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John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto Quotes

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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.”

ThinkingWayWritingStillsReadingBehindsKnownPrinciplesSupportMovementPositionJudgmentToughMethodDefinitionsAppearanceDiscussionAnalysisPenetrateObjectionsFacadeCovertThink For YourselfClose Reading
Author:John Taylor Gatto
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“As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. (...)Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed.”

WayWellsWould BeAgeTodaySchoolMotherLeftBoysSpecialGeniusPoliticianTenScientistFortunePsychologicalEducatedImmortalityPeculiarBusinessmanFranklinThirteenAndrewCounselingTamedCarnegieBen Franklin
Author:John Taylor Gatto
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“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.”

WayTryingMindChildrenNumbersGrowing UpGrowingSolutionsArmyPoliceVariousInventionExpensiveReportsStringsPuppetsLarge NumbersDeviants
Author:John Taylor Gatto
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“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.”

WayHumansChildrenImportantKidsCommunityChanceClassTaughtHabitHundredOrganizationShameScalesInvisibleAssociationIsolatedBellsRetreatCagesRidiculeHornsFinishingLarge Scale
Book:Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
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“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.”

IfsThinkingWayNeedsChildrenGovernmentCommunityExpressionOrganizationOriginalsIndividualityDefinitionsScalesReliefBelongingRight WaySurveillanceIntimidationGovernment Surveillance
Author:John Taylor Gatto
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“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
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“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.”

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Author:John Taylor Gatto
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