Re.: Poor white boys flounder under 'feminised' teaching

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As per Jack Tobin's suggested website:

John Taylor Gatto has not escaped my notice.  He was awarded Teacher of
the Year in New York State some time ago.  He then used that distinction
to cash in on a self-created reputation as a Socratic gadfly.  We are
all transfixed by the spectacle of the dog biting its master?s hand, and
Gatto, despite his name, performed that canine fête to the applause of
self-congratulatory nonconformists coast to coast.  He severely
chastised the stultifying bureaucracy of education, political and state
interference in pedagogy, curriculum and standards, and rhapsodized on
about freedom and growth of young minds.  Attracted by such heroic,
apparently-radical ideas, I happily researched JT Gatto--until, as I
peeled back the layers, I discovered that he worked with agents who
favored vouchers, eschewed unions, and, essentially, were orchestrating
a movement to privatize education.

The education industry is quite a large plum and worth a shake of the
tree if one can afford the entry fee to the gardens.  On any given
workday about one quarter of the US population is in some way working,
playing or goofing off in the educational sector of the economy.
Including all branches and levels of government from the Federal to the
local, education is the second largest government expenditure.  Quite a
plum.

Gatto?s name is being used by a filmmaker in New York City who?s making
a hiply iconoclastic documentary that is more like a PR push to
deregulate education, and ?open its potential.?  We?ve heard that music
before.  I am afraid Gatto?s libertarianism is more linked to the
profit-driven Cato Institute than to the social-minded libertarianism of
Noam Chomsky.  His is a very cunning usurpation of the radical, edgy
attitude hitched to the liberal/conservative agenda.

This is not to downplay the importance of his initial critique:
education is moribund.  At the same time, neither do I belittle the real
teachers in the schools who help youth see the world, its beauty, and
themselves in it, as part of it.  It was not my parents who introduced
me to The Communist Manifesto.  I will sing the praises of those few I
have had the privilege to encounter, who proffered that last straw.
They were exceptional, however.  Nonetheless, without them I have a
feeling I would have ended up in prison.  That's all you're going to get
out of me on that.