Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher? — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
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… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share
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
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
“Limiting the power of government, in order to liberate the individual, was the great American revolutionary insight. Too much cooperation, avoiding conflict… — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
“I have come to believe that government monopoly schools are structurally unreformable. They cannot function if their central myths are exposed and… — 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 Image
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 Image
There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints. — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra! — John Taylor Gatto Copy Share Image
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 and police and various ways to punish deviants, but there isn't any way to punish a large number of deviants. It's too expensive to even try. So, the solution is to colonize the minds of children… — 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 nothing about, and having those strangers work on your child's mind, out of your sight, for a period of twelve years? Could there be a more radical idea than that? Back in Colonial days in America,… — 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 Image
