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The
Nature
of Public Education
Excerpts
from the writings of
John
Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto was named "New York State
Teacher of the Year" in 1992. I heard him speak at a homeschool
convention maybe three years later. His ideas "blew me out of the
water"!!! Along with all of my previously held-dear concepts of
education! I know his writings have done much to re-form my ideas about
education, and, as well, to blast my old ideas of education and have
thus freed me to "do education" without feeling like I
need to imitate the school system, public or private.
Further down this page is a link to a site with much much
more of his writing, as well as a few words from me to introduce you to Mr. Gatto's exceptionally needed
message! But let's hear from him first...
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"Curiosity has no important place
in my work, only conformity."
– John Taylor Gatto
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"I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us...
I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to *prevent* children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior."
– John Taylor Gatto
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"...‘How
will they learn to read?’ you ask, and my answer is ‘Remember the
lessons of Massachusetts.’ When children are given whole lives instead
of age-graded ones in cellblocks, they learn to read, write, and do
arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life
that unfolds around them."
– John Taylor Gatto
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"Whatever an
education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist;
it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the
big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your
road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who
loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with;
it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."
– John Taylor Gatto |
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"It’s
absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in
confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That
system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and
the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past
and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way
television does..."
– John Taylor Gatto
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"I don’t think we’ll get rid
of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re
going to change what’s rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need
to realize that the school institution "schools" very well, though it
does not "educate"; that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not
the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It’s just
impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing."
– John Taylor Gatto
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"By
preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by
the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges,
textbook publishers, materials supplier s, et al. - have ensured that most of
our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly
schooled."
– John Taylor Gatto
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