School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
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… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon,… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Looking back on a 30-year teaching career full of rewards and prizes, somehow I can't completely believe that I spent my time… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
God was pitched out of forced schooling on his ear after WWII. This wasn't because of any constitutional proscription-there was none that… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships — the one-day variety or… — 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
