Dumbing Us Down

'Dumbing us Down' about institunionalised education was written by John Taylor Gatto in 1993 . Rather dated, even though it was updated ten years later, yet what he wites is still so relevant. It is saddening that school has the ability to destroy children’s natural curiosity, teaches children how to sit still and listen to the teacher. Yes, frontal learning is as alive as ever in most classrooms. Yet, handing all responsibility to ‘the family’ would not work for a lot of kids and parents – Gatto has this ideal picture where children learn best in an informal setting, but kids need people on the sideline keeping a close eye on the learning process, whether these are parents or school teachers. The more I think about these things, the more I see contemporary learning as a process where experienced learners support starting learners… informal learning doesn’t mean that there is no more teaching involved - because teaching happens whenever learning takes place - it may just not always be intentional. Perhaps we should speak of intentional teaching versus random learning. At the moment I have five kids in my kitchen trying to bake a cake by themselves – no three, my ten-year old and his friend just left for the supermarket because they realised we didn’t have enough eggs in the house. They wanted to do the baking, I only told them to do it by themselves (but I do sit at the table, keeping an ‘ear’ on things…) Random learning with an intentional edge. In the end self-propelled learning all comes down to motivation and fun and there is no reason why teachers should have a different perspective...