Bird Droppings July 20, 2026
Do children deserve more?
It has been over sixteen years since I drove up to North Georgia with two of my sons one afternoon. I needed to meet with the late Dr. Hilton Smith about some material relating to my dissertation and to pick up a large quantity of rats and mice for my oldest son’s hobby and part-time job, breeding and raising ball pythons and colubrids. So happens the largest mice and rat breeder in the Southeast is thirty minutes from Piedmont College. On the journey, I sat in the back and was working on reading research material, which happened to be John Taylor Gatto’s latest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction.
“Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.” John Taylor Gatto
There are aspects of Gatto’s writing I totally agree with, and many opinions we would disagree on substantially. I do believe in public school. Gatto has come out in favor of un-schooling or homeschooling as alternatives to public school. However, the stripping away of individuality and creativity is a crucial element we both find in today’s schools. Having been taught in my graduate program in a rather liberal setting, perhaps I am jaded towards that view of educational philosophy and methodology. As I think back on my own training in teaching, it was not far off from what I do today. Students learn best by doing versus being told. I learned that in a Red Cross course in 1967 teaching swimming. I even remember the example of tying a square knot. Few could tie the knot after being told several times, even in detail. But when shown physically, not only did everyone learn to tie a square knot, but the next day they also remembered it and, at the end of the course, still knew how.
“I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what’s rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, though it does not “educate”; that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It’s just impossible for education and schooling to be the same thing.” John Taylor Gatto
Gatto, as he illustrates the historical demise of education in the process of schooling children to be consumers, points to several issues that I have raised in recent writings. A corporate-industrial influence on education dating back to the early 1900s that affects the educational process and its outcomes.
“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.” John Taylor Gatto
In my dissertation, I address the loss of soul in education. That stripping away of individuality that has been going on for so many years in schools is only intensified by the teach-to-the-test mentality driving education across the US today. Not all succumb to the numbing and, as Gatto says, “Dumbing Down of students”; there are teachers who provide opportunity for critical thinking and can keep some of the students from falling through the educational cracks. But with many systems relying on test scores to evaluate teachers and placing emphasis on them due to state and federal mandates, teachers fear for their jobs and choose to teach what is on the test, period.
John Gatto was New York State Teacher of the Year in 1990, and in his speech at the award ceremony offered these eight points:
1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies thousands of years of experience. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days, and who can blame them? Toys are us.
2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again to signal class changes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?
3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present; the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.
4. The children I teach are ahistorical; they have no sense of how the past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.
5. The children I teach are cruel to each other; they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, and they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
6. The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candor. I guess that they are like many adopted people I’ve known in this respect – they cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of preserving a secret inner self inside a larger outer personality made up of artificial bits and pieces of behavior borrowed from television or acquired to manipulate teachers. Because they are not who they present themselves as, the disguise wears thin in the presence of intimacy, so intimate relationships must be avoided.
7. The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of schoolteachers who materialistically “grade” everything – and television mentors who offer everything in the world for free.
8. The children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges. This is frequently masked by surface bravado or by anger or aggression, but underneath lies a vacuum without fortitude.
Perhaps where I go with this is that there are solutions and alternatives to what has been happening in education. It will take effort, and it will take people who are concerned, not politicians looking for votes and saying the right thing at the right time. But honest, truthful people who have a passion for education and learning and a true concern for children. I skip back to my early days of education, and Dr. Laura Nolte, who wrote a simple passage about how children learn what they live. In our fast-paced, literally instantaneous society, there is so little time for kids to be kids. I will go to John Dewey and his idea of reflection. There is no time to reflect during the day, none whatsoever.
“Out of the 168 hours in each week, my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self. My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up. My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 6 hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework – a total of 45 hours. During that time, they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in how they use time or space. That leaves 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, my kids eat, and that takes some time – not much, because they’ve lost the tradition of family dining- but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals, we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.” John Taylor Gatto, 1990, addressing the Awards ceremony
Over the years, I would use the term “the sixteen-hour syndrome” to address our eight-hour or six-hour teaching time and the time away from school. One thing Gatto did not address in this book but has in other essays and writings is the societal changes that have occurred. A reliance on drugs, both legal and illegal, amazes our nation and drives the world narcotics market. If we could stop the dependence on drugs, it could be significantly different. I have heard many times and seen many times in records where teachers and parents want their kids on medications. Generally, these meds are not to make them healthier but to calm them down. Recently, in a discussion about ADHD, I was told about a child who was diagnosed as ADHD and was fine when on meds, otherwise bouncing off the ceilings. I asked a question I borrowed from a good friend, Dr. James Sutton, clinical child psychologist: Does he play video games for long periods? Yes was the answer, and then how is this child ADHD if he can focus for extended time on something he likes? Maybe boredom was a better diagnosis regarding school.
“Highly centralized mass production economies can’t function well without colonizing individual minds and converting them to a mass mind. The conversion works best if started early, in the lower grades of elementary school, in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten.” John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction
Other societal issues: marriage has become disposable. It is simply a commodity to use and then move on from if needed. I watch kids who have been through numerous divorces and step-parents, and other than Christmas, which can be fun with fifteen step-brothers and sisters and four houses to visit instead of two. Although I recall a kid I had ten years ago was living with his third stepmother since his mother and father both were in jail. It is not just school but a society created through the design and methodology of our mass school system. Earlier today, I commented on opinions and elections. A word or thought in today’s media-driven world can change opinion instantly. There is no thinking or effort to try and reflect; it is simply to go in a different direction on a word or thought. Let me go back to that nine hours a week to look inside ourselves, as Gatto illustrated. If we can expand that time and put forth a concerted effort to reflect, to think, to peer inside, and to search for our soul, it is just maybe possible we could turn this mess around. I know that, for me, the days I meditate are more meaningful and creative. I cherish those moments reflecting and pondering, as I say, and will grasp them when I can. So I have wandered a bit today, maybe overkill on a book, but still, as I close, keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart. Namaste.
My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird
The daily meanderings of a teacher 