Gatto examines how compulsory government education keeps children from authentic learning and erodes genuine family and community by pre-empting the time young people need to develop their own interests and nurture bonds with other human beings. He presents the reader with the startling assertion that public education cannot be fixed because it is not broken: it does exactly what it meant to do; that is, it produces incomplete, blindly conforming, indifferent, emotionally dependent human beings who will support a plethora of goods and services industries. Gatto points to the phenomenally high literacy rates present in America prior to the advent of public schooling as a counterpoint to arguments that mass government-sponsored education is the only means of achieving a literate population. Gatto sounds a clarion call for those who would take the education of their children out of the hands of strangers and work towards the stronger communities and families that would be possible without institutional schooling.

I was particularly inspired by Gatto's vision of a society in which, no longer hampered by the emotional dependency instilled by schooling, humans will cast off the stranglehold of "expert" institutions, thus reducing the inordinate power held by medicine, law, and the social services industry. School is where future members of the cult of expertise are initiated.

A small flaw in Gatto's work, in my opinion, is how he articulates his view of television. I agree with him that TV, like institutional schooling, takes up a great deal of young people's time that, in many cases, would be better spent at other activities. However, Gatto does not point out that there are no laws which compel parents to plop their children in front of a television set. I think this is an important distinction.

Gatto is not an outsider, unfamiliar with conditions in the public school system. In fact, he taught in New York for more than twenty years, after which he left the system because he felt he was doing more harm than good.

Related resources include Gatto's homepage



http://www.johntaylorgatto.com



and a selection of Gatto's writings posted at The Canadian Alliance of Home Schoolers



http://www.life.ca/hs/gatto.html



Among Gatto's essays, "The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher" is one of the best introductions to his thinking on education. It is available here:



http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt