Quotes from book
Dumbing Us Down

Dumbing Us Down

This radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of Dumbing Us Down and to keep this classic current, we are renewing the cover art, adding new material about John and the impact of the book, and a new Foreword.


“Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid.”

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 14

“Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 23

“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.”

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 19

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