Response to John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down

After the first four chapters, I decided to exercise my own student rights, and stop reading Gatto. I had absorbed his points, and I realized that I was feeling a sense of despair. If schools are "jail," then why do I want to become a "jailer?" I cannot accept that view; rather, I hold a deep-seated belief that schools are NOT jail, and that rather than a wanna-be jailer, I am a key holder. I believe that as a teacher I will hold a set of metaphorical keys to help students unlock their minds. The processes of awakening, of understanding, of enlightenment, of growth, of burgeoning interest, are all processes that I hope to nurture in my classroom, all of which involve opening, not locking. These are also processes that I hope will happen to me as well as I go about my role as teacher.

But what had me feeling dispair in Gatto? The 7 Lessons: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem and that one can't hide. It is not that there are not grains of unfortunate truth in what he says; yes we teach students that they must stay where they "belong" in a group of students that they didn't choose to be with, that they must learn on a fairly superficial level and to turn it off like a switch when it is "time," that a report cards often pose as official declarations deeming worth, that surveillance is pervasive in school. But there is a cynicism informing all that Gatto says, a purposeful negative stance, that he voices in each observation. I feel that as a beginning high school teacher, I need to hold on to a postivie outlook, an idealistic belief, if you will, that will allow me to foster the good, even in the "bad" of what we do.

For example, within the "jail cell" of the classroom, where a student is surrounded by peers that he or she had no say in being with, is there not still a positive outlook on that situation? That by being with those that one would not normally choose to associate with, one must learn to accept those person's differences and somehow learn to work literally alongside them? That the lack of choice, unfortunately, prepares students for a college dorm, for an office workplace, for a social club where all types of people are present and need to co-mingle?

Despite my unease with accepting the 7 Lessons as truth, Gatto asserts some general fundamental points that I agree with: that children need to spend time with their families, that they need to be integrated in society across its citizens old and young, that they need privacy, that they need to be left to learn on their own time and in their own way (i.e. over-programming kids with curricula both inside and outside the classroom is not a good idea), that learning can happen in the most surprising of places from the most surprising of teachers, that our goal as educators is to model and nourish critical thinking, and that we inevitably bump against the system from within, as we try to do the workings of a school district and board while also trying to teach in a way that frees our students.

A paragraph that I want to hold on to and roll around in my mind on my journey to becoming a high school teacher:

"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important: how to live and how to die." (67-68)

In saying goodbye to Gatto, I am led by my prof to Frank Smith, whom I'll respond to next. But the feeling of despair has been good for me, in that I am now wondering about the role of the subversive in teaching, and have begun to read bell hooks, "Teaching as Transgression." What I am searching for I think, is someone who somehow still believes in the profound good of schools and teaching, even as the need for subversion and trangression is blatantly clear. Because, so far, that is where I believe my own stance lies.