And of course it is. He passed away on Oct. 25, 2018. . John Gatto was a teacher in New York City's public schools for over 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. The utter contempt of this system for freewill short-circuits the right to choice. Gatto was a compelling speaker and author of several books that shed light on the train wreck of schooling in America. Gatto attests that when people are interested in learning, they can learn all of the basics of reading, math, and writing in about 100 hours of attentive study. Instead of modifying the curriculum for these students in order to prepare them for their presumed subordinate social role, Gatto challenged the scientific religion of schooling which believes [Black people] to be genetically challenged and presented a rigorous education focused on strong reading skills and critical discussion of fundamental questions in history, philosophy and literature. Gatto believes that schooling is not necessary, and there are many successful people that were self-educated. With a topic like this one, it is important to address the audience and capture their attention. Rather than sending his letter of resignation to his superiors in his school district, he sent a copy of I Quit, I Think to the Wall Street Journal, where it was published as an op-ed on July 25, 1991. What follows is a transcription of the key section from John's classic speech and opus, The Underground History of American Education. He says networks have become an unhealthy substitute for community in the United States. This page was last edited on 14 February 2023, at 03:28. For homeschoolers, in particular, Gatto affirmed the vital role of family and empowered parents to take back control of their childs education. After three decades in the classroom, Gatto realized that the public school system was squashing individualism more than it was educating students and preparing them for the real world. An advocate for school reform, Gatto's books include Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, the Underground History of American Education and Weapons of Mass Instruction. states, to analyse how and why the system of public education hinders and sabotages the. It was a letter for his former employer, the New York City Public Schools I Quit, I Think. If the adult body was a legitimate subject for scientific experimentation, the childs mind was even more appropriate: experiments on a developing psyche in school might even render bodily intervention in adulthood superfluous. In his magnum opus, The Underground History of American Education, Gatto traces the material roots of mass schooling back to the economic and ideological demands of a burgeoning industrial capitalism in Europe. As Gatto writes in his 2010 book, Weapons of Mass Instruction: Ive concluded that genius is as common as dirt. His Twitter page continues to promote his legacy. Various elitist forcesincluding teachers unions and corporate interestsactually work to squash the natural development of human beings as self-reliant and independent thinkers. John Taylor Gatto. Thinking outside the box, Washington asked British Gen. Edward Braddock if he could engage the enemy in wilderness fashion; Braddock denied permission. So as we honor the life of this great man, I leave you with a few of Gatto's most inspirational quotes. Children who used to learn practical skills by working alongside their families and communities were forced into monotonous factory work with the advent of the industrial revolution. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem). 595 Words3 Pages. Gatto said these students were not interested in what was being taught because they often said the work was stupid and that they already knew it. Rather than sending his letter of resignation to his superiors in his school district, he sent a copy of . GOP Megadonors Are Trying to Pull the Party Away From Trump. Hi John. [15][16][17], In 2011, Gatto had two major strokes[citation needed] which occurred after he completed the filming of The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto which was released in early 2012 by Tragedy and Hope Communications. John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education. Shortly after receiving those accolades, however, he decided hed had enough of a system that hurt children far more than it helped them. In the video below, former New York State Teacher of the Year and "The World's Most Courageous Teacher", author and whistleblower John Taylor Gatto, speaks at length about pervasive and deleterious issues which surround compulsory schooling, which not only are in its current fashion imposed to make children conform, but also to remove the create . In this essay, the author. download 1 file . Gattos devotion to family is reflected in his half-century marriage to his wife, Janet. If modern schooling was born in the militaristic milieu of early 19th-century Prussia, it came of age in the rigid class system of England and reached maturity in the colonizing adventures of the British Empire. . Often described as an army with a country, Prussia took the logic of the regimented factory shop floor and military training camp and applied it to the development of a national school system. member of political party. They failed to see and still fail to see that the logic of modern schooling is at odds not only with the revolutionary spirit of the Gospels, but also in contradiction with the teachings of all the worlds great spiritual traditions. John Taylor Gatto Quotes. He claims to have firsthand experience of the boredom that students and teachers struggle with. [13] Ron Paul strongly endorsed Gatto's work, calling him a "legendary teacher" who helped shape his own thinking and homeschooling curriculum. I stumbled onto his name and even found a source of lots of audio files where he explains his views. Educational Policy Analysis . An Evaluation of John Taylor Gatto's Opposition to Compulsory School Education. John Taylor Gatto is a well known critic of schooling. The victory against General Iron and Mayor Lori Lightfoot points the way to clean, green and fully funded schools. The Exhausted School by John Taylor Gatto (Editor) Visit Amazon's John Taylor Gatto Page search results for this author John Taylor Gatto (Editor) (29-Aug-2003) Paperback; Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by Gatto, John (1991) Paperback; Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto (4-Jan-2010) Paperback . 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John Taylor Gatto [1] (born December 15, 1935 [2]) is an American author and former school teacher with nearly 30 years of experience in the classroom. He was awarded New York City Teacher of the Year three consecutive years while also being recognized as New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. Changing public perceptions that equate policing with safety is challenging, especially in the wake of school shootings. Gatto's description of the school system sounds more like the description of a prison or a sweat shop than a school. This system was subsequently deployed in Scotland in Bells own Madras College secondary school in St. Andrews, and later in England and the U.S. under a similar system known as Lancaster schooling based loosely on the ideas of English Quaker Joseph Lancaster. To make matters worse, his later research would reveal that this dumbing down was not just by accident, but by design. It has reduced the human to a number, to a social category, to mere physical matter to be toyed with at the whims and fancies of experts. To challenge the assumptions of modern schooling is to remember and reaffirm the spiritual strivings of the human being. Contents 1 Background 2 Resignation 3 Exposures 4 Later activities 5 Publications For Gatto, Monongahela symbolized America at its finest. Take, for example, the crazy curriculum change starting in the 50s to replace the easy de-coding of phonics with the guessing game of look/say whole word recognition. His writing was a decisive factor in my decision to pull my fourth-grader and sixth-grader out of the supposedly desirable blue ribbon public schools in Potomac, Maryland. He truly is an icon of freedom and self-directed learning, yet he sees himself as a regular guy who was blessed to grow up with a. Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. While Gatto gained a readership among certain sections of the homeschooling and alternative education movements, his piercing criticism of U.S. schooling and its link to the crisis of Western civilization deserves a much wider audience. 62 Copy quote. [22], Gatto demystifies the apparent confusion and meaninglessness of public schooling system by exposing its real purpose and function. In John Gatto's essay "Against School", he insists that modern schooling is crippling our kids. 2. It is no coincidence that this North German state subsequently became the most important country in the development of modern schooling. the current social, political, and economic climate. Given that fact, why would public mass schooling demand approximately 25,000 hours of a persons life? The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Topcu, Ihsan. That mainstream abolitionists like the Stowes were early advocates of European mass schooling in the U.S. is telling. Main page; Community portal; Project chat; Create a new Item; John Taylor Gattoo, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling 70 likes Like "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, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling But here are several other excerpts that Gatto offers us to think about: In the first decades of the twentieth century, a small group of soon-to-be-famous academics, symbolically led by John Dewey and Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College, Ellwood P. Cubberly of Stanford, G. Stanley Hall of Clark and an ambitious handful of others, energized and financed by major corporate and financial allies like Morgan, Astor, Whitney, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, decided to bend government schooling to the service of business and the political state as it had been done a century before in Prussia. [9] In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled I Quit, I Think, to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living. It Could Get Ugly. Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. Keep in mind, you're not listening to John Gatto, you're listening to the man for whom the Honor Lecture in Education at Harvard is named. by John Taylor Gatto This article is only available as a PDF to subscribers. The Ultimate History Lesson with John Taylor Gatto is a 5-hour journey examining the history, root-causes, and consequences of public schooling. He is also an extraordinary teacher, once being named as Teacher of the Year for New York State. . Gatto soon realized that educrats expected him, as a teacher, to put children through an animal training system. In his book, The Underground History of American Education, he describes forced schooling as a means to bring the entire population into conformity so it would be regarded as a human resource and managed as a workforce. He wrote that this required a massive psychological campaignthe ability of Americans to think as independent producers had to be curtailed., Battling such a state of affairs is all the more difficult in a culture that has grown increasingly hostile to the innocence and dignity of children. writer-marian. A mass man dedicated to the proposition that a person got ahead in life by pleasing higher authorities, and by surrendering any personal principles disfavored by one's superiors. He was also a firm believer in self-directed education, sometimes referred to as unschooling. He believed that learning was actually inhibited by the classroom setting and that every single moment of life presented the opportunity to learn and grow. NDC 21F Audience In the article, Against School, author John Taylor Gatto covers the topic of boredom in public school systems. Read; View history; More. This seminar is riveting. I only wish I had done it from the beginning and more completely. 1) The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto (Intro + Hour 1 of 5) Richard Grove 43.6K subscribers Subscribe 3.3K Share Save Description 289K views 10 years ago Would. I cant train children to wait to be told what to do; I cant train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I cant persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isnt any, and I cant persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. Unlock premium content, ad-free browsing, and access to comments for just $4/month. By Vincent Kelley , T ruthout October 25, 2019 Gatto envisioned an education system that placed freedom and justice above technology and efficiency. As Gatto puts it, scientism has no built-in moral brakes to restrain it other than legal jeopardy.. He taught in New York City schools for 30 years, won the New York State Teacher of the Year Awardand resigned his position in the op-ed pages of the New York Times. John Taylor Gatto The Underground History Of American Education Book by santa barbarian. He taught for years in working-class Black schools in Harlem, and observed that black kids had caught on to the fact that their school was a liars world, a jobs project for seedy white folk.. Gatto points out the irony that it was the churches, particularly those of the Anglican and Quaker variety, which laid the foundation for their own decline by encouraging the expansion of mass forced schooling. In this reading, Gatto claims that the public education system causes children to become bored with themselves, to conform to the way of the school and . The Seven Lesson School Teacher About This Site Intro 1 Confusion 2 Class Position 3 Indifference 4 Emotional Dependency . By the 1830s, schools based on the Prussian and Lancaster models stretched from New York to Texas, with significant admirers such as Calvin Ellis Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowes husband, who advocated for the adoption of a Prussian-style national education system in the United States. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. John Taylor Gatto (December 15, 1935[3] October 25, 2018[4]) was an American author and school teacher. "[10] He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received awards from libertarian organizations, including the Alexis de Tocqueville 1997 Award for Excellence in Advancement of Educational Freedom. He recognized that their worth was not determined by the neighborhoods where they lived, their parents annual salaries, or the scores they received on standardized tests. These are the core principles taught by mass institutional schooling, habits drummed in by 12 years of confinement. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than FEE. So after 26 years of teaching, Gatto decided to spend the rest of his life reversing the intellectual and emotional damage that compulsory, factory schooling does to children.