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John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto Quotes

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John Taylor Gatto is an American author known for his critical analysis of the educational system. Born on December 15, 1935, he is a former public school teacher who gained national attention for refusing to comply with bureaucratic regulations in education. Gatto's work emphasizes the importance of educational freedom and personal responsibility.

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All School Children Education Schooling Ifs Learning Teach Way People Teacher Humans Teaching World Community Society Thinking Years Wells Critique Government

Famous John Taylor Gatto Quotes

“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 that reading in a way that obliges you to formulate a position and support it against objections, is an operational definition of education... reading, analysis, and discussion is the way we develop reliable judgment, the principle way we come to penetrate covert movements behind the facade of public appearances.”

“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

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

People Thinking Young Economy Generations

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

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.”

“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 a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate”; that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It’s just impossible for education and schooling to be the same thing.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

People Thinking World Way Has Beens Country Today School Taught Intellectual Prison Financial Plenty Dependent Educate World Today Schooling Schooled Compulsory Secondary School

Author:John Taylor Gatto