Too radical or just what our education system needs?

I think everyone that wants to be a teacher right now needs to read this book. It has some really heated arguments and radical ideas in here about reforming our educational system. Not just tweaking it here and there and improving it, John Taylor Gatto is talking about overhauling the whole system and starting from scratch. He knows what he is talking about and has some solid ideas about what our children really need and what they are actually receiving in schools today. He writes about how they have been conditioned to act in certain ways every since the beginning of compulsory schooling began.

Gatto says that our nation ranks at the BOTTOM of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmatic. The BOTTOM!! He also said to "pick up a fifth grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you will see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be considered college level."

So anyway, I hope I gave you enough of an interest and emotion to go pick up this book and read it. It is fascinating and sad and unfortunately true. At first, I thought he was being way too radical and reformist, but he's been a teacher for over 30 years and won several Teacher of the Year awards. Check it out and tell me what you think. Especially those of you who are in my EDU 471 class and are already reading it--what do YOU think of his ideas?