Dumbing Us Down

The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Hardcover, 106 pages

English language

Published March 30, 2005 by New Society Publishers.

ISBN:
9780865715196
OCLC Number:
58052621

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3 stars (1 review)

Dumbing Us Down is a radical treatise on public education that concludes that compulsory government schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in a machine.

6 editions

Review of 'Dumbing us down' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

wow. the sort of stuff generally written off as left-wing crank-isms. to the contrary, the final lines of the first essay (delivered, of all things, as a speech at acceptance of the NY State Teacher of the Year award 1991!):

"School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know."

The preceding essay is structured around the "Seven lessons universally taught" - Confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem, and one can't hide.

Subjects

  • Philosophy of Education
  • History
  • Critical Theory
  • History of Education
  • Philosophy