Some reviews of books about learning and schooling. They were written quite some time ago and included on the original site.
'The Underground History of American Education' by John Taylor Gatto
For those of you unfamiliar with the name of John Taylor Gatto he published a book back in 1992 entitled "Dumbing Us Down: the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling" which outlines the damaging effects of school upon the individual. It has become a classic text for the alternative education movement in general and contains fascinating and useful insights for home educators in particular. In this book, however, his task is much more immense, for he is attempting to demonstrate not only the destructive effect that schooling has had on society, but also that it was meticulously planned and executed by vested business interests and social engineers. The foundation of the movement took place in Prussia during the 18th and early 19th centuries. A schooling system was created that stratified their population into thinkers and leaders at the top, professionals like engineers, doctors and lawyers next and the rest of the population (92-94%) educated only for "obedience, co-operation and correct attitudes along with the rudiments of literacy and official state myths of history." (p. 137) Educationalists and policy makers who had studied these Prussian ideas, backed by the richest and most powerful families of the time (Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefella and Henry Ford) created a movement for compulsory schooling that spread, between 1852 and 1918, through every state in the union. Anyone who attended the 1999 Home Education Conference in London and heard him speak will be familiar with the basic premise; then he gave it the title "Fourth Purpose Schooling". Although it is an American history, as he pointed out in his lecture, the same ideas, the same influences, shaped the transformation of schooling in Britain at the same time. Our social and cultural background is somewhat different but I think the main thrust of his argument is equally relevant to this country. Modern compulsory schooling, Gatto argues, is designed to actually foster illiteracy and create, in effect, a caste system within the population. It is designed to turn self-reliant, self-educated, creative and independent individuals into passive consumers and factory fodder for the new world economic order that was being created by the 'Coal Revolution' of the late 19th century. The book is an in-depth social, political and economic history of the America of the last 150 years. It is full of detailed references and historical documentation, and has oblique offshoots into such issues as eugenics, fabianism and the removal of religion from schools, with a smattering of his own personal and family history. It all adds up to a damning indictment of a system that has been inflicted on millions and millions of children world-wide. Although not necessarily a book for home educators it is certainly a book for anyone seriously worried about the nature of schools, anyone still under the illusion that they can be reformed and anyone needing inspiration and reassurance that they have made the right choice to leave the system behind.
Available from John Taylor Gatto's website.
'John Holt: Personalised Education and the Reconstruction of Schooling' by Roland Meighan
John Holt wrote ten books, that's quite a lot to get through, so for those of you with less time but still in need of the basics of his ideas this book offers a useful and very readable introduction. John started in the 60's with 'How children fail', a stunning indictment of what schools do to children and how they destroy the ability and desire to learn. From there he was on a path which led him to question more and more of what we do to children and the results of our treatment of them. In 'Escape from childhood' he outlines a blueprint for children's rights that respects them as people and facilitates their true participation in society, rather than their exclusion from it as is currently the case. To begin with, in his earlier books, he clings on to the idea that school could be changed in some way to make it better but as the years and books go by he reaches an almost inevitable conclusion, that they are beyond repair and that to find an alternative is the only real solution. He founded 'Growing Without Schooling' magazine in 1977 to support families who found home education as their alternative and continued to write to provide support and inspiration to people making that choice. There is something in his writings that touches on a 'truth' about the nature of learning and his thoughtfulness and insight cannot help but open your eyes to all sorts of possibilities.
'The Next Learning System: and why home-schoolers are trailblazers' by Roland Meighan
This book is one of many that Roland Meighan has written looking into alternative ideas in education. He has had links with the home education movement and researched within it for many years. In this book he sets out to show that what home education can offer young people could well become a blueprint for the education of the future. I do not consider it idealistic to hope that the ideas about individuality and flexibility that characterise home education will one day become part of the state sector which at the moment is so suffused with conformity and statistics. He looks in 'The Next Learning System' at a spectrum of research into the effectiveness of home education, what it can offer young people as individuals and how it supports their growth and development, and why it appears that home education is so successful. He outlines the ways in which this approach to learning differs from, and is an improvement on, what schools have to offer. What we know about the human brain, how it works and how we learn has been transformed in recent years, and yet the school model has yet to catch up with many of these ideas. The next learning system that he envisions is one where learners manage their own learning, have access to a variety of places in which to learn and resources to use, and can create their own 'curriculum' from a huge 'catalogue' of choices. He sees flexi-schooling as a positive option that could have much to offer those looking for part formal/part informal education, and a possible area for growth in future years. The book offers a positive image of what could be possible for our education system if the political will were committed to such improvements, until such time, the answer appears to be 'make the change for yourself'.
'Compulsory Schooling Disease' by Chris Shute
The book begins with a quote from Winston Churchill, "Schools have not necessarily much to do with education.... they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school." Chris aims to show that we would be hard put to prove anything much has changed since this was written in 1944. Fascism as an ideology is designed to put and keep people in their appropriate place, disallows the rights of the individual and establishes a system of the many being ruled absolutely by the few, with every aspect of their lives being under control. School mirrors the values of fascism by treating children as if they need controlling, so that the young people that emerge from the other end of the system are people who expect to be controlled. School "is about the business of compelling people to conform to a pattern of behaviour and way of thinking decided by the few who hold power over them."(p.18) Children learn "obedience, conformity and compliance"(p.10) and that punishment for those who follow their own thoughts and ideas is justified While it is a book that is a fundamental critique of the 'system', he emphasises that he is not levelling the blame on teachers themselves, but that they become unwitting partners in the subtext of what schools are designed to achieve. Chris gives this 'normal' explanation for the treatment of children in school: "School is good and necessary for children. Good children realise that and settle down to work. Bad children do not. They are insolent, lazy, noisy and obstructive. This makes it hard for everybody to teach them the important things that we adults know they need to learn. Therefore it is very important that teachers take them in hand and force them to do as they are told. Any teacher who cannot or will not is a weakling and should be hounded out of the profession."(p.48) The establishment idea that adults know what is good for children is so widely accepted by our society that it can be a real leap of imagination to accept what this book argues. This is not a book that pulls it's punches, it is profoundly unsettling in it's analysis of school as an institution.
These three available from Educational Heretics Press.
'To Have or To Be' by Erich Fromm
"Literacy is by no means the blessing it is advertised to be, especially if people use it to read material that impoverishes their capacity to experience and imagine." Erich Fromm
This is only a slim volume (for a philosophy book) but it took me several months to feel that I had got some measure of what he is trying to say. The book identifies two 'modes of being', namely the 'having mode' and the 'being mode'. Fromm argues that most human beings are locked into the 'having' mode of existence and that our economic system, social customs and also our education system are all designed to perpetuate this way of living. The 'having' mode is basically at the root of all hedonistic philosophical approaches, i.e. that satisfying every human desire is the route to happiness and the actual purpose of life itself. But his definition goes further than that. 'Having mode' is about defining yourself in terms of what you have and what you consume, and that your experiences are simply to be added to a list which makes the sum total of your life. Conversation is merely an exchange of information rather than a real dialogue because your opinions are like possessions that you fear losing. Reading is about consuming books rather than active engagement with the ideas in the book. Schooling becomes simply getting students to consume certain outputs of our culture that others have also consumed and thus consider important. Knowledge becomes a mere commodity. High status is given to people who have large amounts of 'intellectual property', not necessarily those who use and understand it and are changed by what they learn. The 'having mode' is at the root of the desire to control others. Relationships with others, especially in a patriarchal society, are defined by ownership, of wife or children, even friends become possessions. The 'being mode' on the other hand incorporates very closely the ideas of growth and change, 'becoming' as it were as well as 'being'. 'Being' is about engaging actively with experiences and ideas you encounter in the world, especially where new learning is concerned, knowledge being a process of productive thinking rather than consumption. 'Being' is also about 'productive activity' not mere busyness, though he is pains to point out this does not refer to having a physical 'product' from your activity but is about inner activity. He turns on it's head the meaning of 'passivity' and of 'activity'. 'Busyness' or 'activity' as defined by society i.e. filling your life with meaningless stuff so you are always 'doing', is actually what he defines as 'passivity', whereas what society sees as 'passivity', doing nothing, can actually be 'activity' when it is about engaging in genuine 'non-alienated activity'. 'Being mode' is not however about material deprivation. Fromm distinguishes between 'existential having', to provide for the physical needs for our bodies to survive, and 'characterological having' where the person's life focus is possession and consumption. This books looks at the human condition and it's impact on the society we create, and equally at the impact our society has on the human condition. If you have ever wanted an answer to the 'meaning of life' question, or wondered 'is this all there is to it?' then this book can give some small insight and possibly some hope.