John Taylor Gatto Quotes about Learning

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. It should allow you to find values which will be

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. It should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.

John Taylor Gatto

Learning, Unique, Challenges

John Taylor Gatto (2017). “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”, p.53, New Society Publishers

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

John Taylor Gatto

Life, Writing, Learning

John Taylor Gatto (2017). “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”, p.9, New Society Publishers

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.

John Taylor Gatto

Children, Learning, School

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.

John Taylor Gatto

Learning, Men, Thinking

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.

John Taylor Gatto

Children, Silly, Learning

Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening.

John Taylor Gatto

Learning, Creative, Conditioning

It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things are learned, but not really taught at all. Over-teaching interferes with learning, although the few who survive it may well come to imagine it was by an act of teaching.

John Taylor Gatto

Teaching, Learning, People

School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion on a daily basis, pitting potential associates against one another in contests for praise and other worthless prizes.

John Taylor Gatto

Learning, School, Exercise

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.

John Taylor Gatto

Learning, School, Long