Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“When children are stripped of a primary experience base as confinement schooling must do to justify its existence, the natural sequence of… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The old system where every child was locked away and set into nonstop, daily cut throat competition with every other child for… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“imitation of notable models as an effective spring of learning; was the most ancient and effective motivation to learn—to become like someone… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong.… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
If you live in a material universe where acquiring things is very important to you, then family is an absolute deterrent to maintaining that… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time,… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
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… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
“Any economy in which the most common tasks are the shuffling of paper, the punching of buttons, and the running of mouths isn’t an… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra! — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I'm not saying that there aren't armies… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
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… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
“Pick up a fifth-grade math or rhetoric textbook from 1850 and you’ll see that the texts were pitched then on what would today be… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
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… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
