All John Taylor Gatto Quotes
- Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the structures of schooling… Associating
- I teach how to fit into a world I don't want to live in. I just can't do it anymore. Anymore
- School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only… Children
- The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly boot… Based
- 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 to… Careers
- Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity. Conformity
- The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility… Allow
- This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been… Another Now
- Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be… Allowed
- Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for… Adventure
- Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for… Arithmetic
- Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop - then they blame the family for… Any
- School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. Bad
- The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. Anything Except
- There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints. Become Educated
- Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist. Conformist
- I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead… All
- God was pitched out of forced schooling on his ear after WWII. This wasn't because of any constitutional proscription-there was none that anyone had been… Able
- Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone… Alarming
- I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the… Anymore