School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know. John Taylor Gatto More Quotes by John Taylor Gatto More Quotes From John Taylor Gatto Anyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system. John Taylor Gatto threathuman-beingshumans For reasons that are both fair and foul - but mostly for fair reasons - we have come under the domain of a scientific-management system whose ambitions are endless. They want to manage every second of our lives, every expenditure that we make. And the schools are the training ground to create a population that's easy to manage. John Taylor Gatto trainingambitionschool We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison. John Taylor Gatto countryschoolthinking Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it. John Taylor Gatto wantinspiringgiving As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. (...)Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed. John Taylor Gatto motherboysschool We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that. John Taylor Gatto adventureorderkids In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith. John Taylor Gatto takenteachingschool In a home school, the kid does 95% of the work. But in a school system, since it's an indoctrination system, a teacher has to do 95% of the work. John Taylor Gatto hometeacherschool God was pitched out of forced schooling on his ear after WWII. This wasn't because of any constitutional proscription-there was none that anyone had been able to find in over a century and a half-but because the political state and corporate economy considered the Western spiritual tradition too dangerous a competitor. And it is. John Taylor Gatto politicalspiritualeducation Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another. John Taylor Gatto creatingselfschool Child labor becomes a label of condemnation in spite of its ancient function as the quickest, most reliable way to human independence John Taylor Gatto independencelabelschildren It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you. John Taylor Gatto teacherchildrenschool I taught public school for 26 years, but I just can't do it anymore. For years I asked the school board to let me teach a curriculum that doesn't hurt kids, but they always had other fish to fry. If you hear of a job where I don't have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything, but blind obedience. John Taylor Gatto hurtjobsschool The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. John Taylor Gatto caringteacherschool The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real. John Taylor Gatto governmentrealschool Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity. John Taylor Gatto conformitycuriosityimportant I teach how to fit into a world I don't want to live in. I just can't do it anymore. John Taylor Gatto wantworldschool The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted. John Taylor Gatto avoidedobligationpeople School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged. John Taylor Gatto mustreformenoughschool
