OF JOHN TAYLOR GATTO
Professor Cat Call, please. Twenty-six years ago, not having at that moment nothing better to do, I tried to make the school teacher. The My license certifies that I am a teacher of English language and literature, but it is not what I am doing. I do not teach English, I teach school - and making even win prizes.
The word "Teaching" has different meanings in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem [New York black neighborhood, once a symbol of degradation, ndt] in Hollywood Hills. These constitute a national curriculum for which you pay in more ways than you can imagine, then you should well know what it is. You are free, of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when I say I want to do any irony in this presentation. That 's what I teach, they pay me to teach the following. Take these lessons as you wish.1. CONFUSION
The other day a lady named Kathy wrote to me from Dubois, Indiana:
"What great ideas are important for young children? Well, the biggest idea of \u200b\u200bwhere I think they need is what they are learning is not extravagant - it's some kind of system approach, and it's not just raining on them while absorbing powerless. And 'This is the task: to understand, make it consistent. "
Kathy was wrong. The first lesson I teach is that of confusion . Everything I teach is out of context ... I teach the non-correlation of all. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbits of the planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnastics, choir, assemblies, surprise guests, fire alarms, computer languages, parents evenings, days for staff training, after-school programs , tips from strangers my students may never see again, standardized tests, age segregation in the outside world as never seen ... But does this have to do these things together?
Even in the best schools close examination of the program and its sequence reveals a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions. Fortunately children do not have words to describe the panic and anger they feel the continuing violations of the natural order and sequence that is trimmed them as quality in education. The logic of the mind education is that it is better to leave school with a wealth of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural sciences and so on, rather than leave their children with genuine enthusiasm. But the quality of education requires learning something in depth. The confusion is inculcated in children from too many strange adults, each working alone with the least possible relationship with others, usually boastful of a teacher who does not possess.
learning, and not disconnected facts, is what they are looking healthy human beings, and education is a system of codes for processing raw facts into meaning. Behind the mosaic of the school routine and the school's obsession for facts and theories, they are old but in good condition, lies in the human search. This is harder to see in an elementary school, where the hierarchy of school experience seems to have more sense because of the report, simple and good-natured, the "do this" and "do that", which is taken as if had a meaning, and customers do not have distinguished consciously how little substance there is behind the appearances, behind this play.
Think about all the great natural sequences like learning to walk and learning to speak, following the progression of light from dawn to dusk, observing the ancient techniques of a farmer, a blacksmith, a shoemaker, looking at your mother prepares the dish for Thanksgiving - all parts are in perfect harmony with each other, any action is justified by itself and illuminates the past and the future. School sequences are not so, is it not in one lesson, let alone the whole of the daily lessons. School routines are crazy. There is no particular reason for any of them, nothing that deserves careful analysis. Few insegnanti oserebbero insegnare gli strumenti se i dogmi di una scuola o di un insegnante potessero essere criticati, in quanto tutto deve essere accettato. Le materie scolastiche vengono imparate se possono essere imparate, così come i bambini imparano il catechismo o imparano a memoria i trentanove articoli della Chiesa Anglicana.
Io insegno la non-correlazione di tutto, una frammentazione infinita che è l’opposto della coesione; quel che faccio è più vicino ad una programmazione televisiva che alla composizione di uno schema ordinato. In un mondo dove la casa è solo un fantasma perché entrambi i genitori lavorano, o perché troppi trasferimenti o cambi di lavoro o troppa ambizione or else have left all too confusing to maintain a family relationship, I teach you to accept confusion as your destiny. This is my first lesson.
2. POSITION CLASS
The second lesson I teach is the location of your class . I teach the students must remain in the class to which they belong. I do not know who decides that my kids belong but it is not my business. The children are numbered so that if someone leaves can be brought back in the right class. Over the years the variety of ways in which children are numbered by the schools has increased dramatically, to the point that it became difficult to distinguish human beings under the weight of numbers they carry. Number the children is great and very profitable enterprise, even if unaware of the meaning of what this strategy seeks to achieve. I do not know why parents would allow, without protest, that this is done to their children.
However, once again, these are not my business. My job is to please their being locked up with other children who have him as their numbers. Or at least tolerate it as if it were a good sport. If I do my job well, the kids can not even imagine in another place, because I showed envy and respect them as the better classes and how to feel contempt for silly classes. With this efficient discipline the class mostly to check if they meet a good running order. And 'this is the real lesson of any make-up competition like school. You get to know the place.
Despite the comprehensive class takes for granted that the ninety-nine percent of the boys is in your class to stay, however, do a public effort to push children toward higher levels of success in examinations, the fanning of a possible transfer from the lower class like a reward. Often suggests that it will the day when an employer will take them on the basis of the scores and grades, even though my experience says that employers are rightly indifferent to such things. Never lie shamelessly, but I have come to the point of view that truth and teaching are, at bottom, incompatible just as Socrates said they were thousands of years ago. The lesson of numbered classes is that everyone has their own place in the pyramid and that there is no way out of their own class than with the magic numbers. Failing this, one is forced to stay where they are made.
3. INDIFFERENCE
The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children not to worry too much about something, even if they want to see that it is. The way I do it is very thin. I expect that total involvement in my lessons, jumping up and shooting Residing in their chairs as if they were eager to do so, competing vigorously with each other to get my approval. I feel rewarded when they do so, makes an impression on everyone, including myself. When are the best I can I plan my lessons carefully, to produce this show of enthusiasm. But when the bell rings I insist that we stop at any what they were working on, and proceed without delay to the next work session. They must go on and off like a switch. Nothing of importance is ever finished in my class, or in other classes that I know. The students never complete without an installment plan.
The lesson of the bell in fact teaches that no job is worth to be done, so why worry too much about something? Years of bells pick up all but the strongest, to a world that can no longer offer important job to do. The bells are the secret logic of the school, their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy past and future, rendering every interval the same as the abstraction of a map is the same result every river and every mountain exist, even if they are not. The bells of indifference infuse every initiative.
4. Emotional dependence
The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency . With stars and red signs, smiles and glances, awards, honors and disgraces, I teach kids to give up their wills in favor of the chain of command fixed. Rights may be granted or denied by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist within a school - not even the right to freedom of speech, as established by the Supreme Court - unless the school authorities do not say otherwise. As a teacher, I intervene in many personal decisions, providing a permit to those who feel justified, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself among children and teenagers, so my words come quickly and abundantly. Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to all systems of classification.
Here are some of the most common ways in which it occurs: children slink off to enjoy a private moment in the bathroom on the pretext of an urgent need, or steal a moment to themselves in the corridor because they have to drink. I know that does not really need it, but allow them to trick me because this conditions them to depend on my approval. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or happy for the things that are beyond my understanding, the rights to these materials can not be recognized by teachers, only the privileges may be revoked guarantees of good conduct.
5. DEPENDENCE ON INTELLECTUAL
The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency . The smart people expect a teacher to tell them what to do. It 's the most important lesson: we must wait for other people more experienced than us, create the meanings of our lives. The expert makes all important decisions, and only I, the teacher can determine what you need to study, or rather, only people who can pay me to take those decisions which I then put in place. If I am told that evolution is a fact and not a theory, I pass on this as I was ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I was told to tell them to think. This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily.
Children successful think that I will appoint a minimum of resistance and appearance of an honest enthusiasm. Millions of things that deserve to be studied, I establish what I have so little time, or rather, they are my anonymous employers who decide. The choice is up to them, why should I discuss? Curiosity has an important role in my work, only compliance has it.
course the bad guys challenge everything, even if they lack the concepts to know what to fight against, and struggle to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn. How can we allow this and yet survive as a teacher? Fortunately there are ways to force the will of those who resist, of course, is more difficult if the child has good parents who come to his aid, but this happens less and less, despite the bad reputation that have schools. To be honest, I never met any parent middle-class who thought that the school his son fell between those poor. Not a single parent in twenty-six years of education. This is surprising and is probably the best testimony of what happens to families when mother and father were well-educated themselves through teaching of the seven classes.
The smart people expect it to be an expert to tell them what to do. It is certainly not an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends on what is learned this lesson. Do you think if the boys were not ruin educated to be employees: companies that deal with certain social services could not survive, would disappear, I think, in limbo in recent history from which they arose. Counselors and therapists would watch in horror as their stocks disappear mentally disabled. The commercial entertainment of all kinds, including the television , wither when people relearn how to enjoy themselves. Restaurants, caterers and a large pile of assorted other services related to food would be drastically reduced if people would return to prepare the food for themselves, instead of depending on outsiders who plant, harvest, grind, and cook for them. Also a good part of modern law, medicine, and engineering would be less, as the garment industry and teaching school, unless a yearly basis of insured persons who are unable to continue not to come out in droves from our schools.
not be too ready to vote in favor of radical reform of the school, if you want to continue receiving your paycheck. We have built a way of life that depends on people who do what they are told they do not know how to say to themselves what to do. This is one of the biggest lessons that I teach.
6. PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM
The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self . If you have ever tried to fight with a boy reached the level where parents convinced him to believe that they will love him in spite of everything, you know how impossible it is able to bring the spirits who are confident. Our world would not survive long in a flood of people confident, so I teach that self-respect should be subject to the opinion of an expert. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.
A monthly report, whose preparation is impressive, is sent home for students to indicate approval or to tell you exactly, up to a particular percentage point, they should be dissatisfied with the parents of their children. The ecology of "good" education is because of continuing dissatisfaction, just as the economy depends on the same commercial fertilizer. Although some people may be surprised how little time or reflection takes to achieve these mathematical records, the total weight of documents apparently objective establishes a profile that compels children to arrive at certain decisions about themselves and their future based on the accidental opinion of a stranger. The self-assessment, the main subject of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, was never considered a factor. The lesson of report cards, grades, and examinations is that children should not have confidence in themselves or their parents, but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to hear what it's worth.
7. NOT YOU CAN HIDE
The seventh lesson I teach is that you can not hide . I teach the children that are always kept an eye on, everyone is constantly monitored by me and my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time. The change of the class lasts three hundred seconds to keep at a low level of indiscriminate socializing. Students are encouraged to gossip about themselves or about their parents. Of course, I also encourage parents to take note of the stubbornness of their child. A family trained to spy on itself is unlikely to conceal any dangerous secrets.
I assign a type of extended education called "homework", so that the effect of surveillance, if not the same surveillance, go to the private sphere of families, where students might otherwise use the free time to learn something not authorized by a father or a mother, exploring, or practicing some wise person in the neighborhood. Disloyalty to the idea of \u200b\u200beducation is a devil always ready to find work for idle hands.
The meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that you can not trust anyone, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers, a fundamental requirement to writing in Republic in City of God, in ' Institution of the Christian religion in New Atlantis in Leviathan, and a bunch of other works. All these childless men who wrote these books discovered the same thing: children must be monitored closely, if you want to keep a society under tight central control. The children follow a lone percussionist if you can not put them in a band uniform.
II The great triumph of compulsory mass schooling of the government monopoly is that even the best of my fellow teachers, and among the best parents of my students, only a fraction can imagine a different way of doing things . "Children must know how to read and write, no?" "They know how to do addition and subtraction, right?" "They must learn to execute the orders if they expect to keep a job."
Only a few generations ago, things were very different in the United States. The originality and variety were common currency, and our freedom from framework has made us the miracle of the world, the boundaries between social classes were pretty easy to cross, and our citizens were wonderfully self-confident, creative, and able to do much for themselves independently, and to think for themselves . We were something special, we Americans, all persons, without the government sticking their noses into our lives, without institutions and social bodies tell us how to think and feel. We were something special, as individuals, as Americans.
But in the U.S. have been essentially a company with a central power just before the Civil War, and a company of this type requires compulsory schooling, una scolarizzazione monopolistica del governo, per mantenersi efficiente. Prima di questo sviluppo l’istruzione non era molto importante in nessun luogo. Ce l’avevamo, ma non troppa, e solo nella misura in cui un individuo la desiderasse . Si imparava comunque a leggere, a scrivere, e a far di conto molto bene; esistono alcuni studi che rivelano che il grado di istruzione all’epoca della Rivoluzione Americana, per lo meno per coloro che non erano schiavi sulla costa orientale, era quasi universale. Il Buon Senso di Thomas Paine vendette 600.000 copie in una popolazione di 3.000.000 di abitanti, il 20% dei quali erano schiavi, ed il 50% servitori a contratto.
I coloni erano dei geni? No, la verità è che leggere, scrivere e l’aritmetica richiedono solamente circa cento ore per essere trasmessi, a condizione che l’uditorio sia diligente e desideroso di imparare. Il trucco è quello di attendere finché qualcuno non fa una domanda, e poi procedere velocemente mentre l’atteggiamento è ricettivo. Milioni di persone insegnano l’una all’altra queste cose, in realtà non è tanto difficile. Prendiamo una quinta classe di matematica o un manuale di retorica del 1850 e si vedrà che allora i testi erano impostati su quello che oggi sarebbe considerato un livello universitario. Il richiamo continuo alla pratica delle "competenze di base" is a smokescreen through which schools are siphoning off time of the boys for twelve years, teaching them the seven lessons I have just described.
The company, just before the Civil War, it is increasingly controlled by the central government shows itself in the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs next to which we spend traveling coast to coast, which are all products of this control. This is also true, in my opinion, for the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, abuse, the fact that the class becomes a caste, as a product of the dehumanization of our lives in the United States, reducing the importance of individuals, families and communities, a reduction that proceeds from the central power. We can not escape the coercive nature of large institutions, they want more and more until there is nothing left to give. The school takes away our children every opportunity to play an active role in community life - in fact it destroys communities relegating the training of children in the hands of certified experts - and in doing so ensures that our children will not grow up fully human. Aristotle taught that without a fully active role in community life was not possibile sperare di diventare un essere umano sano. Sicuramente aveva ragione. Guardatevi intorno la prossima volta che passate vicino ad una scuola o ad un’oasi per anziani, se ne volete una prova.
La scuola, così com’è stata creata, è un sistema di sostegno essenziale ad una visione di ingegneria sociale che condanna la maggior parte della gente ad essere pietre di ordine inferiore in una piramide che si restringe innalzandosi ad un terminale di controllo. La scuola è un artificio che fa sembrare inevitabile un ordine sociale piramidale di questo tipo, sebbene una tale premessa costituisca un tradimento fondamentale della Rivoluzione Americana. Dall’epoca del colonialismo fino al periodo della Repubblica we had no schools to talk about - just read ' Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin for an example of a man who had no time to waste in school - but was beginning to be realized the promise of democracy. Turning your back on this promise by reviving the ancient pharaonic dream of Egypt: compulsory subordination for all. This was the secret Plato reluctantly spoke in Republic when Glaucon and Adeimantus solicited from Socrates the plan for total control of human life by the state, a project needed to maintain a society where some people take more than their part. "There show, "said Socrates," how to determine such a city suffering from inflammation, but you will not like what I'm about to say. "And so it was outlined for the first time the school's program of seven lessons.
The current debate on whether we should have a program at the national level is bogus. We already have a national program contained in the seven lessons I have just outlined. A program that generates a physical paralysis, moral and intellectual, and no program content will be sufficient to reverse the His abhorrent effects. What is at issue at this time in our national school hysteria about the low academic performance does not grasp the point. The schools teach just what I intend to teach and they do it well: how can you be a good Egyptian and remain in place in the pyramid.
III None of this is inevitable. None of this is impossible to overturn. We have alternatives on how to educate young people, there is no right or wrong way. If we open a gap in the power of illusion we would see the pyramid. There is no international competition to the death that threatens our national existence, difficult as that idea is even to think, much less to believe, in the presence of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. Sotto ogni importante aspetto materiale la nostra nazione è autosufficiente, energia compresa. Mi rendo conto che quell’idea è in contrasto con il pensiero più alla moda degli esperti di economia politica, ma la "profonda trasformazione" della nostra economia di cui parlano queste persone non è né inevitabile, né irreversibile. L’economia globale non parla al bisogno collettivo di un lavoro che abbia un senso, di una casa che sia accessibile, di un’istruzione soddisfacente, di cure mediche adeguate, di un ambiente pulito, di un governo onesto e responsabile, di un rinnovamento sociale e culturale, o semplicemente di giustizia. Tutte le aspirazioni universali sono basate su una definizione di produttività and I am convinced that the good life so alienated from common human reality is wrong, and that most people would agree with me if he could perceive the existence of an alternative. We may be able to see that if the purchaser of the support of a philosophy that identifies the meaning where the meaning is really to be found - in families, friends, in the alternation of the seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity , generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy in all things free and economical they are made of real families, real friends and the real community - then we would be self-sufficient so that we would not even need the "enough" material, according to the insistence of our experts' global worries us so much.
How have created these awful places, these "schools"? Well, occasional education has always been present in a variety of forms, a moderately useful accessory to growth. But the 'modern education "as we know it is a byproduct of the two" Red Scare "of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor. The general education has been created in part because families Americans were frightened by the long-standing native cultures of immigrants of Celtic, Slavic, Latin and '40s of the XIX century, and felt aversion to the Catholic religion they brought with them. A third factor contributing to the creation of a prison called school children must have been without doubt the consternation with which these same "Americans" were watching the movement of African Americans in society in the wake of the Civil War.
Let's take another look at the seven lessons of school education: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, surveillance - All these things are an essential training for the lower classes fixed for persons deprived forever of the possibility of finding the center of his special genius. And over time this training has shaken off its original logic: to deal with the poor. Because since the 20s the growth of the educational bureaucracy, and the development less prominent than a swarm of industries that profit from education exactly as it is, has expanded the original scope of the institution, to the point that now even takes hold sons and daughters of the middle classes.
Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged for allegedly taking money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of education that would have taken by capturing the function of teaching that in a healthy community, belongs to everyone.
With lessons like the ones I teach day after the other, we should not be surprised if there is a real national crisis, the nature of which is very different from the one indicated by means of ' National information . Young people are indifferent to the adult world and the future, almost indifferent to everything except the diversion rappresentato dai giochi e dalla violenza. Ricchi o poveri, gli scolari che affrontano il XXI secolo non riescono a concentrarsi a lungo su qualcosa; hanno uno scarso senso del tempo passato e di quello a venire. Sono diffidenti verso l’intimità, come i figli del divorzio che effettivamente sono (perché noi li abbiamo separati dall’importante attenzione parentale); odiano la solitudine, sono crudeli, materialisti, dipendenti, passivi, violenti, timidi in presenza di qualcosa di inaspettato, drogati di distrazioni.
Tutte le tendenze marginali dell’infanzia sono alimentate ed esaltate fino a rasentare il grottesco dall’istruzione che, attraverso il suo programma occulto, impedisce uno effective development of the personality. In fact, without taking advantage of the apprehension, selfishness and inexperience of children our schools could not possibly survive, or I could do myself as a qualified teacher. No public school that actually dared teach the use of the tools of critical thinking - like the dialectic, heuristic, or other means which should use the free minds - last very long before being cut to pieces. The school has become the substitute of the church in our secular society, and just as the church requires that its teachings are believed to be authentic.
And 'Now is the time when directly address the fact that institutional schooling is destructive to children. No one survives completely unscathed the program of the seven lessons , even educators. The method is deeply and completely antieducativo. It can not be groped messing about. For one of the great ironies of human affairs, the full re-thinking they need the schools would cost much less of what we're shelling out now that powerful interests can not let that happen. You have to understand that first of all the business I'm involved in a project job and an agency for the execution of contracts. We can not afford to save money by reducing the scale of our operation or by diversifying the product we offer, even to help children grow in the right way. And 'This is the iron law education institution - is a business that is neither subject to normal accounting procedures, or the scalpel rational competition.
Some form of the free market system in public education is the most likely to seek answers, and a free market in which schools and family-run small business schools, schools run by religious schools craft and schools-there are plenty of farms and compete with education in mano al governo. Io sto cercando di descrivere un libero mercato nell’istruzione proprio come quello che il paese possedeva fino alla Guerra Civile, quello in cui gli studenti si imbarcano nel tipo di educazione che è adatta a loro , anche se questo significa educarsi da sé; non ha fatto male a Benjamin Franklin, da quel che vedo. Queste possibilità attualmente esistono in meravigliosi resti in miniatura di un passato forte e vigoroso, ma sono accessibili solo agli intraprendenti, ai coraggiosi, ai fortunati, o ai ricchi. La quasi impossibilità che una di queste strade migliori si apra alle famiglie in frantumi dei poveri, o alla schiera di perplessi accampata ai margini della borghesia urbana suggerisce che the disaster of the seven classes of schools is becoming ever greater, unless we do something bold and decisive with the mess of government monopoly of education .
After an adult life spent in teaching, I think the method of mass schooling is its only real content. Do not be fooled into thinking that good curriculum or good training or good teachers are the crucial determinants of the education of your children. All the diseases that we have examined occur in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children maintain important appointments with themselves and their families, apprendendo le lezioni dell’automotivazione, della perseveranza, dell’autonomia, del coraggio, della dignità e dell’amore – e anche le lezioni del servizio agli altri, che sono fondamentali per la vita domestica e comunitaria.
Trent’anni fa [nei primi anni ‘60] queste cose potevano essere ancora imparate nelle ore che rimanevano dopo la scuola. Ma la televisione ha fagocitato la maggior parte di questo tempo, e una combinazione di televisione e tensioni proprie delle famiglie con due redditi o monoparentali hanno inghiottito anche molta parte di ciò che era solito essere il tempo dedicato alla famiglia. I nostri figli non hanno of time to grow up fully human, just deserts from the ground by thin ruin.
on our culture is sliding into a future that will insist all of us to learn the wisdom of 'intangible experience, the future will demand as the price of survival we follow a path of natural life economical in cost material. These lessons can not be taught in schools as they are. The school is a sentence of twelve years in prison, where bad habits are really the only program taught. I teach school and win awards doing it. I know something.
John Taylor Gatto , teacher of the year 1991 in upstate New York, is the author of this and many other essays in the book are dumbing Us Down.Link: http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm
Translation for www.comedonchisciotte.org and http://scuolalibera.blogspot.com by Cristina Mazzaferro
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