I think in general, if you want to know the problems with today’s education system, this is the book, This is the book you need to read to get the problems of today’s educational system. Incredible insight, the kind of insight you can only get from someone who’s been a star a teacher for years and years. Now, if you want to know the solutions, this is probably not the book. It doesn’t give a lot of solutions. The book is called Dumbing us Down, so you can see from the name of the book, that he’s focusing on the problems here.
I would have liked overall, I’ve heard some of John’s stories, those stories about a black kid in this class who they wouldn’t serve a pizza to and he brought through the process he brought his pizza and he brought this pizza company to the court and the kid grew up and become a lawyer who’s helped now. I make it this buddy butcher in this story but this is my understanding of it who helped other young kids in similar situations in the future so that’s really great amazing inspiring story, I would’ve like more of those stories, it gives some of those stories sometimes great. I would like to know more of these kind of stories in this book but maybe that’s different book and don’t read John Taylor Gatto sort of books and see what’s there, that’s just a really quick overview.
To go with the detail in the book now, you can see on your screen here Monongahela, some pictures of Monongahela now, if this is where John Taylor Gatto grew up so I had to take a look at it and you could see just from the pictures it is said that everyone was poor but we didn’t know they were poor and I kind of understand what he was coming from, that because everybody was, he didn’t know he compared to, but the sleepy old village where everyone call knows each and everyone looks after and it looks like a really beautiful place, the river town, and the way he describes in the book, its really incredible and I wanted to pick up one or two just from the introduction one. But one thing he talks about is him as an educator overtime, he started seeing it as he wasn’t the painter who painted this beautiful picture, took a blank canvas and paint a beautiful picture by pulling knowledge into childs head, he knew that there was genius and inherited every child and that’s another nugget that I took, it was just unbelievable, he knew that there’s a genius child needs to be brought out so he sought his job not as a painter but more of a sculptor and which reminds me of Anthony de Mello.
An email I used to talk about take his word, don’t take his words and just implement them that knocked him away like a sculptor, finds the element to what he’s bringing out of the rocky find and he brings his sculpture air of the rock by knocking pieces aways and that’s what John Taylor’s got saying the sculpture already in the child, all you need to do is knock away the pieces to show him the incredible beautiful sculpture, I think that was a beautiful thing that he was saying isn’t he genius inherit the children, I think that we can all agree that is right, that is true and that is amazing, it’s just an amazing nugget, we got out of the end even this just yet in the book hasn’t even started and we talked about Monongahela and how different he came from Monongahela might teach so I’m gonna open up and some pictures about where he teaches that this might not be the exact school but this gives you and idea of the type of area where he’s teaching, it’s in Manhattan’s Upper East side and it’s a huge place and I think this is one of the affluent places he was teaching but there’s a lot of other place that weren’t affluent that he was teaching as well and he did win Teacher of the Year because of his practices which weren’t normal you couldn’t say, I wasn’t saying Erykah Badu, it’s not on the right word, it’s very negative but not normal school practices.
He had some practices which some people would think we’re kind of dangerous like ten kids go out and do projects on their own and one of the privates with letting two girls go – do you want to go to a museum? and they had to hitchhike their own way there which I would be afraid to that but one teacher year and his practices weren’t normal and he took a lot of chances which obviously paid out for a lot of kids. He thought it but he wants to give them response this much responsibility as possible which is something that is really lacking in todays school, his responsibilities are just educational where you’re given these facts and you have to record , you take them and that brings me just to another that inner I just heard this total deduction, he was saying that sometimes people leave school they seem competent, when they’ve just memorised someone else’s performance and the same memorising someone else’s performance is not competence and there’s a big difference so that is just another great little nugget. I got out of the age deduction so it’s very interesting, I’m not gonna leave this video for too long and now but it’s interesting where he’s saying that the genius isn’t inherently children that was all was really interested me and he was saying that genius is not a rare phenomenon, its actually in abundance in children just needs to be brought out of them sort of genius in it. And just at the end of the book, the piece that really grabbed me was he started to wonder as a teacher if he was there to inhibit the genius actually coming out of children and he wasn’t there to teach them of bring them on, in fact he was put there to inhibit the genius coming out of the children and that doesn’t have his exact words but I’m just paraphrasing it so it’s my own words but he started to wonder – and that is just the start of the book, that’s the introduction and the book hasn’t even started.
I’ve read the whole book, it is my second read and I’m just going though the introduction and as I do each chapter, I might not do a video in each chapter but I might do a video in every two or three chapters, you might just want to read the book to hear, it’s when I give my experience, but I’m going to give my experience from different chapters and that’s what really grabbed me. Genius inherently children and he began to wonder as a teacher whether he was there to inhibit that, and he wasn’t bringing out as he should and that’s the book hasn’t even started yet so that tells you. I’m excited about this book, I think if you want to get a book. If you’re interested in education or interested in your children, anything like that if you want to get a book that’s gonna give you some information but it’s not gonna give you solutions and I’m interested in solutions as well. This specific book isn’t gonna give you solutions but in it, its amazing that John Taylor Gatto wrote this book. I want to had an issue with John Taylor Gatto that he’s an absolute genius, I want to listen issues later on in life where he was slurring his words, not his fault, but it made him more.
I wanted to watch a lot of videos wanted to hear everything said but made it difficult to understand some things or just understand some concepts that he was coming out what that you want to know you want to understand but with the book, it’s perfect someone else you get his his brain but someone else is reading it. You might get it into Amazon and have the actual physical book. If you wan to get an E-book to brick the education system, this is it. He was trained to do medical education system, but I’m in Ireland, but it really applies to every or at least every Western, but I think, even outside the Western morals probably every education system is build on the same and it’s the fundamentals that he’s talking about, so if you want to understand the education system to a deeper degree dumbing this down as a book, you really need to go to Audible and get it right now. I should go for free dose and there’s a link on this video where you can go in and you can get this book for free anyway but it’s a great book, now there’s the first chat just the introduction I’m doing, I’m going to do the first chapter and the second chapter in the future video but I will be talking about this amazing book for about four or five videos. It’s me Alan, from Looking for Warriors