Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

Written by AbleChild on June 17, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

This book, written by top health journalist Ray Moynihan and Canadian science writer Alan Cassels, is an analysis on pharmaceutical companies, and how they have colluded with medical science to expand their customer base and increase profits. This has been accomplished by lowering thresholds for certain disorders such as high cholesterol, creating narratives around common problems to turn them into diseases (such as sexual dysfunction), and to market their prescription drugs to not just sick people, but healthy people as well.

Moynihan and Cassels make it clear that there are definitely serious illnesses, conditions and disorders that require prescription drugs. Often, even powerful prescription drugs may be needed that come with side effects that may be worth enduring when weighed against the benefits of the drug. But in Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients, which was published in 2005, these authors illustrate how much of the world’s population, and even medical professionals, have been tricked into believing these pharmaceutical companies have altruistic intentions. The public has been warped into thinking they can trust the ads and commercials that are funded by these profiting pharma companies and say these drugs are safe and helpful, while downplaying potential risks.

As a result, many healthy people are on prescription drugs for normal everyday issues and these drugs are not only doing very little to help their condition, they are often creating even more problems for the patient thanks to various side effects. And sick people with conditions such as high blood pressure, for example, are now programmed to automatically turn to prescription drugs to fix their health problem, when natural remedies, such as diet and exercise, may be all they need. As more and more types and brands pharmaceutical drugs become available, and more and more medical diagnoses are created worldwide, this book is a must read.

About the Authors

Ray Moynihan

Ray Moynihan is one of the world’s leading health writers, with a background in academic research and investigative journalism. His work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Australian Financial Review, Crickey.com, The Conversation, The Saturday Paper, the British Medical Journal, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. He has given many presentations in universities, conferences and workshops worldwide.

Moynihan won a Harkness Fellowship, based at Harvard University, in 1999. Then in 2015 Ray completed his PhD on Overdiagnosis at what was then the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University in Australia. He is an honorary adjunct Assistant Professor at Bond University’s, Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, and has been a cojoint lecturer at University of Newcastle, in Australia.

Moynihan has also done television and radio work with his investigative journalism, such as ABC TV’s investigative program, Four Corners and the 7:30 Report, and he recently hosted a series of podcasts from Australia called The Recommended Dose. He has written a total of four books and his most recent book, Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals, was released in 2010.

Alan Cassels

Alan Cassels is a Canadian writer who has been immersed in pharmaceutical policy research and healthcare journalism for the past 23 years. He has written several other books, including The ABCs of Disease Mongering: An Epidemic in 26 Letters, and Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease. His most recent book, The Cochrane Collaboration: Medicine’s Best Kept Secret (published in 2015) examines the history of a stellar international organization which produces some of the world’s highest quality medical information.

Cassel’s work has been heavily concentrated around exposing the large gap between the marketing and the science around prescription drugs, medical screening and other forms of disease creation. The head of RX&D, the research-based pharmaceutical association in Canada, refuses to debate Alan Cassels and his research on the drug industry’s practices.

Reviews

Gary Schwitzer, HealthNewsReview.org:

“It documents disease-mongering, how drug companies foster the creation of medical conditions to create markets for their pills, the marketing of fear, the “medicalization” of normal states of health, the hidden agendas of “disease-awareness campaigns,” problems with drug company relationships with celebrity spokespersons and patient advocacy groups, and other issues about which most consumers don’t have a clue. I highly recommend the book.”

Prescription for Disaster: The Hidden Dangers in Your Medicine Cabinet

Written by AbleChild on June 17, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

Prescription for Disaster: The Hidden Dangers in Your Medicine Cabinet is a book designed to create informed consumers. There is too little known about the long-term safety of many drugs that are prescribed to hundreds of thousands of children, such as Ritalin. Other drugs like Xanax are very addictive, and there are countless side effects for so many other drugs that are prescribed liberally by doctors. Thanks to lack of testing by the FDA and insufficient monitoring of side effects, and the failure of doctors to provide patients with adequate information about the potential risks for the drug they are being prescribed, it’s no wonder that prescription drugs are involved in 100,000 deaths per year, as the book states. And this is just the beginning of the statistics, shocking situational examples and thorough research that is laid out in this revolutionary book.

Consumers and patients have become part of the problem as well by not being informed, and this is why consumer advocate and prizewinning investigative journalist Thomas Moore wrote this eye-opening book. He provides a wealth of important information on side effects and potential dangers associated with common drugs prescribed for all kinds of medical conditions. Prescription for Disaster: The Hidden Dangers in Your Medicine Cabinet also guides the consumer on what many of the different warnings and labels mean that are found on prescription drugs, and what questions you need to be asking your doctor and pharmacist. Moore makes a strong and emotionally appealing case in this book that should be read by all prescription drug consumers.

About the Author

Thomas J. Moore is a award-winning investigative reporter who also spent six years researching and writing about prescription drug safety and dangers as a senior fellow in health policy at the George Washington Medical Center. He is co-author of more than 30 scientific studies focusing on clinical trials, US Food and Drug Administration regulation of therapeutic drugs, adverse event reporting, pharmacovigilance with electronic health records, and the risks of psychoactive therapeutic drugs.

Aside from Prescription for Disaster, Moore has written three other books total around the safety and dangers of prescription drugs. His book Deadly Medicine told the gripping story of the nation’s worst drug disaster that killed tens of thousands of heart patients. His other two books are called Heart Failure and Lifespan: Who Lives Longer and Why. For ten years Moore served as project director for QuarterWatch: An Independent Perspective on Emerging Drug Risks, a drug safety publication of the non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices. His consulting and research are conducted under the umbrella of Drug Safety Research, a sole proprietorship with offices in Alexandria, Virginia. Through his research, Moore has worked with lawyers, the national news media, and pharmaceutical fraud prosecutors on a wide variety of projects.

Reviews

Kirkus Reviews:

“The key to improving the system, Moore says, is an informed, concerned, and even demanding public, which this book is designed to create. Vintage Moore—sharp, readable, persuasive.”

Critical New Perspectives on ADHD

Written by AbleChild on June 17, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

Critical New Perspectives on ADHD is an in-depth exploration, drawn from the analyses of experts worldwide, of the ADHD phenomenon that occurred in the 21st century. This book, edited by Gwynedd Lloyd, Joan Stead and David Cohen, explains how the concept of ADHD came to be, and the background surrounding it’s development. It examines the significant ways ADHD has altered schools, families and the lives of children across the across the world, and it seems that this psychiatric disorder is becoming more prevalent as each day passes.

The book takes a deep dive into the parallel growth of the pharmaceutical industry, examining how these pharmaceutical companies needed new markets for their medications, and how they have profited in recent years. Critical New Perspectives on ADHD, published in 2006, enters new territory, laying out theories and bringing to light evidence that can’t be found in most accepted reading material on this topic. The book takes a bold perspective, questioning current practices in the psychiatric industry that are based on controlling children’s behavior with medication. It’s a must-read for anyone curious about ADHD and other mental diagnoses.

Teaching the Restless: One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed

Written by AbleChild on June 17, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

With over 6 million children in the United States being labeled with psychiatric disorders and prescribed medications for said labels, this book makes a strong case against such practices. Teaching the Restless: One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed was published in 2004 and written by Chris Mercogliano, an experienced educator who is the co-director of the Albany Free School in Albany, New York. Mercogliano is able to draw from his experience with the practices from the Free School, which forgoes psychiatric labeling and drugging. Instead, the Free School offers alternative ways to help children learn how to relax, concentrate, manage their emotions, run their lives in a responsible manner and develop healthy relationships. Many of the approaches used at the Free School are community-based.

One main theme of the book is the case study of nine students of the Free School (six boys and three girls) who were all given psychiatric labels and medications at their previous school. Mercogliano reveals in Teaching the Restless how these children succeeded with the Free School’s approach. Mercogliano theorizes that for children with oppositional behavior the best approach is to give them the freedom to choose what they want to learn and to what aspects of the school they want to devote most of their time This teaches the children to look within themselves for motivation. This freedom-based approach also teaches these children to be accountable for themselves, and to their peers and the community.

Teaching the Restless is an excellent tool for both parents and educators to help them understand how to deal with hyperactive children. The book encourages readers to make more of an effort to understand these children and help bring out their positive attributes instead of suppressing them.

About the Author

Chris Mercogliano is an American author who has written numerous books containing well-researched material about children’s education, development and mental health. Beginning in 1973, he taught, and eventually became co-director, at the community and freedom-based inner-city alternative school the Albany Free School . He worked at the Free School for over 30 years. He also serves on advisory boards for other democratic schools. Mercogliano has authored numerous essays. Other books he has written include Making It Up As We Go Along: The Story of the Albany Free School (written in 1998), How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining Schools That Work (written in 2006), and In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness (written in 2007).

Reviews

Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Magical Child:

“Teaching the Restless is a very important book for our time. That we continue to prescribe drugs to our children in such massive numbers is appalling. There are no historical precendents for a society perpetrating such a travesty on its offspring. Chris Mercogliano deserves a medal for his courage and insight, as well as his years of hard work on behalf of America’s children.”

Ron Miller, executive editor, Paths of Learning magazine, educational historian, author of What are Schools For?:

“Teaching the Restless is a finely crafted moral commentary on a society that would rather “tranquilize our children than create a more tranquil world for them to grow up in.” Chris Mercogliano is a gifted writer as well as a superb observer of children’s lives. Here, he offers a rich blend of insights and observations based on his own extensive teaching experience. His stories of real kids struggling against the cultural constraints on their lives, including inappropriate labeling and drugging, are deeply moving and convincing.”

John Breeding, clinical psychologist, author of The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses:

“God bless Chris Mercogliano. He has turned his lifelong commitment to the creation of free learning communities for children and families toward a passionate defense against the oppression of children by psychiatry and the schools. May his longstanding drug-free school zone in Albany extend throughout our country and the world.”

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail

Written by AbleChild on June 17, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

If you are curious about how school curriculums came to be structured in a manner that puts the population of America in an intellectual slumber, this text is a must-read. The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail gives a very thoroughly documented history of the education system from the late 1800s to 1999.

Written by whistleblower Charlotte Iserbyt, a former official at the Department of Education during the years 1981-1982 of the Reagan administration, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America exposes the people, government organizations, corporations and domestic and foreign groups that orchestrated this elaborate but purpose-driven plan to ruin the education system through the years. One of the main premises of this plan was to draw it out very gradually so the American people aren’t likely to notice.

In the book, Iserbyt gives shocking details, gathered from her time in the Department of Education as well as the comprehensive research she did afterwards on her discoveries, which will open your eyes to this elusive plan. She shows why and how students are lacking the reading and math skills that allow them to think independently, and are instead being taught peripheral content that government entities, special interest groups and corporations want them to know. This book will also help you gain a better understanding of the true intentions politicians have when they are passing education reform legislation.

Based on the stark facts revealed in the paper trail that makes up The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, it seems that a pure education has become a near-impossibility in America. Originally published in 1999, the book was updated in 2011 with an important 16-page addition.

About the Author

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt is a freelance writer and education professional and activist. She served as a school board director in Maine and co-founded Guardians of Education for Maine, an educational activism group. She served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would manipulate curriculum in America’s classrooms.

Iserbyt also served in the American Red Cross overseas during the Korean War. She has written articles that were published in Human Events, The Washington Times, The Bangor Daily News, and she has participated in Congressional hearings. Some of her other publications that exposed the Soviet and Communist doctrine infiltrating our classrooms include the 1985 booklet Back to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and the 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America’s Latest Education Fad. She was born in 1930 in Brooklyn, New York and died on February 8, 2022. Sons of Liberty did a remarkable tribute to her work following her death, the video can be viewed here.

Reviews

David Risselada, Author of “Not On My Watch” and “Psychopolitics in America: A Nation Under Conquest”:

“I have been reading and researching Iserbyt’s book Deliberate Dumbing Down of America for a while now. I was in a social work education program where I was told I wasn’t fit for the program because I opposed the notions of social justice and white privilege. This is when I found Iserbyt’s work. I have written two books myself and blog continuously on the dangers we face concerning operant conditioning and other change methods. In fact, a link to DDD is on my page as well as New Lies For Old and other essential reading. Thanks for what you do. It is definitely appreciated and there are those of us out here fighting the good fight.”

The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools

Written by AbleChild on June 16, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

Driven by data, statistics and thorough research, this powerful exposé of the American education system shows how teachers are purposely trained to be academically inferior, so their teaching will follow suit. Most of these teachers are even outscored on SAT tests by their own students that are about to go to college. This is an eye-opening and comprehensive testament to how poorly educated American students are becoming.

In The Conspiracy of Ignorance: The Failure of American Public Schools, author Martin Gross exposes how weakened school curriculums have become, with only one in five students taking trigonometry, physics or geography while in high school. He points out noticeable things like how when you drive around town, it seems every parent has a “My Child Made Honor Roll” sticker on their car, alluding to the lowering standards of education that awards every child a trophy. These lower standards of teaching have infiltrated our system thanks to establishment powers-that-be that have slowly nurtured a system designed to promote ignorance. So-called “remedies” the government offers to fix education, such as federal funding and smaller class sizes, are rendered useless because they do not even address the issue of government control and establishment ideals that are the crux of the problem.

Not only does The Conspiracy of Ignorance reveal how teaching has been designed to produce low performing, poorly educated students, author Martin Gross also gives detailed instructions on how to fix the problem. He outlines what can be done to increase public awareness of this issue and see to it our children receive a level of education that will allow them to contribute to society and give them a fighting chance for the successful, happy and healthy life that they deserve.

About the Author

Martin L. Gross has written dozens of books around topics like psychiatry, psychotherapy, the medical care system, government spending and taxation. Several of his books became New York Times bestsellers, including The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z, A Call for Revolution, The End of Sanity, The Medical Racket and The Conspiracy of Ignorance. Before all of this, Gross, who has also written novels, was a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. Gross has testified before Congress five times, and though he was an active Democrat in the 1950s and 1960s, he has most frequently been a guest on conservative television and radio shows. Gross’s books were very popular in the 1990s and enjoyed a revival after the Tea Party was born. He has also been a member of the faculty of The New School for Social Research and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Science at New York University. He passed away August 21, 2013, and is survived by his two daughters and two grandchildren.

Reviews

Booklist:

“Longtime institutional critic Martin Gross is always fluent, persuasive and uncranky. Now, in one of his best books, he takes aim at the public schools.”

Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health

Written by AbleChild on June 14, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

This book, written by psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser, exposes the field of psychopharmacology, and how it is replacing the role that psychotherapy used to play. The book explains how, while psychiatric drugs can be helpful in the short-term, they can have detrimental long-term effects and often only mask a problem that can be fixed through therapeutic means.

Dr. Glasser touches upon Choice Theory in the book, which he developed himself. The basic gist of the theory is that we all have choices to make, and understanding these choices is what liberates us from the grips of unhappiness. Most mental illnesses, according to Dr. Glasser, are an expression of one’s own unhappiness. While choosing to lift oneself out of unhappiness is a difficult thing to do, long-term psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin, Zoloft and Prosac often are not the answer, and in many cases can make things worse.

Below are a few more concepts that Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health touches upon:

Lack of mental health can lead to physical symptoms as well that will resolve themselves upon healing of one’s mental health.
It’s our desire to control others that leads to unhappiness, and once we learn to let go of this need for control, mental health improves.
Often, psychiatrists cannot tell the difference between a transformational breakthrough (which is a temporary dramatic experience that one needs to go through for a positive outcome) and an emotional breakdown. Because of this, many patients end up on psychiatric medications they don’t need.

One of the main solutions for improved mental health without psychotropic drugs that Dr. Glasser advocates for in the book is group therapy and connection with others. But the book goes much further than just recommending counseling. Since the majority of people with symptoms can’t afford or wont accept counseling, the book teaches how you can, by yourself or with your family’s help, improve your own mental health at no cost and at no risk to yourself.

About the Author

Willam Glasser, M.D., is a world-renowned psychiatrist who is president of the William Glassner Institute in Los Angeles, which he founded in 1967. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University with his M.D. in 1953 and became board certified in 1961. Dr. Glasser worked as a private practice psychiatrist from 1956 to 1986. He has written quite a few other books, which include Choice Theory, Reality Therapy, The Quality School, and Getting Together and Staying Together.

Reviews

Publisher’s Weekly:

“Swimming against what he sees as the tide of prescriptions written for antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac, psychiatrist Glasser (Choice Theory) argues that these drugs can do more harm than good. He asserts that there has been some scientifically sound psychiatric research that suggests the drugs can damage mental health and even the brain itself. Through selective case studies and extrapolation of evidence, the author urges readers to think twice before accepting “brain drugs”; he states that the effectiveness of certain selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors has been exaggerated by the drug companies. To his credit, Glasser does offer several practical alternatives for patients. But he seems to cherish his outsider status and questions the way psychiatry is practiced today. Group therapy transcripts and case studies constitute the bulk of his case, and chapters like ‘Luck, Intimacy, and Our Quality World’ and ‘We Have Learned to Destroy Our Own Happiness’ are designed to help the reader understand symptoms. Some of the anecdotes are compelling, and individuals seeking alternatives to drug treatments may benefit.” Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Informed Consent: The Consumer’s Guide to the Risks and Benefits of Volunteering for Clinical Trials

Written by AbleChild on June 13, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

The decision to participate in a clinical trial should not be made on a whim or taken lightly. Thankfully, this one-of-a-kind, comprehensive and beyond helpful guide is designed for the very purpose of providing necessary information to patients, their family and advocates before giving consent to volunteer for clinical trials. The guide, written by Ken Getz and Deborah Borfitz, is also designed to help keep participants informed throughout the clinical trial.

Informed Consent: The Consumer’s Guide to the Risks and Benefits of Volunteering for Clinical Trials is an excellent resource for helping patients understand their rights as a clinical trial participant, what the process is like. It also clearly defines what the role is of research professionals, and what participants can expect overall from a clinical trial. The guidebook has been reviewed and acknowledged by research and regulatory experts, patient advocates and consumers.

The book also guides patients on how to find a clinical trial that meets their needs and interests, and how to determine if a trial is right for them. There are specific guidelines in the book for more vulnerable groups of individuals, such as children and the elderly. The guidebook is also a great resource for advice about what clinical trial participants should do when things go wrong, and has a helpful appendix containing reference information.

About the Authors

Ken Getz

Ken Getz is the publisher, president and CEO of Centerwatch, a company that provides a variety of clinical research products and services, including: clinical trials and results, drug approvals, study grants, news and analysis, career and training opportunities for patients and professionals. He is a widely recognized expert on the clinical trial process, having spoken at conferences, published articles in scholarly and trade journals and books, and appeared on major national radio and television programs.

He has served as Director of Sponsored Research Programs and Associate Professor a Tufts CSSD, Tufts University School of Medicine. He is founder and board chair of the Center for information and Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISRP). Getz also sits on several other boards, including the Institute of Medicine’s Clinical Research Roundtable, and the Dors Duke Foundation’s Consortium to Examine Clinical Research Ethics. Getz received his bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University, and his MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Deborah Borfitz

Deborah Borfitz has written for numerous health and business periodicals throughout her career, which spans over 30 years. She was a contributing writer for Centerwatch, and now serves as Senior Science Writer at Cambridge Healthtech Institute in Nashville, Tennessee. Other publications she has written for include Strategic Health Care Marketing, eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, and Medical Economics Magazine. Borfitz attended State University of New York College at Cortland and SUNY Oneonta.

Reviews

Carol Saunders, Executive Director, New England Institutional Review Board:

“…A comprehensive and balanced treatment, providing the research participant with the information and tools to make an informed decision.”

Paul Gelsinger, who wrote the foreword for Informed Consent: The Consumer’s Guide to the Risks and Benefits of Volunteering for Clinical Trials:

“This book informs the average human being about what to expect and ask when participating in clinical research.”

The Underground History of American Education

Written by AbleChild on June 11, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

John Taylor Gatto shines once again in this exposé of the true history of American education, i.e., not the version of history that the government and media have led you to believe. He reveals where the concepts and ideas that rule contemporary education truly originated. In the book, Gatto explains how most teachers and school staff may believe they are contributing to the good of their students and do not intend on making their students dumber. However, these teachers are caught in a faulty system that is designed to make individuals easily controlled by the government and corporate entities. Basically, the education system is designed to create mindless, obedient consumers who won’t question government authority or fight corporate power.

In The Underground History of American Education, Gatto pleads for less restraint of the individuality and critical thinking of students in the school system. He shows how deeply embedded these toxic ideas are that have infiltrated the school system we know today. By going back through history and connecting the dots and giving examples and revealing ideas from leaders that have been strategically hidden, Gatto helps the reader to truly understand what is wrong with our schools.

About the Author

John Taylor Gatto was born in on December 15, 1935, in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as Cornell and Columbia in New York. Gatto then served in the U.S. Army medical corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Fort Houston, Texas. After his military service, Gatto completed graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva, the University of California, and Cornell.

Before and during Gatto’s teaching career, he served in various other occupations, many of which involved writing. He wrote scripts for the film business, wrote for advertising, was an ASCAP songwriter, and eventually founded Lava Mt. Records, which is an award-winning documentary record producer. Gatto’s record company has completed a variety of big-name projects, including presentations of speeches from Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

Gatto’s teaching career garnered him quite a few awards. He was named New York City Teacher of the Year three times, and then held the title of New York State Teacher of the Year. After leaving his teaching career after 30 years, telling the Wall Street Journal that he was “no longer willing to hurt children,” he moved on to become a much-sought-after public speaker on the topic of school reform. His speaking engagements took him across all 50 states in the U.S., and to seven foreign countries.

Gatto had also recieved other awards, such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty. From 1996 on, he has been included in the Who’s Who in America. He has authored a handful of other books, including A Different Kind of Teacher and Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.

Gatto passed away on October 25, 2018. His obituary on the website for the Foundation for Economic Education stated that after three decades in the classroom, “Gatto dedicated the rest of his life to repairing the damage done by the public education system.”

Reviews

Archive.org:

“The book is absolutely riveting, and the country would be better off if more citizens read it and demanded real change to the system. Gatto’s book deserves five stars because it dares to speak the truth.”

A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

Written by AbleChild on June 10, 2022. Posted in Essential Books.

This collection of essays from educational liberty advocate John Taylor Gatto examines how the education system that we know today was created to advance government and corporate interests. In the book, Gatto explains how the contemporary education system is designed to train individuals against critical thinking, leading them to accept whatever is told to them by the government or media without taking further steps to investigate if it’s true or logical. Gatto says this is the result of conditioning of the mind that comes from compulsory schooling.

Gatto points out in the book how education used to be very different, and how before compulsory schooling was used, children were much more literate. In A Different Kind of Teacher, Gatto examines the difference between private and public (aka government-operated) education. Not only does Gatto examine the problems with contemporary public education in the book, however, he also lays out a plan of action for individuals and communities to change the system to one that doesn’t cater to government and economic interests. He encourages critical thinking on the individual level, and calls for changes made in the school system at the local level.

About the Author

Gatto had also recieved other awards, such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty. From 1996 on, he has been included in the Who’s Who in America. He has authored a handful of other books, including Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and The Underground History of American Education.

Reviews

The New Agora Magazine:

“Each of one of us is inherently responsible for our own continuing education. When we pass that responsibility to the state, such as John Taylor Gatto has showed, we come to terms with the desolate fact of the public schooling system’s cataclysmic decline.”