Dumbing Us Down

This book offers the idea that you you should let a group of people literally burn others at the stake because eventually after a couple hundred years they will come around to not thinking that's appropriate. And it is clearly better to do it like that then to institute some kind of governmental control about burning people to death.

I'm not really paraphrasing this was an idea offered by the author towards the end of the book.

I'm not sure what to think about this book; I found myself agreeing with Gatto's thesis despite all of his terrible arguments and proposed solutions for why the government monopoly education system is terrible. The book is in the form of several of Gatto's essays, but I would only suggest reading the first (The Psychopathic School – coincidentally available online for free at http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Ed/GattoPsyPathSchl.htm), as the rest of the book does little but harp on these same topics over and over.

The excerpts from the book that I liked can be found here:
http://sandymaguire.me/books/john-taylor-gatto-dumbing-us-down.html

While I was prepared for the degree to which this book was an indictment of our public education system, I was unprepared for the degree to which it's an indictment of pretty much our whole society, including education, national government, mass media, etc...

I have to admit that I'm really still digesting the implications of the book and will probably need to re-read shortly.