Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it. — 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
You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so;… — 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
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
By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive:… — 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
If you live in a material universe where acquiring things is very important to you, then family is an absolute deterrent to… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
I taught public school for 26 years, but I just can't do it anymore. For years I asked the school board to… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
If you put fleas in a shallow container they jump out. But if you put a lid on the container for just… — 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
