Dumbing Us Down

What Hacker News says

1. lqetFeb 2025
   > John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down perfectly captured this when he noticed that schools, another place where authority figures hang out, ruthlessly disciplined any child who tried to assert individuality.

   There has been an interesting result recently, which was discussed here [0]. In an online game where participants had to forage for resources, people with attention deficits scored higher, because they preferred exploration to exploitation.

   I commented back then that ADHD may be understood as introducing chaos into life to avoid being trapped in local optima.

   Having ADHD is then of course a major disadvantage in environments where there is only one global optimum. Examples include highly regulated and deterministic academic environments (school, undergraduate studies) or corporate environments.

   But in human history, environments with a single global optimum have been the exception, not the rule.

   People with ADHD - and their parents and teachers - should therefore embrace their individuality as a kind of reservoir talent in the human gene pool. We need these individuals in the future.

   [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39508573

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2. paxiongmapJan 2025
   As another product of the British 'education' system, this is all very familiar.

   If you're interested in some content that really helped me understand why I hated school so completely, I recommend "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto, and "Free to Learn" by Peter Gray. Peter Gray also has a very nice blog called "Play Makes Us Human" at https://petergray.substack.com/

   As a parent of a toddler, deciding on schooling options is one of the most serious decisions I'll have to make with my partner over the coming years and it terrifies me. Home schooling is a very attractive option from my perspective, but only due to lack of alternatives that offer the sort of nurturing and positive environment that I want my child to have.

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3. gregjorOct 2022
   > You clearly made choices in how you were raising your children, which means you were satisfying some constraints.

   Well, yes, over time. At first we just wanted a child. We didn't have any plan. As a parent you have to make it up as you go -- the experience of other parents only goes so far. Before long I understood that I was dealing with an autonomous person, not someone I could mold or shape. Parents tend to overestimate the control and influence they have, which leads to conflict especially in the teen years and sometimes long into adulthood. I have friends my own age (past 60) who still resent their parents forcing them to play sports or go to violin lessons or sit through math tutoring.

   You can find plenty of resources for homeschooling. I think of unschooling as a form of homeschooling. Traditional homeschoolers use a curriculum and try to duplicate at least some of the forms and rituals of traditional school at home. Unschoolers don't follow any curriculum, and involve their kids in the "real world" of adults rather than confining them in school or a simulation of it. The majority of homeschoolers in America do it for religious reasons, though you can find secular homeschooling groups in every city.

   Some resources:

   How Children Learn and How Children Fail by John Holt.

   The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher by John Taylor Gatto (online) https://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/SevenLessonsTaughtI...

   Dumbing Us Down and Weapons of Mass Destruction by John Taylor Gatto.

   Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich.

   The Unschooled Mind by Howard Gardner.

   Anything by Maria Montessori.

   We kind of fell backwards into it. Our first child went to Montessori school at first, she loved it. Then we moved and couldn't find a Montessori school that had openings (many have long waiting lists), so we enrolled her in public school. After a few weeks she got in trouble for reading a book in class "above her grade level" according to the teacher. She was in second grade reading a Nancy Drew book, bored waiting for the other kids to learn how to read. She cried about going to school after that because the teacher shamed her in class. So we didn't make her go and let her do her own thing. We told the school we planned to move, they never followed up. She went on to (easily) get a high school diploma and went to college. We didn't send our next two kids to school but left the option open, they decided to go later but mainly because of their friends.

   We gradually found out about organized homeschooling groups and joined those, which led to lots of opportunities for sharing ideas and letting the kids socialize and play.

   It helped that I was able to support all of us so my wife didn't have to work at a job, she did most of the work handling the kids. Unfortunately homeschooling only makes sense for middle- and upper-middle-class families who don't need school to provide day care while they work two jobs. We knew families with stay-at-home dads, and couples who had flexible jobs that allowed them to alternate. I came to believe that kids should have a parent around as much as possible, as a role model and person to answer questions, which is why I objected in the first place to the idea of hiring a nanny or sending kids to school.

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4. pneumatic1Sep 2022
   There’s a book called Dumbing Us Down that is a collection of his essays. I liked it.

   I’m glad I read it after I finished school and before my kids start.

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5. triyambakamJul 2022
   Consider reading "Dumbing Us Down" by John Gatto for anyone who isn't yet convinced about the benefits of homeschooling.
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6. nateabeleJun 2021
   No amount of money will ever cure the problem because the stated goal of the system is almost the exact opposite of its actual intent.

   I highly recommend Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto, a 3-time New York State teacher of the year, which presents a detailed analysis of this.

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