Parents tend to think that schools exist to help their children
reach their highest intellectual ability. However, that is not
the political goal of the industrialists that fund compulsory
education, which is to create a nation of complacent, socialized
workers, deep in debt because they have bought too much of what
the industries produce.
I have heard John Taylor Gatto speak three times now, and
each time I get something a little different out of what he has
to say. He came out with a book about the history of American
education that is shaking up a lot of people who think that Carnegie,
Ford and other industialists who have donated so generously to
education were doing so out of the kindness of their hearts.
In the essays below, Gatto speaks about what he knows best
and what he's found out. He was New York City and State Teacher
of the Year at various times in his career. He taught at a school
were teens everyone else had given up on were sent, and he did
a good job with them but in a creative and unorthodox way.
He let them out of school, to be around town, working on various
projects, learning first hand how to work the system.
A Yahoo Group has sprung up to discuss the essay links below.
I didn't start it up, but if you wish to discuss these essays
with others, consider joining EduTalk.
Beginning June 1, 2005, members of EduTalk will begin
reading and discussing John Taylor Gatto's book, "Underground
History of American Education." This book is a must
read. We must understand where the roots of our educational system
began, in order to understand where we are headed.
You will not enjoy the essays in the links below. They will
make you feel sad and angry. They will make you think.
Bootie
Zimmer's Choice
Our children have been held captive by a method of literacy transmission
that ignores reality -- and makes a very large fortune each year
doing so. By John Taylor Gatto.
The Curriculum
of Necessity
Or "What must and educated person know?" By John Taylor
Gatto. Includes Harvard's list of what a well-educated person
should be able to do.
I
may be a teacher, but I'm not an educator
John Taylor Gatto's resignation letter in the Wall Street Journal.
"I've come slowly to understand what it is I really teach:
A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice,
vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to
quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world
I don't want to live in. I just can't do it anymore."
'I'm
a Saboteur.'
Brainpower is more important than ever, but education seems more
backward than ever. John Taylor Gatto, an award-winning teacher,
now aims to overthrow the public-school establishment for which
he worked for 30 years. By Daniel H. Pink, Fast Company, November
2000.
John Taylor Gatto
The site to find out more about John and to purchase a pre-publication
of his book, Underground
History of American Education. You can also view a pictorial
essay about the history of education.
Nine
Assumptions of Modern Schooling
John Taylor Gatto warned that although there were many caring
teachers who worked hard in the system, the institution itself
was "psychopathic and without conscience," and would
always overwhelm their individual contributions.
Personal
Solutions, Family Solutions
"If you have no time for your family you want to ask yourself,
'Why must I always be do-ing something?' God made us human be-ings,
not do-ings!" By John Taylor Gatto.
Public School
Nightmare
Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought? By John
Taylor Gatto
Six-Lesson
Schoolteacher
By John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of
the Year, 1991. If you pay for these lessons, you should at least
know what they are.
Seven-Lesson
Schoolteacher
A longer version: "The first lesson I teach is confusion.
Everything I teach is out of context... I teach the unrelating
of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much."
By John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers, 1992
Teach
Your Own Children . . . At Home
This article was originally printed in the July/August 1980 edition
of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS, pp. 11-16, as their "Plowboy Interview."
Teacher
of the Year-Or "Hero of the Decade?"
When voicing his acceptance speech on that momentous day, January
31, 1990, more than a few jaws dropped. John was not deterred.
He had his speech prepared. He had something on his mind. He
was going to share. By Gena Suarez, TOS
The
Underground History of American Education
A Schoolteachers Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of
Modern Schooling by John Taylor Gatto. A review on Family
Unschoolers Network.
We
The People Radio Interview By Jerry Brown March 25, 1997
Jerry Brown: Welcome to another edition of We The People, this
hour we're going to talk some more about learning, education,
and schooling in its many variations.
What Really
Matters - Part 1 -
By John Taylor Gatto. If what I've said is even partly true,
you'll have to join me in sabotaging the global economy and sabotaging
the government schools, because schools and government and machinery-makers
lie to you about what matters every time.
What Really
Matters - Part 2 -
By John Taylor Gatto. Warehousing the young; warehousing the
aged good business, I know, but good for what?
My husband, Fred Zeise, and son, Scott, help Gatto and Diane
Keith, editor of Homefires,
the Journal of Homeschooling, get the video system set
up.
Gatto revealing what Carnegie's motivation was to "help"
educate America's school children, to make them complacent workers.