Iraq war, and the upcoming election. No wonder the Executive Summary of the State Legislatures report opened with a blunt indictment: "This public opinion survey shows that young people do not understand the ideals of citizenship, they are disengaged from the political process, they lack the knowledge necessary for effective self-government, and their appreciation and support of American democracy is limited."


Math/Science/Technology. "The United States is in a fierce contest with other nations to remain the world's scientific leader." That's the opening sentence of Tapping America's Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative, a 2005 report by the Business Roundtable. The premise appears regularly in discussions of the future of U.S. competitiveness in the international arena, and so does a corollary to it: to preserve its economic and military superiority in the world, America must sustain a flowing pipeline of able math, science, and engineering graduates. Politicians are quick to respond. In his 2006 State of the State address, New York governor George Pataki called for more magnet schools focused on math and science, and for free tuition at SUNY and CUNY campuses for students majoring in those subjects. In May 2006, the U.S. House Committee on Science introduced three bills designed to bolster math and science education, with Chairman Sherwood Boehlert asserting, "As a nation, we must do everything possible to remain competitive, and that starts with ensuring that we have the best scientists and engineers in the world."

Young Americans haven't answered the call, though. According to the National Science Board, engineering degrees awarded in the United States have dropped 20 percent since 1985. Of the more than 1.1 million high school seniors in the class of 2002 who took the ACT test, less than 6 percent planned to study engineering, a steep drop from the nearly 9 percent who declared an engineering major a decade earlier. The 2006 American Freshman Survey found that only 0.5 percent of first-year students intended to major in physics, 0.8 percent in math, and 1.2 percent in chemistry, although engineering improved to 8 percent.

Set alongside rival nations, the numbers look worse. While six million Chinese students tried to win a place in the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, only 65,000 U.S. students did, a ratio of 92 to 1. American universities still have the best engineering programs in the world, but more than 50 percent of the doctorates they grant go to foreign students. At the going rate, in a few years 90 percent of all scientists and engineers in the world will reside in Asia.
 
The low interest students have in math and science is reflected in their knowledge and skills. On the 2005 NAEP science exam for twelfth-graders, the average score was 147, a drop of three points since 1996. Nearly half of the test takers—46 percent—didn't reach the "basic" threshold, and only 2 percent reached "advanced." Math scores were better, but not by much. NAEP results from 2004 showed that fourth-graders improved significantly over the previous decades, but twelfth-graders made no gains at all, even though the number of them taking calculus nearly tripled from 1978 to 2004 and the number taking second-year algebra rose from 37 percent to 53 percent. Indeed, from 1978 to 2004 the percentage of students reporting doing math homework "often" jumped from 59 percent to 73 percent, but still, no improvement happened.

Again, international comparisons darken the picture. Two major ongoing projects provide the data, the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The TIMSS exam tests nine- and 13-year-olds on their curricular knowledge (geometry and algebra, for example). In 2003, with 51 countries participating, nine-year-olds did well, ranking eighth among countries tested. Likewise, 13-year-olds beat the international average, but they slid down the rankings six slots to #14, falling behind Lithuania, Latvia, and the Russian Federation. The PISA findings were worse. In 2003, PISA tested 15-year-olds in 42 countries in math and science (sample size: 4,500-10,000 per country), emphasizing the application of concepts to real-life problems. Fully 26 nations scored significantly higher than the United States, including not only the expected ones (Hong Kong, Finland, and Korea topped the list), but Canada, the Slovak Republic, Poland, and Australia, too. Given the general NAEP Jindings that show twelfth-graders sliding down the achievement scale, we may assume that if TIMSS and PISA tested older teens, the United States would appear even worse in international comparisons.

Fine Arts. It is hard to compile data on how much teens and young adults know about the fine arts, but we can determine their attraction to different art forms. The 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (National Endowment for the Arts) charted several exposures over the preceding 12 months to record the bare presence of the fine arts in individuals' lives. Except for people 75 and older, 18- to 24-year -olds emerged with the lowest rates of all age groups. Only one in 10 attended a jazz performance, and one in 12 attended a classical music performance. Only 2.6 percent of them saw a ballet, 11.4 percent a play. Less than one in four (23.7 percent) stepped inside a museum or gallery during the previous year, one in 40 played a classical music instrument, and one in 20 sang in a choir. Compared with findings from 1982 and 1992, the 2002 results showed performing arts attendance by 18- to 24-year-olds dropping in every art form included. The decline took place, moreover, at the same time that the opportunity to experience the arts rose. According to the Census Bureau, the number of museums in the United States jumped from 3,600 in Year 2000 to 4,700 in 2003, and performance arts companies went from 19,300 to 27,400. Nevertheless, the younger audiences shrank.

It wasn't because young adults didn't have time to enjoy the arts. According to the 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (Centers for Disease Control), 37 percent of high school students watch three or more hours of television per day. For college students the numbers may be higher. In 2005, Nielsen Media Research reported that the average college student watches 3 hours, 41 minutes of television each day. "It was a little more than I expected," a Nielsen executive stated, and a little more than professors care to see. Clearly, students love entertainment, but not of the fine arts kind. The 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement (Indiana University) reported that fully 27 percent of first-year students "never" attended an art exhibit, gallery, play, dance, or other theater performance, and 45 percent only "sometimes." The rate for seniors, who had three extra years on campus to cultivate their tastes: 45 percent "sometimes," the same as the freshmen, but the "never" rate actually rose a dismaying four points……

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