Best John Taylor Gatto Quotes
- Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it. Education
- Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other… Application
- It's been a horrifying academic secret for decades that the children who walk away with the highest formal honors, the valedictorians and National Merit Scholars,… Academic
- Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a manager. Grades
- Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and rigorous discussion of… Analysis
- For reasons that are both fair and foul - but mostly for fair reasons - we have come under the domain of a scientific-management system… Ambition
- When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling. Education
- Shouldn't we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the "most" of everything to our children in a world of fast… Ask
- I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have… Assumption
- Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic-it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man… Ancestor
- Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. Common
- ...good things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone. Alone
- The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible.… Amuse
- What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to… Education
- Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance… All
- Individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way" thinking on the grand scale. Children and families need some relief… Belonging
- Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Bases
- In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith. Church
- 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 what’s rapidly becoming… Any
- I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated… Common
- One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the… Children
- It is absurd and anti-life to be a part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want… Absurd
- The old system where every child was locked away and set into nonstop, daily cut throat competition with every other child for silly prizes called… Been
- School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion on a daily… Associates
- It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things are learned, but… Act