{"id":241,"date":"2005-08-05T20:43:42","date_gmt":"2005-08-05T20:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/?p=241"},"modified":"2010-05-08T20:44:09","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T20:44:09","slug":"dumbing-us-down-ring-a-bell-and-change-your-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/dumbing-us-down-ring-a-bell-and-change-your-cell\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumbing Us Down: Ring a Bell and Change Your Cell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I\u2019ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of  teaching: that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the  great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists  are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or  poets in English classes. The truth is that <strong>schools don\u2019t really  teach anything except how to obey orders<\/strong>. This is a great mystery to  me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools, as  teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the  institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers  do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic;  it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of  writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell  where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common  ancestor.&#8221; (John Taylor Gatto,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect?link_code=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;tag=mjtate-20&amp;creative=9325&amp;path=tg\/detail\/-\/0865714487\/qid=1123213605\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_bbs_sbs_1?v=glance%26s=books%26n=507846\"><span style=\"color: #000066;\">Dumbing Us Down<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000066;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=mjtate-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/>, pp.<\/span>24-25)<\/p>\n<p>This is a good example of why I&#8217;m a bit skeptical of tightly-timed  homeschool schedules.\u00a0 I do believe we need order and routine,  but\u00a0regularly changing gears by the clock, perhaps every 30 or 60  minutes, smacks too much of classroom bell-ringing to me.\u00a0 (Yes, yes, I  know such schedules work beautifully for some families.\u00a0 They&#8217;re just  not a\u00a0 good fit for mine.)<\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite images of homeschooling comes from a taped lecture  by Chris Davis of the Elijah Company.\u00a0 He talks about seeing one of his  boys lying on the back of his horse staring into the sky, and deciding  not to call him in for his &#8220;lesson&#8221; just then as he had intended.\u00a0 Chris  felt like the boy needed the freedom of the time to think and dream.  How many young people today have such a glorious opportunity?<\/p>\n<p>Mary Jo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I\u2019ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching: that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don\u2019t really teach anything &#8230; <a title=\"Dumbing Us Down: Ring a Bell and Change Your Cell\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/dumbing-us-down-ring-a-bell-and-change-your-cell\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Dumbing Us Down: Ring a Bell and Change Your Cell\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}