Dumbing Us Down

As I read and thought about our book for November, (Dumbing Us Down; the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Grotto), I had lots of different thoughts and feelings. I’m not an educator, nor do I know much about education. But I was educated in the public school setting that Grotto attacks in this book, so I have an opinion or two.

I agree with Grotto’s assertion that the current mass-education model is deeply flawed. Public schools in America encourage memorization instead of learning and inexorably wear children’s minds into narrow, regimented thinking that admits only “one way” to achieve or to succeed (p. 68). He says that communities and families should undertake to educate their children in ways that reflect local attitudes. I agree with him; I can see that a local approach to education could result in a more complete experience for students and communities.

Here are the exceptions I see with his arguments, though. What about the families who are indifferent to their children’s educations? What about the single-parent families who must send their children to public school, because there are no affordable alternatives? Who looks after these children’s educations? He mentions, on page 93, that we should “involve everyone in every community in the education of the young; businesses, institutions, old people, whole families;” I guess I’m looking for some kind of solution or plan for how that could happen.

I agree to a child’s need for private time, too. But one of his arguments irks me profoundly. A few times in the text, he quotes Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”, specifically the proverb that “good fences make good neighbors.” Please! Read “Mending Wall” again. It’s a protest (a mild one) against the unexamined reasons for the maintenance of a wall that may no longer be useful. Frost is saying that we put up too many walls, not that we need more of them. I refuse to believe that Grotto’s never read the poem, and I think it disingenuous of him to mis-use the quote so blatantly. I admit that this may be a nit-picky criticism, but I think it reflects a kind of righteous passion in his rhetoric that clouds the effectiveness of his arguments.

It’s a good book, gives me lots of food for thought. I think more people need to read it and become aware of the detrimental effects of current practices in public education. I hope that there’s a corresponding involvement in and excitement for alternative education methods.

Juli