I started reading Dumbing Us Down last summer on recommendation from a friend. I felt many of the same reactions. Some of his general ideas are strong (there’s something wrong with compulsory education, a system set up to force kids into hating everything about it instead of giving kids what they want when they need it and fostering a love of learning), but Gatto seems to criticize nearly all the wrong things in a system full of things worth criticizing.

Your bit about education carrying value to students in the present is something I argue with students about all day – it came up just today during 5th period. “You get paid, we don’t,” they drone. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I just get my paycheck sooner than you do.”

I’m all for TV in the class. In fact, I don’t use it enough. Most teachers don’t. I’m still mentally preparing myself for a Winter Holiday spent on designing a character study unit based on Season One of Lost, one episode every other day. It should take less time than reading a novel, all told.

For the record, I don’t agree with every idea in Gatto’s speech, but the quotes I pulled in my post are pretty right-on. Also, I use popular culture all the time in my classes, so I don’t believe TV, internet, film, etc. has to be negative. As you say, Dan, it’s the indiscriminate consumption … and I’d add “lacking critical reflection.”

On the other hand, even a brief step outside the mainstream culture of this country will wake most people up to the constant barrage of consumerism pumped at us from every angle. It’s really hard to escape and can be literally “mind numbing” if we’re not careful.

And though he may be speaking in ideal terms, that doesn’t discount everything. How can we argue with the claim that we must “force the idea of ‘school’ open – to include family as the main engine of education”? Do we give up in the meantime? No … but let’s not pretend that the role of family (and community) isn’t a huge factor, or that schools, on their own, can remedy this (which too much popular discourse on the issue certainly does).

I do believe children need guidance (obviously), and that some things they need they won’t want and won’t see the benefits of for some time. However, the way we control their time, limit them to what is almost always unhealthy and uninspiring environments, and allow little room for personal interest is inexcusable. And those are systemic conditions that teachers can’t overcome themselves in their classroom, no matter how hard they work to offer relief to their students. (I mean, from what I can tell, Dan’s class is likely a mathematics oasis in comparison to some other math classes, but he only controls his class and his room …)

It’s a tough issue, I think, and I’m not arguing for one side over the other because I think balance is what we have to find, not binaries. Discussion, of the type I often see on this blog, is a move in the right direction.

I do argue, though, with great angry yells, with anyone who says there is no problem.

Thanks for your thoughts, Dan.

I wanted to add, before I hit “submit,” that Gatto got a lot of things right, including what Eric pulled in his post on the matter. But then Eric commented while I was writing mine, so now it’s redundant.

i think very young children are intrigued by all manner of “play,” and if higher math (higher than counting!) were introduced at very young ages, then children would feel compelled to study fractions. mathwise, there is a huge chasm between the four basic operatives (add, subtract, multiply, divide) and anything higher. most kids are probably ready to move ahead, into algebra and geometry and theory, long before high school, even before middle school. it’s an incremental process, anyway. it’s okay to plunge ahead and then back up and then go forward again. nothing else in life is experienced just once, “sink or swim,” and yet that’s the way public high schools dish out subjects.

Dan,

Dammit, you’re right again. The more I think about it the more I realize I shouldn’t comment before lunchtime (east coast time).

But I still say that School 2.0 as immediate punching bag is kind of transparent. And I still can’t believe I’m doing something as lame as defending a movement that’s still being defined.

I don’t know if I’m a School 2.0 guy. I do know that from where I am, a lot of the ideas that are contained in the School 2.0 bag seem right-on. And I also realize that even though you’re the pro-lecture, teach-basic-skills-first-so-help-me-Athena guy on my blogroll, you’re doing something valuable for all of us–showing up how old-school pedagogy can be remixed into something relevant to now.

It’s just the tone, sometimes. Seriously.

Have your students do tv diaries where they list vocabulary and important ideas that they learn from tv. I doubt you will get very much. I unplugged from that nonsense years ago and I am not missing anything significant. My suggestion is that any thinking skills you have did not come from tv. Once you have developed even moderate thinking skills by learning some kind art, reading strong texts, and being , then you thought how to think clearly, then you can go back and interpret tv. But the kids today are barely literate, much less capable of reading strong texts and are bombarded by essentially a culture that reflects back their own very narrow beliefs and ideas. Not what we would call fertile intellectual soil.