Are You Blinded by the Education System?

blindfold

By Kelly Negvesky

The American school system is flawed. John Taylor Gatto, a public school teacher for 30 years and winner of both the New York City Teacher of the Year award and the New York State Teacher of the Year, has been speaking and writing about the errors in today's school system and what can be done to change the way students are educated today. Explaining the nature of true education, Gatto says, “Education is almost totally engineered from the inside. You cannot take an education and no one can give you one. It is customized to the individual person.”

Creating Consumers

Instead of educating lifelong learners, today's system is creating “consumers” instead of “producers” and, according to one of Gatto's best selling books, educators are actually “Dumbing us Down.” Mr. Gatto says regarding the philosophy coming from the system, “they haven’t done a great job past tense - they are doing a great job. It’s a constant propaganda mill. They want to get individuals feeling uneasy about not turning their child over to total strangers in an institution that has a dismal track record.”

Assumptions

Conditioned by 200 years of mandatory public education parents feel there are no other options. How can I educate my child? So often parents' thoughts are, "I don’t have the capabilities, the teaching certificate, the proper environment, correct chalkboard, or desks", and in response to high school or college they feel inadequate to impart wisdom or knowledge they, as parents, do not have. “The whole public school institution is based on a delusion, an indefensible assumption that kids don’t want to learn, and they require a specialist, who is a stranger, to teach them.” Gatto believes, “it is just all nonsense.”

Are There Answers?

So what is the solution to sidestepping the current system? Is there hope to change education in America today? Gatto offers this lifeline, “Now we are down to nuts and bolts of engineering. This doesn’t have to be thought of from scratch. Fortunately, we have over 2,000 years of history where we have a very large number of successfully educated young people. Is there a pattern we can pick out of the success stories? YES!”

Gatto points to one of our nation’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, as an inspiration for change. He encourages a close look at how this man, one of 15 children and son of a candle maker, "In his spare time with his friends, put himself through an education I doubt Harvard, Yale or Princeton would dream of asking their undergraduates to undergo today.”

What's the Difference?

The differences between Franklin’s model and today’s schools are severe and according to Gatto they can be summarized into three words, “there are three key words to profound transformation in the quality of young people’s education and those are production, connections, and concentration.”

There are very few exceptions to production being a key concept in education. “Don’t undertake anything which you do not understand the product and then tie that teaching to learning to actually produce things.”

Get Connected

Each person comes into this world with associations, ties to the family they are born into. Connections are important in regards to obtaining an education. Gatto states, “Most successful people are connected with a whole lot of different sources and information. Schools disconnect you from everything real and reconnect you with a total stranger. Then if the young person tries to reconnect themselves to others during the school day they are punished and chastised.”

Sinking Ship

Gatto documented as many as one interruption in the classroom every 6 minutes, “and that is in a good classroom; in a bad one they can be non-stop.” Concentration is key to a superior mind, “No one can look through history at the great minds and not see that they were set apart in their ability to concentrate for long periods of time” said Gatto. “Now you put someone in that environment for 12 years and what happens to their ability to concentrate. It is regulated to a short sound bite. It is not conducive to achieving a great education”

The current system cannot be saved. Gatto claims, “If there are going to be any solutions it is going to come from the bottom up as in the case of the nearly three million homeschool students.”

Take Action

CollegePlus! is a bottom up answer to many of the current system's problems. Giving the student Life Purpose Planning helps ensure they are lifelong producers in society and earning a degree for which they were created. CollegePlus! offers the freedom to achieve students' educational goals while remaining connected to family and community, their key support system. Finally, CollegePlus! gives a clear approach to courses allowing great concentration on individual subjects with a coach alongside helping maintain that focus.

Find Out More

Mr. Gatto’s wisdom and expertise points many to new directions in education. You can learn more about the history of American education by downloading his book, “The Underground History of American Education” for free from his website: www.johntaylorgatto.com.

Shawn Cohen

Kelly Negvesky lives in Orlando, loves her husband of 13 years and educates their 3 children at home. She recently graduated from CollegePlus! and earned her BA in Humanities from Thomas Edison State College.

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