Ever wonder how it is that as taxpayers, we keep spending more and more money on our school system and yet our kids aren't getting any smarter? Not only are kids not getting smarter, but as a group, they are actually getting “dumber”. (The budget for K-12 schools in Kansas consumes a little over 1/2 of the entire state's operating budget. With the projected deficit of some $470m in the state budget for the next fiscal year, some discussion seems appropriate.)

The education administrators and the teacher unions always tell us that the reason they fail is that more money is needed, but they never say how much is enough. As a staff instructor at a local community college, I can tell you we see evidence of the failure every day. Many of the high school graduates require much effort and many resources on our part just to bring the students up to the competencies they should have received before being graduated from high school. (Of course, the tax payers pick up the bill for all these extra resources, too.)

John Taylor Gatto, a retired teacher in the New York City school system spent 31 years of his career frustrated with the whole system. After much research, he's figured out that the concept of compulsory schooling--in which kids are grouped by age and taught from boring, watered-down and inaccurate text books--was purposely set up in a way to keep kids from becoming "too smart".

In his book, “Weapons of Mass Instruction”, he presents his case. If you take his research at face value, you will see so many light bulbs come one; from what’s happening today, to your own experiences coming through the system. (The dumbing down of our children through compulsory schooling has been going on for over 100 years, so it has affected nearly all of us alive today.)

In one chapter, he presents examples of people that have done very well without the “benefit” of our education system. They are very smart people; they just educated themselves by means other than our system. One such example is race car driver, Danica Patrick.
“On April 20, 2008, Danica Patrick, age 26, became the first woman in big-time auto-racing history ever to win a major event. She was driving against two—time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, and roared past him in the final two laps of the Motegi, Japan 300, and won going away. ‘This is about finding something you love and following through with it,’ she told reporters after the race.

“Ten year earlier, at age 16, Danica dropped out of high school and went to London, all by herself, to learn to sustain high speeds for hours at a time. You might have been in high school at 16, probably a sophomore, looking forward to a graduation far far away.”

So, if you’ve ever wondered why it is that we keep spending more and more of our money on more and more school buildings, fancy equipment and administrators, yet keep graduating kids that cannot function in society or college without extensive tutoring, take a look at “Weapons of Mass Instruction”, written in 2008. Another Gatto book “A Different Kind of Teacher” was written in 1992, just after he retired. It also provides many of the same insights.