John Taylor Gatto

Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us.

— John Taylor Gatto

You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra!

— John Taylor Gatto

When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.

— John Taylor Gatto

“average men and women don’t really exist except as a statistical conceit.”

— John Taylor Gatto

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.

— John Taylor Gatto

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

— John Taylor Gatto

“When children are stripped of a primary experience base as confinement schooling must do to justify its existence, the natural sequence of…

— John Taylor Gatto

What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE…

— John Taylor Gatto

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children.”

— John Taylor Gatto

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to…

— John Taylor Gatto

“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

The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be…

— John Taylor Gatto

“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

“imitation of notable models as an effective spring of learning; was the most ancient and effective motivation to learn—to become like someone…

— John Taylor Gatto

People are less than whole unless they gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family,…

— John Taylor Gatto

School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull…

— John Taylor Gatto

“Free will allows infinite numbers of human stories to be written in which a personal you is the main character. The sciences,…

— John Taylor Gatto

I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day…

— John Taylor Gatto

It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things…

— John Taylor Gatto

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

For reasons that are both fair and foul - but mostly for fair reasons - we have come under the domain of…

— John Taylor Gatto

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

“The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will…

— John Taylor Gatto

I dont think well get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if were going to change…

— John Taylor Gatto

“may occasionally pay lip-service to their value, but it ultimately has no real use for artists, dancers, poets, self-sufficient farmers, tree lovers,…

— John Taylor Gatto

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at…

— John Taylor Gatto

“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

Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and…

— John Taylor Gatto

Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening.

— John Taylor Gatto

Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain…

— John Taylor Gatto

Child labor becomes a label of condemnation in spite of its ancient function as the quickest, most reliable way to human independence

— John Taylor Gatto

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

The economy schoolchildren currently expect to live under and serve would not survive a generation of young people trained to think critically.

— John Taylor Gatto

One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong.…

— John Taylor Gatto

In a home school, the kid does 95% of the work. But in a school system, since it's an indoctrination system, a…

— John Taylor Gatto

Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.

— John Taylor Gatto

The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them…

— John Taylor Gatto

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when…

— John Taylor Gatto

I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a…

— John Taylor Gatto

“The home-schooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and half million young people are being educated entirely by their…

— John Taylor Gatto