Quotessence
Home / Authors / John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllSchoolChildrenEducationSchoolingIfsLearningTeachWayPeopleTeacher

Famous John Taylor Gatto Quotes

“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 of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free.”

WorldWayFeelsChildrenRealSelfGrowsGrowing UpKnowingImagineIndependentAssumingStriveObligationCellsAshamedBetter WaysSelf ReliantMingling
Book:A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling
Create image

“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 to find in over a century and a half-but because the political state and corporate economy considered the Western spiritual tradition too dangerous a competitor. And it is.”

StatesAbleSpiritualPoliticalEducationHalfEconomyCenturyDangerousTraditionEarsWesternCorporateCompetitorsWwiiSchooling
Author:John Taylor Gatto
Create image

“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 by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community.”

PeopleChildrenHas BeensMadeHardHandsGovernmentCommunityWealthEducationClassStonesSellsStructureSettingSettingsConcentrationFormalRuinedBrighterSchoolingFractionsExclusionDividingMidwifeConcentration Of WealthNational Community
Author:John Taylor Gatto
Create image

“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 planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.”

YearsBelieveSchoolOrderClassTeachFiveTeachingPlanetsPoetPoliticianTruth IsScientistTwentiesFive YearsEnterpriseFascinatingPhenomenonIrrelevantSchoolingCivicsTwenty FiveScience ClassEnglish Class
Author:John Taylor Gatto
Create image

“We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of 'success' as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, 'schooling,' but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prison.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayHas BeensCountryTodaySchoolTaughtIntellectualPrisonFinancialPlentyDependentEducateWorld TodaySchoolingSchooledCompulsorySecondary School
Author:John Taylor Gatto
Create 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 other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”

MenHumansSchoolHuman BeingsEducationTeacherProduceCollegeBehaviorMassManagementInstrumentsUniversityPopulationControlledChicagoApplicationColumbiaHarperSears
Author:John Taylor Gatto
Create image