I just finished another book by John Taylor Gatto. After I turned the last page, I closed it , turned to my husband and said, "That might have been the best book I've ever read and that makes me so very sad."He asked why (as any good husband would know to do when a wife asks such a question). Actually he asked if it was better than Les Mis, but then he asked why. (FYI it's probably not better than Les Mis, but is it really fair to compare a treatise on modern schooling with the greatest French novel of the 19th century?)
Anyway, it's a profoundly great book because his ideas strike at the heart of the problems that disease this nation. For example, by separating out the young and the old and locking them away from the rest of society in various institutions we are perpetuating a society with no past and no future.
The reason this book makes me sad is because I will probably never actually meet one other person in the flesh who has read this book. It makes me sad that a powerful book written to open our eyes to the absolute decay of the system we trust to raise our children, will never be read by the parents who need it most.
So there's my backward book recommendation. I want to buy this book and send it to everyone I know. But I don't think they would read it. Like clean eating, a person has to be ready for this kind of information. They have to already intuit that we have a problem and be hungry for a change. And once you are ready for it, reading the book is like preaching to the choir. Although if you only vaguely sense that something is seriously wrong, this book will help clarify those feelings and put them into words. Maybe it will make you into an activist. I want to become an activist?
BTW, A Different Kind of Teacher is not about homeschooling. Whilst it would seem that Gatto is impressed by homeschooling, he does not present it as the solution for our society's ills.
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