john-taylor-gatto Quotes About children

“A combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families has swallowed up most of what used to be family time as well. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.”

Children Society Youth Television Discourse Upbringing Critique Homeschooling Mass Schooling

Book:Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness.”

Children Education Teaching Schooling Dumbness

Book:The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

“Unceasing competition for official favor in the dramatic fish bowl of a classroom delivers cowardly children, little people sunk in chronic boredom, little people with no apparent purpose for being alive.”

Children Education Boredom Coward Classroom Schooling Fish Bowl Purpose For Being Alive

Book:The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

“Trapped children, like trapped rats, need close management.”

Children Education Schooling Close Management

Book:The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

“Was it possible I did like kids, just not the script written for them?”

Children Education Forced Schooling

Book:The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

Source: The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

“I can’t believe that centralized schooling is allowed to exist at all as a gigantic indoctrination and sorting machine, robbing people of their children.”

Children Education Schooling Indoctrination Centralised Schooling

Book:The Underground History of American Education, Volume I: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

Source: The Underground History of American Education, Volume I: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

“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, have a horrendous performance record in later life.”

Children Walks Secret Records Honor Highest Performances Decades Merit Academic Scholar Formal Valedictorians

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“Is there an idea more radical in the history of the human race than turning your children over to total strangers whom you know nothing about, and having those strangers work on your child's mind, out of your sight, for a period of twelve years? Could there be a more radical idea than that? Back in Colonial days in America, if you proposed that kind of idea, they'd burn you at the stake, you mad person! It's a mad idea!”

Ifs Knows Years Mind Humans Kind Children Persons Ideas America Race Periods Sight Our Children Mad Stranger Radical Your Children Human Race Stakes Twelve Radical Ideas Mad Person

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“• As society rapidly changes, individuals will have to be able to function comfortably in a world that is always in flux. Knowledge will continue to increase at a dizzying rate. This means that a content-based curriculum, with a set body of information to be imparted to students, is entirely inappropriate as a means of preparing children for their adult roles.”

World Mean Children Body Able Individual Roles Information Students Adults Function Increase Rate Preparing Curriculum Inappropriate Flux

Book:Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“Looking back on a 30-year teaching career full of rewards and prizes, somehow I can't completely believe that I spent my time on earth institutionalized; I can't believe that centralized schooling is allowed to exist at all as a gigantic indoctrination and sorting machine, robbing people of their children. Did it really happen? Was this my life? God help me.”

“Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market.”

Writing Children Doe School Jobs Reading Hours Teach Streets Students Arithmetic Reading Writing

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants, but there isn't any way to punish a large number of deviants. It's too expensive to even try. So, the solution is to colonize the minds of children as they're growing up, so that they become their own police, and to report on others who are deviating.”

Way Trying Mind Children Numbers Growing Up Growing Solutions Army Police Various Invention Expensive Reports Strings Puppets Large Numbers Deviants

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“Slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”

Ifs Thinking Children Age Realizing Crazy Behavior Constant Addiction Dependent Privacy Bells Segregation Sequence Surveillance Schooling Curriculum Confinement

Book:Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“Our cultural dilemma has nothing to do with children who don't read very well. It lies instead in the difficulty of finding a way to restore meaning and purpose to modern life.”

Way Wells Children Lying Purpose Modern Findings Difficulty Modern Life Dilemma

Book:A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

“It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you.”

Years Wells Children Self Enough Kids School Hours Behinds Teach Practice Teacher Cry Taught Lessons Skills Six Math Contact Twelve Literacy Transmit Math Skills

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“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 dwindling resources?”

World Children Asks Consequence Resources Our Children

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“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.”

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“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 from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to THEM are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning.”

“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 grades is broken beyond repair. If it could be fixed it could have been fixed by now. Good riddance.”

Ifs Children Has Beens Learning Cutting Broken Competition Silly Fixed Grades Prize Throat Locked Could Have Been Riddance Good Riddance

Author: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. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.”

Trying Firsts Children School Evil Differences Teach Learning Distinction Good And Evil

Author: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 and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course.”

Firsts Children School Life Is Courses Society Stupid Products Impression Organized Dull Relief Lasting Coke Schools And Education First Impression

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“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 rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.”

Children Persons Has Beens Grows Land Responsible Permanent Architect Sane Shelter Schooling

Book:Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“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 passive.”

World Children Play Given Responsibility Serious Superiors Passive Taking Responsibility

Author: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 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.”

Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

“By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive: if nothing is worth finishing then by extension nothing is worth starting either. Few children are so thick-skulled they miss the point.”

Ifs Children School Teach Missing Errors Starting Technique Progressive Thick Bells Extensions Gross Finishing

Author:John Taylor Gatto

“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.”

“Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?”

Giving Children Government Giving Up Our Children Agents Your Children Docile

Author: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”

Way Humans Children Labor Function Independence Ancient Labels Spite Condemnation Child Labor

Author:John Taylor Gatto

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