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| | Description | "In this book, the noisy gadfly of U.S. education takes up the question of damage done in the name of schooling. Again he touches on many of the same questions and finds the same answers. Gatto is a bold and compelling critic in a field defined by politic statements, and from the first pages of this book he takes even unwilling readers along with him. In Weapons of Mass Instruction, he speaks movingly to readers' deepest desires for an education that taps their talents and frees frustrated ambitions. It is a challenging and extraordinary book that is a must read for anyone navigating their way through the school system." - Ria Julien - Winnipeg Free Press John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of familiar schooling that cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a by-product of rote-memorization drills. Gatto’s earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, put that now-famous expression of the title into common use worldwide. Weapons of Mass Instruction promises to add another chilling metaphor to the brief against schooling. Here is a demonstration that the harm school inflicts is quite rational and deliberate, following high-level political theories constructed by Plato, Calvin, Spinoza, Fichte, Darwin, Wundt, and others, which contend the term “education” is meaningless because humanity is strictly limited by necessities of biology, psychology, and theology. The real function of pedagogy is to render the common population manageable. Realizing that goal demands that the young be conditioned to rely upon experts, remain divided from natural alliances, and accept disconnections from the experiences that create self-reliance and independence. Escaping this trap requires a different way of growing up, one Gatto calls “open source learning.” In chapters such as “A Letter to Kristina, my Granddaughter”; “Fat Stanley”; and “Walkabout:London,” this different reality is illustrated. John Taylor Gatto taught for thirty years in public schools before resigning from school-teaching in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal during the year he was named New York State’s official Teacher of the Year. Since then, he has traveled three million miles lecturing on school reform.
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| | Product Details | | Author: | John Taylor Gatto | | Hardcover: | 192 pages | | Publisher: | New Society Publishers | | Publication Date: | October 01, 2008 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0865716315 | | Product Width: | 1.56 centimeters | | Product Height: | 2.31 centimeters | | Product Weight: | 0.01 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.2 inches | | Package Width: | 6.1 inches | | Package Height: | 0.9 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.1 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 46 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 46 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 74 found the following review helpful:
 Reclaim your mind - Read this book!! Dec 31, 2008
By Andrea Mcclerren
This book and Gatto's earlier work, "Dumbing Us Down", were life-changing reads for me and my wife.
We have been set free to live our own lives. We are going to let our children grow up with that freedom and take their own education. Largely due to this book I have decided to aggressively further my own education in order to live a truly fulfilling life and make a positive contribution to my country.
I discovered, as I hope you do, that MIT has made their entire undergrad/grad program online FREE-FOR-ALL. Just Google "MIT OPEN".
57 of 62 found the following review helpful:
Bravo, Mr. Gatto. Jan 16, 2009
By Matthew Kowalski
In this book, John Taylor Gatto rips the sheep's clothing off of the ravenous wolf that is government run schooling. The structure of schooling in America is shown to be an old Prussian model that is used to churn out consumers and dumb-down the general population. Read what the pioneers of modern schooling said in their own words...it's chilling.
One example - William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906:
"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual..." (from p. 13)
85 of 98 found the following review helpful:
Amazing book- A must read for anyone concerned for the future of our nation/ Dec 25, 2008
By Emily Winters
I received this book yesterday afternoon. Christmas Eve day was spent reading this book, highlighting it, writing notes and reading aloud chunks of it to my home educated children.
And because it is Christmas Eve I will keep this review short. (Even though despite the holiday, I'd rather be calling all my friends and urging them to order this book; I am restraining myself however.)
This book is truly Gatto's Magnum opus; I like it better than any of his other books.
His sage observations on the school system, corporate world and consumer-driven culture are brilliant. He even addresses how this country has gone from manufacturing steel to manufacturing "Bubbles" (as in Real Estate bubbles...sound familiar?)
It is my earnest hope and prayer that students everywhere will accept the challenge of the Bartleby Project, which is offered on the last page of the book. Then maybe, just maybe, the dreadful course this country is hell-bent on can begin to change.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Vitally important considerations for educated citizens Jun 18, 2009
By Donald N. Anderson
John Taylor Gatto has written another thought provoking book about the critical problem of allowing children to become educated. This one approaches the defects of current schooling from a number of directions that should leave no doubt about his reasons for objecting to compulsory schooling.
I was a public school teacher for only a couple of years in the early 60's teaching science and math in a small rural high school. I did not experience the vicious corruption of purpose in the way that John Taylor Gatto did in New York. Never the less, I formed the firm opinion that schools supported by government were a serious mistake in a free society and were dangerous to that society's long-term health. It is small wonder that many of our citizens value freedom so lightly that they appear willing to give it up for an illusion of security. After all, most have been bored and conditioned by 13 years of government schooling to accept authority even without reasons.
We need a full range of competing schools that offer the variety we find in fields such as food growing and delivery. We might also find that such schools carefully look for ways to deliver desired information more rapidly at lower cost. School costs have gone up at the same time quality has gone down. This is the picture of a failing institution, only government life support enables it to continue to miss-educate.
Gatto has done us all a huge service by providing a history of educational thought in America and identified its roots and personalities. You would be correct if you thought my education school classes failed to mention this part of history. After reading his earlier books, I went back and read more thoroughly the musings of John Dewey and others. It was a revelation and something I felt was not compatible with the American ideals of freedom.
I had always wondered why the classes in the education school were the worst classes in the entire college. After all, they should have learned something to become a professor of education. As teachers we always joked about how irrelevant those classes were to the actual work of a teacher. After reading Gatto, I suspect that those professors were selected because they were incapable of inspiring instruction and would fit well in the "dumbing down" process.
Even in my own public school education in the mid 40's, I was taught reading without phonics. They failed to suppress my interest in reading, but did delay my competence in spelling. The "dumbing down" process was evident at that time although it was just getting well started. I shudder to think of the many of our fellow citizens who have been unable to break free and perform their own critical evaluations. And they vote!
Private schools often mistakenly take leads from the public schools since the latter define the test content that all use to evaluate their standing. Mr. Gatto correctly identifies standardized testing as the first tool that needs to be destroyed to permit children to pursue an education rather than be schooled as obedient robots.
I can't completely agree with Gatto's recommendation that folks omit most schooling in favor of education. I personally converted from an avid history major to a chemistry major after I found as a college freshman that history instructors added only trivia to the faster knowledge acquisition skills I had already acquired through reading. However in chemistry, my skills were inferior and I definitely benefited from an instructor's guidance. This was not true of all classes, but there was enough of the challenging to keep me interested for many years.
I believe Mr. Gatto is entirely correct when he recommends homeschooling. The homeschooled students I have met were much better prepared and articulate than most of their contemporaries. They also fit well in the company of educated adults rather than participate in the resentments and conformity of perpetual childhood.
Every parent and taxpayer needs to read this book and develop his own position on schooling and education after incorporating the information that Gatto so vividly describes!
16 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Analysis, Short on Solutions May 05, 2009
By Diane Dekker
"Author of Two Trees of Knowledge: A Biblical Case for the Separation of School and State"
Gatto knows what he is talking about and is absolutely right about how the State schools are destroying our children: The intent of the State is ultimately to change our children's values, not to educate them. The State is training future citizens to serve its own purposes. Businesses do not have personnel departments any more--they have "human resources." Our children are nothing more to them than future resources for the State.
This book is much more likely to be read than Gatto's The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling because of its shorter length and easy readability. However, there are some problems that come with short-cuts. For one thing, this book is not nearly as well documented as his other books. If you want documentation, you have to read Underground History.
Secondly, Gatto is on a mission in this book and he needlessly attacks those who could be his most avid supporters. As one example, he unfairly attacks Calvinism and Puritanism as part of the cause of our present school dilemma. Modern history has been very successful in demonizing Calvin and the Puritans, but I never trust a history book. Reading the writing of the Puritans themselves has shown me that they were some of the most humble and joyful people who ever lived, and of all groups in history, the ones who fought most successfully for liberty from tyranny in government. While John Calvin and Martin Luther promoted public education, both were very aware of what it could turn into if taken over by the wrong people. Martin Luther said, "I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth." Likewise, the Puritans recognized that liberty walks hand in hand with moral values. Without moral restraint, self-governance is impossible. When Gatto attacks Calvinists, he is attacking all those of reformed faith: Presbyterians, Baptists, Anglicans, Lutherans--the very people who today are fighting for the separation of school and state, the very ones who are already homeschooling or setting up private schools.
Finally, Gatto presents no real solutions to the problem. He does recommend that students refuse to take standardized tests, but for children who are old enough to do that, it is already too late. Studies have proven over and over that the emotional/psychological/spiritual bonding that takes place between a child and his parents is not complete until age eight to ten. By this age, the family's values are thoroughly instilled and family loyalty is a given. You would be hard pressed to find a child development expert (not state-employed) who recommends formal schooling before the age of 8, because of the trauma of separation of the child from the family. The book School Can Wait gives the results of over 7,000 studies over a ten-year period, involving 80,000 children from 3,500 schools. The conclusion is that even without any formal education at all, children who start school between the ages of 8 and 10 will likely surpass their peers by the time they reach eighth grade. Better Late Than Early: A New Approach to Your Child's Education is another great book on this topic.
What most parents may not realize is that every state differs in compulsory education laws. Until last year the state of Kansas did not require formal schooling until age 8. Last year it was lowered to age 7. Gatto should have mentioned this in his book--keep your kids out of the school as long as you can! Check out your state laws. The later you start your kids in school, the fewer problems you will have with peer dependency, and the less likely that the State will succeed in changing your child's values.
I love Gatto's books and I relied heavily on information in Underground History for the writing of my own book Two Trees of Knowledge: A Biblical Case for the Separation of School and State. I would highly recommend Weapons of Mass Instruction to anyone who wants to know the truth about public education. If you want solutions however, I would point you to School Can Wait, Better Late than Early, or Two Trees of Knowledge.
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