John Taylor Gatto - Discussion Board Archives

Success and Failures -- a synopsis of my Odyssey over the past 15 years By Tom 04/26/02 11:35:31 AM

Date: 04/26/02 11:35:31 AM
Name: Tom
Email: tom@reedelectronics.com
Subject: Success and Failures -- a synopsis of my Odyssey over the past 15 years
In keeping with the theme, I thought I should call my experience an Odyssey, though any person's experience with the modern educational system could be termed an Odyssey, one that incorporates many twists and turns -- some make it to the end of the journey, while others are caught up in the journey and unable to make it to the destination unscathed. I will also begin by stating that this is only a rough synopsis of my thoughts. A fuller or broader set of my experiences could easily fill a book, as could the experiences of many other studnents and teachers around the country. Here is a brief outline of who I am with regard to schooling, and please note that I am mentioning these items to impress no one, but simply as a basis to explain where I am coming from:

I would be considered to be a success story of public "education"

Nearly every teacher I have ever had seemed to consider me the best in their class

If a valedictorian had been annouced at my high school, I would have been that person with a 104% grade average. -- as a side note, no valedictorian was announced for my high school because the principal at the time considered it to be too competitive and against what the school was there to do. Sameness, not excellence, was the need to be filled.

I graduated from Rice University with a degree in Classics (Latin & Greek) with a fairly decent grade point average and have gone to start my own business, having never worked for anyone else in my life -- barring a 2 week period of working in Library. I am not going to get into the modern college experience in this small outline, but I will say that it is my belief that it is broken -- not beyond repair like the lower levels of education -- yet still beyond belief.

Now I will state a few more things that I believe about myself:

I believe that I was not born any more intelligent than any other person

I believe that love of knowledge (curiosity), in all forms and in any and all subject matters, is one of the most fundamental and essential elements of being human and of learning what it is to be human.

I believe that any other individual in my past schools, if given the proper opportunity or social development, would have been able to do and achieve not only the same things I did, but many more varied and greater things.

I define success not in the grades, though now it is used as a common basis for comparison, but in the ability to be self-sufficient. That is, I reconized long before high school that most standardized and classroom tests and exams were not the true basis of knowledge, but merely the constructs of those who wished to be able to measure knowledge as if it was water in a measuring cup.

Here is my reason for pointing this out. For 15 years, from about 7th grade on, I have been thinking about why this is the case. Why it is that one average human (from a divorced family living with a single mom) in an average class in an average school like myself can excell (excelling I would define as a love of knowledge), while most others who are similar end up failing and seem to wander aimlessly through life. Why only the love of knowledge separates those who fail in living a human life from those who succeed. Why I feel so successful and confident while others do not. Why I still believe that I can do anything I put my mind to, when I believe I have no more innate ability than anyone else.

In short, although I have discussed this on numerous occasions with some of my past teachers as far back as 10th grade, quite a few of whom I still keep up with -- I even know where my kindergarten teacher lives 20 years later -- I believe the answer was clearly and eloquently pointed out in "Dumbing Us Down", a book with which I agree 100%. I have, for my entire life, almost entirely been "homeschooled" within the public education system. Though all of my education has been through public schooling, in retrospect, almost none of it really was. I happened to escape the public education vacuum by isolating myself within it. I have always known my teachers, and they have always known me as a human instead of a number. And as I see teachers I have known for years, excellent teachers who have produced spectacular students of individual learning, retire because they can no longer endure the beaurocratic mess, I am truly saddened. As I see that I would now be a certified teacher if not for the certification and industrialization of the process, I am drawn inward to search for the answer! As I see that I have many personal friends (at least 5) who would love to be teachers if not for the beaurocracy and impersonalization of the modern educational institution, I am in mourning. And as I see the students and "products" of this broken system becoming more incompetent every year and less able to simply take care of themselves, I am stunned beyond belief that citizens allow this to continue to happen to their children.

As I stated earlier, I could go into subjects and scenarios that would take a book to encompass, how I came to the understanding at an early age of 10 that I could be a successful individual within the corporate beaurocracy of the modern educational system and stuck with it for many years, trying to ingore the vast apathy and regimentation around me. But I will skip over those and finish by telling you a brief success story, one that lately got me interested in thinking about these ideas again.

Without going into too many background details to explain, 3 years ago nephew and was in special ed. No one really knew why he was in special education, but he just never seemed to do any work, never seemed to be interested in himself or their life, and most importantly, never really cared about anything at all. Other than the fact that he seemed to have serious emotional problems and had suicidal tendencies, he would look like a normal kid. And already being in 6th grade, there wasn't have much time left to do anything about it. It got so frustrating dealing with the public schools on the issue -- for all they cared about was covering up the real problems -- that my mom (his grandmother) began doing what I would term "guerrilla" homeschooling. Every day he would come home from school, where he seemed to learn nothing, and then do homeschooling from 3-9pm. This went on for a year, and he was making good progress. But it became more and more apparent that regular school was becoming entirely worthless to his improvement -- more than that actually, it was becoming an impediment. He was finally removed from the public school system last summer. Since then, he has been waking up at 7:30 every day Mon-Fri and working until about 2:30, with a few breaks here and there. I am absolutely stunned at the progress he has made. In just under one year, he has learned to think for himself, increased his math ability by 3 grade levels, to pre-algebra level, and is now learning to read books on his own, where before he could barely read sentences well out of 2nd grade books. He is learning history. He is learning science. And I have started teaching him Latin. After only 3 months of doing Latin, I already have him forming sentences and he has learned over 150 vocabulary words from which he can understand basic Latin sentences.

It turns out that David was never really a special ed student, but it took a lot of work to pull him out of the system. I have never seen him happier in his life.

And there are many other David's out there. For every success story like my own personal one, there are 10 Davids.

Tom

Wow By Stan 04/28/02 11:25:52 AM

Date: 04/28/02 11:25:52 AM
Name: Stan
Email: staneandrus@cs.com
Subject: Wow
Great story! You should consider writing your book. I would be interested in reading your whole story. Yes, it is indeed the system of education that has become unworkable through myriad choices and actions and well-intentioned and not-so-well-intentioned political movements. The reason I did 'go in' to teaching was simply ignorance of the weight of the pressure on teachers and students to conform. As a student, I wasn't as 'aware' as you were. I thought the general unpleasantness was just my poor draw of teachers and school system. My choice was to get in and 'be like those good teachers who I loved'. I now see that they were the exception and what they did (and do and what I do) is difficult to accomplish and impossible to maintain. See, the teaching style and view (not really a style at all just the notion that students are FELLOW-HUMANS) that really resonates with kids stands in total opposition to the design of modern govschools.

Even as a 'good' teacher. BY CONTRACT: I MUST assign grades. I MUST assign grades by student number. I MUST administer several standardized (great word choice, what a giveaway!) tests every year. I MUST obey the bell-schedule each day. I MUST follow the State (CA) curriculum. I MUST use the textbooks selected by the district. That's why your friends drop out or never go into teaching.

Stan

Re: Success and Failures -- a synopsis of my Odyssey over the past 15 years By S. Thomas Lewis 04/26/02

Date: 04/26/02 10:23:17 PM
Name: S. Thomas Lewis
Email: tomlewis_2002@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Success and Failures -- a synopsis of my Odyssey over the past 15 years
Thank you for your story about your education.

It is very inspiring, but not really totally unusual. Marva Collins was able to accomplish such things as was accomplished with your nephew

Re: Success and Failures -- a synopsis of my Odyssey over the past 15 years By Tom 04/26/02 02:49:36 PM

Date: 04/26/02 02:49:36 PM
Name: Tom
Email: tom@reedelectronics.com
Subject: Re: Success and Failures -- a synopsis of my Odyssey over the past 15 years
I apologize for the numerous typos and grammatical errors. I must have been interrupted at least 20 times while writing it.

Tom

Replying to:
In keeping with the theme, I thought I should call my experience an Odyssey, though any person's experience with the modern educational system could be termed an Odyssey, one that incorporates many twists and turns -- some make it to the end of the journey, while others are caught up in the journey and unable to make it to the destination unscathed. I will also begin by stating that this is only a rough synopsis of my thoughts. A fuller or broader set of my experiences could easily fill a book, as could the experiences of many other studnents and teachers around the country. Here is a brief outline of who I am with regard to schooling, and please note that I am mentioning these items to impress no one, but simply as a basis to explain where I am coming from:

I would be considered to be a success story of public "education"

Nearly every teacher I have ever had seemed to consider me the best in their class

If a valedictorian had been annouced at my high school, I would have been that person with a 104% grade average. -- as a side note, no valedictorian was announced for my high school because the principal at the time considered it to be too competitive and against what the school was there to do. Sameness, not excellence, was the need to be filled.

I graduated from Rice University with a degree in Classics (Latin & Greek) with a fairly decent grade point average and have gone to start my own business, having never worked for anyone else in my life -- barring a 2 week period of working in Library. I am not going to get into the modern college experience in this small outline, but I will say that it is my belief that it is broken -- not beyond repair like the lower levels of education -- yet still beyond belief.

Now I will state a few more things that I believe about myself:

I believe that I was not born any more intelligent than any other person

I believe that love of knowledge (curiosity), in all forms and in any and all subject matters, is one of the most fundamental and essential elements of being human and of learning what it is to be human.

I believe that any other individual in my past schools, if given the proper opportunity or social development, would have been able to do and achieve not only the same things I did, but many more varied and greater things.

I define success not in the grades, though now it is used as a common basis for comparison, but in the ability to be self-sufficient. That is, I reconized long before high school that most standardized and classroom tests and exams were not the true basis of knowledge, but merely the constructs of those who wished to be able to measure knowledge as if it was water in a measuring cup.

Here is my reason for pointing this out. For 15 years, from about 7th grade on, I have been thinking about why this is the case. Why it is that one average human (from a divorced family living with a single mom) in an average class in an average school like myself can excell (excelling I would define as a love of knowledge), while most others who are similar end up failing and seem to wander aimlessly through life. Why only the love of knowledge separates those who fail in living a human life from those who succeed. Why I feel so successful and confident while others do not. Why I still believe that I can do anything I put my mind to, when I believe I have no more innate ability than anyone else.

In short, although I have discussed this on numerous occasions with some of my past teachers as far back as 10th grade, quite a few of whom I still keep up with -- I even know where my kindergarten teacher lives 20 years later -- I believe the answer was clearly and eloquently pointed out in "Dumbing Us Down", a book with which I agree 100%. I have, for my entire life, almost entirely been "homeschooled" within the public education system. Though all of my education has been through public schooling, in retrospect, almost none of it really was. I happened to escape the public education vacuum by isolating myself within it. I have always known my teachers, and they have always known me as a human instead of a number. And as I see teachers I have known for years, excellent teachers who have produced spectacular students of individual learning, retire because they can no longer endure the beaurocratic mess, I am truly saddened. As I see that I would now be a certified teacher if not for the certification and industrialization of the process, I am drawn inward to search for the answer! As I see that I have many personal friends (at least 5) who would love to be teachers if not for the beaurocracy and impersonalization of the modern educational institution, I am in mourning. And as I see the students and "products" of this broken system becoming more incompetent every year and less able to simply take care of themselves, I am stunned beyond belief that citizens allow this to continue to happen to their children.

As I stated earlier, I could go into subjects and scenarios that would take a book to encompass, how I came to the understanding at an early age of 10 that I could be a successful individual within the corporate beaurocracy of the modern educational system and stuck with it for many years, trying to ingore the vast apathy and regimentation around me. But I will skip over those and finish by telling you a brief success story, one that lately got me interested in thinking about these ideas again.

Without going into too many background details to explain, 3 years ago nephew and was in special ed. No one really knew why he was in special education, but he just never seemed to do any work, never seemed to be interested in himself or their life, and most importantly, never really cared about anything at all. Other than the fact that he seemed to have serious emotional problems and had suicidal tendencies, he would look like a normal kid. And already being in 6th grade, there wasn't have much time left to do anything about it. It got so frustrating dealing with the public schools on the issue -- for all they cared about was covering up the real problems -- that my mom (his grandmother) began doing what I would term "guerrilla" homeschooling. Every day he would come home from school, where he seemed to learn nothing, and then do homeschooling from 3-9pm. This went on for a year, and he was making good progress. But it became more and more apparent that regular school was becoming entirely worthless to his improvement -- more than that actually, it was becoming an impediment. He was finally removed from the public school system last summer. Since then, he has been waking up at 7:30 every day Mon-Fri and working until about 2:30, with a few breaks here and there. I am absolutely stunned at the progress he has made. In just under one year, he has learned to think for himself, increased his math ability by 3 grade levels, to pre-algebra level, and is now learning to read books on his own, where before he could barely read sentences well out of 2nd grade books. He is learning history. He is learning science. And I have started teaching him Latin. After only 3 months of doing Latin, I already have him forming sentences and he has learned over 150 vocabulary words from which he can understand basic Latin sentences.

It turns out that David was never really a special ed student, but it took a lot of work to pull him out of the system. I have never seen him happier in his life.

And there are many other David's out there. For every success story like my own personal one, there are 10 Davids.

Tom