A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling [Hardcover]

I particularly found interesting the comparison of real work with paper work. The idea that important (i.e., real) projects should be pursued in contrast to the model/abstract (i.e., illusion) projects. The concept here is that people (especially young, unadulterated children) thrive educationally on touching the real, important things in their lives. The children grow in character, ability and knowledge where they actually accomplish something of value in the real world. Compulsory school cannot accommodate an individual's curiosity and need to accomplish that which is real life. School can only teach in a classroom full of desks and books, where one is forced to learn what the school has deemed good (regardless of the individual's curiosity, aptitude and learning style). Thus, school can really only teach with paper and concepts. School, ironically, is not the real world and yet, it's the place most of us have chosen as a great starting place for our children. The irony is loudly ringing in my ears.

Here's the scoop: yes, school systems can be better. But they are much better than they were when we were kids. AT least in the suburbs which Mr. Gatto has no clue. Mr. Gatto is against a national education system, but such a system would free kids frm the property-tax discrimination system now in place!

Mr. Gatto makes you think that School is the cause of all the ills in urban society where he taught. As a native New Yroker myself, the problems are far deeper. These children come to school from broken homes, with little discipline, and poor parenting with no value for learning. Why do Asian immigrants do so much better in the same school system? "It's the culture, stupid!" Not the school.

Mr. Gatto's solution (here an in his other writings) is to wax poetic about the pre-industrial world where folks lived simply in trademan jobs in small towns. Come to reality, Mr. Gatto! Those tradesmen did not elinamate the 1 in 5 kids who died before age five, or kept you alive to 90, or give you more time with your kids because of modern technological conveniences. Modern socieyt did all that. Everything has its tradeoffs.

Mr. Gatto believes that no school is best. Home schooling (just a little) is preferred. Great if we all could afford that. And the family culture of inner city families makes this a pipe dream.A s a New Yorker, I cannot imagine the masses of students hanging out causing trouble all day as they "learn naturally."

Apprentiships and providing trademen alternatives in school (not just college) is laudable, but Gatto's disdain for anything oganized makes this a well-disguised treatise of an Anarchist, plain and simple.