A Review of Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto

John Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down, has published a new book Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. Note that the subtitle of Gatto's book uses the term "compulsory schooling" rather than that oxymoron "compulsory education".

In his prologue Gatto asks, "Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years? Is this deadly routine really necessary (xv)?"

It certainly is puzzling that something with such a dreadful and contradictory name as "compulsory education" was passed into law by all the states of the union. But there was a lot of arm twisting and coercion going on back in the mid to late 1800's and early 1900's. (That certainly does not happen these days). By 1918 every state in the union had adopted some form of legislation for compulsory school attendance.

The idea of public education gained sympathy with the American populace because of its idealistic notion that the poor needed access to education in order to be able to pull themselves out of poverty. Gatto's story is that the compulsory part of public education has much darker and deeper roots.

Gatto quotes from books such as Professor Arthur Calhoun's Social History of the Family; A Sociological Philosophy of Education (1928); and William Kirkpatrick's Education and the Social Crisis. Gatto shows that these books and others reflect a utopian philosophy and "dream of scientific population control" (4).

And what is that utopian philosophy? Well, Gatto explains it best, but it has something to do with the poor staying poor and the middle class getting poorer. In other words, if we think government is going to step in and fix it (the economy, our schools), we think wrongly.

Using Pennsylvania as an example, Governor Rendell has been talking about consolidation of school districts in order to save taxpayer money. The following is taken from an on-line pdf document titled "2009-10 Executive Budget Facts":

Governor Rendell proposes to create a legislative commission to study how best to right-size Pennsylvania's local school districts. His goal is to have no more than 100 school districts.

Full-scale school consolidation provides a very effective way to relieve the local property tax burden all across Pennsylvania. There is no need to maintain 500 separate schools districts across the state - each with its own staggering, and growing, administrative costs.

Historically in public education, however, consolidation has been the means by which local control of schools is loosened and diminished. Care to define right-sizing for us, Governor?

Gatto writes, "These mergers were sold as efficiency measures to save taxpayers money, but an oddity occurred-as the districts were enlarged, costs went up, not down, and continued upward in subsequent years. With local watchdogs gone, tendencies to use mass schooling as a cash cow were exploited by every special interest group with political friends (19)."

For anyone involved with public education as a student, parent, or teacher, the issues Gatto addresses in this book are exactly the questions you have asked. Did you ever get a good answer? Probably not.

Students, you deserve to know why you have to go to school and why you are bored when you get there. Parents, you need to know why standardized testing takes up so much time in school. Teachers, you want to know why your initial enthusiasm for teaching has dissipated. Take your education into your own hands. Start by reading Gatto's book.

Gatto, John Taylor. Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. Canada: New Society Publishers, 2009.

"2009-10 Executive Budget Facts" http://www.kasd.org/files/news/factsheet_consolidationFINAL.pdf