Weapons of Mass Instruction
Gatto's follow-up to Dumbing Us Down, examining how compulsory schooling became a tool for managing and limiting the population — and profiling the historical figures who built the system.
John Taylor Gatto·2008
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John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) spent 30 years teaching in New York City public schools, winning the New York City Teacher of the Year award three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 1991. He resigned from teaching the same year, writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled 'I Quit, I Think.' He went on to write several widely read books critiquing compulsory schooling, arguing that it deliberately produces a passive, obedient, and intellectually stunted population. His Underground History of American Education is considered his magnum opus.
Key Ideas
- →Compulsory schooling was designed by industrialists to produce compliant workers
- →The seven lessons all schools actually teach: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, surveillance
- →Extraordinary achievers throughout history were self-educated or educated outside conventional schools
- →Parents can and should take responsibility for their children's education
Books by John Taylor Gatto
Dumbing Us Down
John Taylor Gatto's influential indictment of compulsory schooling, drawing on his 30 years as a NYC teacher and three-time Teacher of the Year.
John Taylor Gatto·1991
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