John Taylor Gatto

free will education schooling

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

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

children learn live class cagecommunity ridicule

“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 at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

education individual conformist life live

“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.”

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

education United States one right way grow up children

“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 proceed with growing up.”

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

secular society school church teaching faith

“In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.”

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

genius dirt suppress manage

“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 men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.”

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

education goal fact truth responsibility lives life

“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 for their lives.”

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

institution school destructive children

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

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

learn script life actor

"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 (1935-2018)

New grade measure obedience manager

"Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a manager."

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

interest human being rule threat system

"Anyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system."

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

school teach obey order

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

—John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)