Book Review
The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling
By John Taylor Gatto (1935 - 2018)
First published 2011
Paperback by Valor Academy 2017
Print length 300 pages
Author's website is www.johntaylorgatto.com
An audio version of this review is at anchor.fm
About the Author
From his website, "He climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He quit teaching on the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children. In 1992, he was named Secretary of Education in the Libertarian Party Shadow Cabinet, and was included in Who’s Who in America from 1996 on. In 1997, he was given the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty, and was named to the Board of Advisors of the National TV-Turnoff Week." He was known as “The World’s Most Courageous Teacher.”
John authored several other books some of which are:
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992),
The Exhausted School (1993),
A Different Kind of Teacher (2000).
About the Book
Contents consist of a Prologue 18 chapters and Epilogue. In recapitulating Chapter Eighteen Breaking Out Of The Trap he states, "The only conceivable way to break out of this trap is to repudiate any further centralization of schooling in the form of national goals, national tests, national teaching licenses, school-to-work plans, and the rest of the utopian package which accompanies these. Schooling must be de-systematized, the system must be put to death."
John proclaimed that, "It's time to take our schools back. If they mean to have a war, let it begin now."
This book's popularity is demonstrated in the fact that its Amazon rank is #96 in the "History of Education" category. There, Customer Reviews rate it an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars from 146 ratings.
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