Student Review: Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto (reviewed by Phoebe B.)

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One would think that someone who has been teaching in the public school system for 30 years would have minimal complaints about their job. John Taylor Gatto, however, has a nearly endless list of criticisms about America’s public school system in Dumbing Us Down. In this book, which is a collection of his own essays and speeches, he brings up many radical, uncommon ways to fix problems that he believes are catastrophic to students, teachers, and entire communities. Gatto is successful in opening the reader’s eyes and bringing up thought-provoking ideas, all with the aim of showing that the public education system is teaching students to function like machines. On the other hand, some of his ideas aren’t strongly backed up with quality evidence, as there are few legitimate statistics.

One example of an idea that Gatto strongly persuades readers to consider is that school is hindering the amount of family time students have. In his own words, he claims that “[Schools] separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other’s lives” (65). He blames the long days of school as the main reason for this, as it limits the time students spend with their families. This concept is relatable to all readers of Dumbing us Down, as it is in everyone’s interest to spend more quality time with their family, making this a successful point.

However, some of Gatto’s ideas leave the reader scratching their head. When talking about the benefits of being homeschooled, and that “…you don’t need officially certified teachers in officially certified schools to get a good education” (48), he doesn’t bring up a single statistic, whether it be about a difference in scores, social abilities, or overall satisfaction. Rather, he demolishes the idea of networks and how they “do great harm by appearing enough like real communities to create expectations that they can manage human social and psychological needs” (51). Also, he fails to mention the massive number of job losses that would occur if legitimate school systems didn’t exist, whether it be teachers, janitors, or parents who now have to educate their children full-time. A major lack of direct evidence to support some of his ideas makes this collection a less reliable source, as there are often not facts, but weakly supported opinions.

Waiting for Superman is an excellent example of the benefits of facts. The film appears to be reliable, as strong facts are thrown left and right, leaving the viewer with more confidence in agreeing with the points made. Yes, the film is like Dumbing Us Down, created based on an opinion, but the abundance of facts in Waiting for Superman provides exactly what Gatto is missing: evidence-based arguments.

Overall, Dumbing Us Down brings up many ideas on the issues of public schools, including many that are unconventional and interesting. Gatto pulls the reader in successfully with a book that immediately starts with bashing the public school system, showing what he is expected to do as a teacher and how it is harming students. Nevertheless, the arguments in his book have an aggressive tone, and his immense use of strident, unconventional opinions hang in the air, unsupported by facts or statistics, making his argument weaker. ~ Student: Phoebe B.

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Spontaneous, by Aaron Starmer

Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

(This is a review of an ARC from Edelweiss)

You think your senior year was stressful? Trust me, it’s got nothing on what’s going on at Covington High. The seniors there are so tense they’re ready to explode. Literally.

When a case of spontaneous combustion breaks out among the senior class – and begins spreading – Mara Carlyle takes it the way any cliche-ridden teenager would: cracking jokes, doing drugs, and hooking up with a new boy. Luckily her best friend Tess is there to talk her down, and the new boy, Dylan is mysterious and surrounded by rumors (burned down a store? fathered triplets? maybe!) Throw in government agent who implies there’s more to what’s going on than it seems, and you have what could be a great, dark-humored read.

I really wanted to like this. But oy, it just didn’t work for me. The premise was there, if not entirely new (Heathers? Buffy?) but Starmer just couldn’t seem to pull it over the goal-line. The ending peters out and you just never get any answers or resolution for the characters, which irritated me. Even if I don’t like a character, I want to know what happens to them!

And I didn’t like the characters. The main problem is Mara – she’s just an incredibly unpleasant character – and that was before the kids started exploding. Yes, she’s far too cool for school, and for this book even. I had no interest in what she was thinking or doing, and couldn’t figure out why any of the other characters were so interested in talking to her either.  – Ms. Schoen

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Student Review:Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee (reviewed by Joseph S.)

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, taking place while civil rights and political tension changed the South, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch returns to Maycomb and sees her old home in a new light. At the age of 26, Scout has been living in New York City, trying to become more independent from her family. On her annual visit to see Atticus, her aging father, Scout sees something that makes her question everything she knows about her beloved home. Go Set a Watchman covers the differences in beliefs on racial equality between New York City, Scout’s new home, and Maycomb, Scout’s old home.

Go Set a Watchman was a highly anticipated book when it first came out. Many people loved To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s previous novel, and wanted more of it. Although To Kill a Mockingbird was an amazing book and you should read it (you have probably read it by now if you are looking at this review), Lee’s new novel is not worth the read for the most part. Not only was it incredibly boring, but the narrative clumsily switched between first and third person. Recommending this book to anyone is difficult because even though it was bad, it could interest someone. Those who are curious to know why it was so bad should read the book and decide for themselves. However, anyone who did not enjoy To Kill a Mockingbird, and those who absolutely loved To Kill a Mockingbird will most likely be disappointed. Student: Joseph S.

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Zero Day, by Jan Gangsei

Zero Day by Jan Gangsei

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a review of an ARC from NetGalley.

It’s been 8 years since governor’s daughter Addie Webster disappeared. Now 17-year-old Addie is back, but things have changed since she was taken – her father is the president, and a group of cyber-terrorists has been engaged in increasingly more serious attacks designed to scare the government into tightening surveillance and security laws. Where was Addie all this time? And does her sudden reappearance have anything to do with the new attacks?

So, this is basically an airport book. By which I mean it’s something you would pick up in Hudson News before you get on a plane, just in case you’ve already seen the movie. And it has all the standards of the genre – easily guessable plot twists (why doesn’t Addie’s story add up? Will her childhood best friend turn out to be a new romance? Is *he* hiding something as well?), barely defined characters, car chases, shootouts, key characters who don’t show up until halfway through the book.

Much of it is utterly unbelievable (no matter how well trained I do NOT believe a teenage hacker could just jump onto the White House and NSA computer networks and start looking at the President’s computer). But the author does a decent job of keeping the plot trekking along. I did actually read this on a plane, and it did a perfectly fine job of passing the time. I don’t think it would be worth anything more than that though, and the cliff-hanger ending designed for a sequel seems like wishful hoping. ~Ms Schoen

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Student Review: Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer (reviewed by Maria H.)

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is a crazy journey to read about. This book is about getting rid of everything in your life. Christopher McCandless is the guy who chooses to take this path for his new life. McCandless had it all, he was a very smart kid during his adolescence. He graduated at Emory University with high grades and a Bachelor’s degree and with a double major. He had a loving family who supported him but with some father issues on the side. Christopher had the brains but what makes the readers itch is why throw all this away to go live out in the wilderness? He had the determination to hitchhike to Alaska. McCandless hiked everywhere, did some labor work, and met new people. He refused anything that people offered him. McCandless was just a drifter. But the real questions which engage the readers are why did McCandless abandoned everything? Why does he die for such an intelligent person? and why Hike all the way to Alaska?

I would definitely recommend this book to people who like to read about a journey and who could relate because I was still stumped in the end what his purpose truly was. I was not a big fan of this book but its a nice easy read and I do like the suspense that comes up in the book. Jon Krakauer did very well by retracing McCandless’ steps and figuring out this journey mystery. ~Student: Maria H.

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Admissions Lottery, by Bette Johnson (reviewed by Samuel S.)

Admission Lottery by Bette Johnson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If twenty thousand students each year apply to a top university, but the school only admits two thousand students per year, how does the university decide whom to admit? As it turns out, usually about five thousand applicants to such a school have the necessary qualifications to be accepted, but the university rejects most of them based on other qualities they look for in the application. In Bette Johnson’s Admission Lottery, Johnson discusses the possibility of taking these five-thousand or so qualified applicants, and admitting them via a lottery system. The idea itself, though entertaining and simple, seems incredibly impractical in a real-world setting.

Granted, Johnson does address some of the flaws in this theory, and notes that the purpose of this book is simply to entice admissions officers to think of more effective ways to admit applicants. The writing style is extremely intriguing and encourages the reader to read on; however, this starting point which she creates in her book seems to raise more questions than it answers.

One problem in Johnson’s logic is that she bases her idea on the Pygmalion effect in psychology. This theory states that if people are treated as extraordinary, they will rise to the occasion and produce extraordinary results. This effect has been proven time and again by psychologists, however the magnitude of the effect has been proven rather small. And so, it would be risky to expect that randomly admitted applicants who may be slightly less-qualified will succeed to the degree of their slightly more qualified peers. Moreover, basing a whole admissions process on the idea that everyone is equally capable of succeeding completely disregards that some people have innate intellectual abilities. So we immediately start seeing holes in Johnson’s ideas.
Another glaring problem is that Johnson defines a success as admitting a student who gets good grades. To understand this decision, we must note that she wrote this book as the Associate Director of Admissions at MIT. In the admissions department, the only thing officers can do to see they’ve done a good job is look at the grades produced. Especially in MIT, where grades are scrutinized daily. And so, it makes sense that she exhibits a bias favoring the paramount importance of grades. However, Johnson fails to realize that not all students who maintain high GPA’s are happy where they are. The goal of college admissions is not to accept people who will maintain high marks in their classes, it is to admit students who best fit the mold of the university and its culture. And so, it would be illogical to define success as simply better grades in one’s courses.

But one must also notice that Johnson’s motive to create a new college admissions process is that it would save admissions officers a lot of time and effort. She writes that admissions officers now spend far too much time, “make[ing] mountains out of molehills…agonizing over every application, trying to make a case where the differences are so small” (6). And so, rather than take the time to account for all these personal differences among applicants, Johnson argues that it would be more effective to ignore them. Ultimately, she makes the assumption that all the applicants are more or less the same, so it doesn’t really matter whom gets admitted.

Overall, Bette Johnson has produced an extremely entertaining and thought-provoking book, explaining her radical ideas on the college admissions process. However, she does not do a thorough job of backing up her ideas, and she ultimately does not propose a better, more logical solution. This work definitely deserves a read, but must be read with a touch of rationality and sensibility. ~ Student: Samuel S.

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Bittersweet, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

Bittersweet by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I found this book to be an utter disappointment. It held such promise for a summer read: set on a charming family compound on Lake Champlain in Vermont, young, wealthy, beautiful characters with a dark family secret and a plucky outsider protagonist who yearns to belong to this exotic and tantalizing world. Oh, and of course, romance. Unfortunately the book was contrived, not credible, and forced. It relied on the standard “rich are evil” trope. There was far too much emphasis on predictable description and no depth to the characters. The mystery was the only thing that kept me going and even that was disappointing. ~ Ms Dimmick

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Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this one, and it almost succeeds for me. Westerfeld is telling two stories – one is the tale of 17-year-old Darcy Patel, who has written a book, gotten an agent, and postponed college to go off to New York and write. Interspersed with this we get Darcy’s novel, titled Afterworlds, which tells the story of Lizzie, who survives a terrorist attack by slipping into the world of the dead, and emerges with the power to see ghosts and talk to a Hindu god of the dead.

I love stories within stories, I like YA literature and paranormal romance, but this just did not work for me. Lizzie’s story was definitely more engaging for me, and watching it be shaped as Darcy rewrites and revises was interesting. But the framing story fell short. Darcy is a total Mary Sue – a too-perfect stand-in for the reader who magically gets an agent, a publishing deal, an enormous advance, a huge and affordable apartment in New York, a perfect girlfriend, an invitation to join a famous author on a book tour — it’s all too good to be true and so grating. The literary characters she is surrounded by are pretentious and patronizing. Her problems are all magically solved (or just ignored – Westerfeld never really resolves the fact that she’s living far beyond her means and will basically run out of money five minutes after the book ends).

And one more oddity – another review I read pointed out that Darcy’s friends are all going on about how wonderful her writing is, and how amazing her book is, which is basically Westerfeld just complimenting himself. And once you realize that, it just glares out at you. Did he do this on purpose? Is it supposed to be funny? I don’t know, but it just didn’t work for me.

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Student Review: Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut (reviewed by Ethan W.)

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Witty and comical, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions is certainly not your average novel. The book tells the story of two characters, Kilgore Trout, a struggling science fiction writer with a unique view of the world, and Dwayne Hoover, a car salesman, who although seemingly sane on the outside, is going through a mental collapse. Hoover interprets Trout’s novels as works of nonfiction, and believes he is the only human left on Earth, with everyone around him being robots. This belief causes Hoover to go on a violent rampage, and while this is happening, Trout is on his way to Hoover’s hometown to give a keynote address at a local library. This all takes place in a time similar enough to modern day for it to be recognizable, but with some clear differences. The book focuses on themes such as how humans are like machines, in literal ways such as believing those around you to be robots, but also how people often do not make decisions for themselves. Vonnegut writes, “Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead” (53). Often, people are too busy agreeing to think for themselves, and the narrator often examines this flaw in humanity. Breakfast of Champions focuses heavily on character development and the idea that all characters are major characters, both in books and in life. All in all, Breakfast of Champions took far too long to get exciting, and its over the top writing style lost me at points. Having read some of Vonnegut’s other novels and enjoyed them much more, I would not recommend this one. ~ Student: Ethan W.

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The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead, by Paul Elwork

The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead by Paul Elwork

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The two stars might be slightly unfair, since as a work of literary fiction the book might deserve three. The one point deduction is for the cover and the title, which clearly signal “scary story.” This is not scary, it is sad. It is slow. It is somewhat boring. Set in 1925 on a sprawling estate with a mysterious past, the story revolves around bored and somewhat neglected 13-year-old twins Emily and Michael, whose father was killed in WWI and whose mother appears to be grieving and is therefore emotionally unavailable to her children. Emily discovers a bizarre talent in which she can crack her ankle and the source of the sound appears to be coming from elsewhere. She and her manipulative brother dupe neighborhood children into believing that Emily can communicate with a dead ancestor by cracking her ankle in response to mock seance questions — one crack for no, two for yes. What starts as a fairly innocent children’s game starts to expand in ways that make Emily uncomfortable and Michael indulge in visions of grandeur. Elkin succeeds in creating a dark and mysterious backdrop for the story, but fails to produce the chills you might expect with a book of this title. I came away disappointed and a little depressed. You have been warned. ~ Ms. Dimmick

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