I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet.John Taylor Gatto
Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges.John Taylor Gatto
Your children and grandchildren are currently being fashioned into merchandise that schools are paid to produce.John Taylor Gatto
Is it any wonder that Socrates was outraged at the accusation he took money to teach?John Taylor Gatto
You can’t get big unless you’re really bad.John Taylor Gatto
Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850.John Taylor Gatto
It was resisted-sometimes with guns-by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost Bryantville, holding out until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.John Taylor Gatto
This type of schooling is an essential support system for the kind of social order a number of you in the audience would like your kids to live under.John Taylor Gatto
None of this is a secret.John Taylor Gatto
School should be something that you work hard to get into, not something you're sentenced to.John Taylor Gatto