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. In the spring of 1960, he borrowed his roommate's teaching license, went into Harlem to work as a substitute teacher. Above all, Gatto understood that his students were not mere underlings, but individuals with unique skills and talents to share with the rest of the world. In addition to his family, he leaves behind a legacy that inspired thousands of people to challenge the premise on which our education system was built and to protect a childs right to a real education built on actual experience rather than government-sanctioned texts. Gatto explains how todays model of factory schooling is based on the Prussian model of sorting people for an efficient society in which a minority of elites rule over a vast majority of subjects who have been deliberately dumbed down. One need to look no further than Friedrich Engelss 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, to understand the impact of the industrial revolution on Englands poor, whose living conditions dropped precipitously at the same time as mass schooling was being introduced in the country. Chronologically, our current model of regimented, factory schooling begins more or less with industrialization in the mid-19th century, which triggered a decline of agriculture and deterioration of family life. The Seven Lesson School Teacher About This Site Intro 1 Confusion 2 Class Position 3 Indifference 4 Emotional Dependency . Gatto believes that schooling is not necessary, and there are many successful people that were self-educated. In 2011, he co-created "The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto," which is an epic 5 hour video interview exploring the history of education, political power, and freedom that was released in 2012. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation. Get daily news, in-depth reporting and critical analysis from the journalists, activists and thinkers who are working to improve our world.. Florida's Miccosukee is the first tribe allowed to run its own school, where students fully participate in family and cultural activities. I teach school and win awards doing it. Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day. [5] He was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991[4][6][7][8] and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. That mainstream abolitionists like the Stowes were early advocates of European mass schooling in the U.S. is telling. [21], Gatto's book aimed to inspire education advocates and the inception of Praxis tests. medical condition. Gatto dedicated the rest of his life to repairing the damage done by the public education system. 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. I therefore work to introduce unschooling principles in my teaching--and I have seen . He claims to have firsthand experience of the boredom that students and teachers struggle with. For Gatto, Monongahela symbolized America at its finest. All rights reserved. Sociologist Edward A. Ross captured the turn of the centurys zeitgeist in his 1901 book, aptly titled Social Control, writing that, Plans are underway to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media. It confuses the students. He resigned in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times upon receiving the New York State Teacher of the Year award. As harsh as Gattos criticisms sound, the dehumanizing conditioning and programming of kids has a long history going back a couple of centuries. 2023 The Federalist, A wholly independent division of FDRLST Media. You will find out all that the . Gatto was born in 1935 in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, so he could recall getting a real education before the cancer of compulsory factory schooling metastasized. For Gatto, it is the sacred narrative of modernity, of which mass schooling is an essential (if often unquestioned) component, that has become a substitute for the message of the Nazarene. Indeed, the idea of a conflict between secular schooling and religious education is a false one: Modern schooling is a religion, and has merely supplanted the Church as the primary institution of education. John Taylor Gatto Challenged the Ideas Inherent in US Mass Schooling Gatto envisioned an education system that placed freedom and justice above technology and efficiency. Gatto dedicated the rest of his life to repairing the damage done by the public education system. He's one of the most important thinkers in American historythat's becoming more obvious every day. John Taylor Gatto wrote this article for The Wall Street Journal, July 25th, 1991. Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images [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. Feeling the education system was beyond repair, Gatto could no longer in good conscience be an active participant. She is a co-host of The Way The World Works, a Tuttle Twins podcast for families. John Taylor Gatto's writings inspired a generation of parents and educators to question deep-seated beliefs about compulsory mass schooling and pursue alternatives. Though he is no longer with us today, we would be remiss to neglect his insights a year after his death. One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. 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. Its the passion of someone who has witnessed crimes against humanity. Gatto understood that his students were not mere underlings, but individuals with unique skills and talents. 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 . After studying and documenting this perverse connection, Gatto asks a question that may seem harsh to those who havent given it much thought: How does a fellow human being come to regard ordinary peoples children as experimental animals? Or how about we all just return to Egyptian hieroglyphics instead of an alphabet?) If you think about it, you too will realize that powerful elites in our institutions are always trying to suppress human ingenuity and imagination. Were proud to publish real news 365 days of the year, completely free of charge to our readers. [2], Gatto also ran for the New York State Senate, 29th District in 1985 and 1988 as a member of the Conservative Party of New York against incumbent David Paterson. 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. Edit View history Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling ( ISBN 086571231X) is a non-fiction book written by American teacher and political libertarian John Taylor Gatto. Call me Mr. Gatto, please. This testing measured academic competence and knowledge of specific subjects required for teaching. A rapidly growing homeschooling movement is reviving a long tradition of family and community-based education, particularly among Black Americans who have been historically barred from or discriminated against in the school system. A seventh-grade teacher, Gatto has been named New York City Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the Year. [22], Gatto demystifies the apparent confusion and meaninglessness of public schooling system by exposing its real purpose and function. Just as the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck was ruled legal by the Supreme Court in 1927, the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Fords threw their money behind radical experiments in the transformation of human nature in the first half of the 20th century. He is an activist critical of compulsory schooling and the hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions. $ 16.38 - $ 22.69. By stripping these systems of their ideological basis through a critique of science itself, Gattos work opens up new ways to think about education, freedom and genius. Let them manage themselves. A gift of any size makes a difference and helps keep this unique platform alive. In John Gatto's essay "Against School", he insists that modern schooling is crippling our kids. How John Taylor Gatto Helped Us Regain Our Freedom To Think Trending 1 Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You An 'Isolationist' 2 With 3D Body-Image Avatars And Fake Voices For. [14], Gatto was featured in the 2011 documentary film, IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America. [citation needed], John Taylor Gatto, "Why Schools Don't Educate", The Natural Child Project, Last edited on 14 February 2023, at 03:28, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteachers Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, The Underground History of American Education, IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity, The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto, "John Taylor Gatto Challenged the Ideas Inherent in US Mass Schooling", "John Taylor Gatto, Frank Furedi and John Holt - Quotations and Abstracts The Gold Scales", "For Those We Won't Reach: An Alternative", "Behind Every Silver Lining: The Other Side of No Child Left Behind", "IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in", "Indoctrination: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America (2011)", "The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto (Intro + Hour 1 of 5)", "The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto", https://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html, "Why Schools Don't Educate - Teacher of the Year acceptance speech", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Taylor_Gatto&oldid=1139243923. . Gatto was a teacher in Manhattan where he taught for thirty years. Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. 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. In 1963, he was hired as a fulltime 8th grade English teacher at Intermediate School 44 on New York City's Upper West Side. Parents Defending Education is overwhelmingly funded by big donors dark money rather than by concerned parents.. he regards individual choice and self-discipline as higher than firm rules and unyielding standards. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough. In other words, the student not only can, but should, be kneaded into the proper shape, and there is no better institution to complete this task than the school. School is about creating loyalty to certain goals and habits, a vision of life, support for a class structure, an intricate system of human relationships cleverly designed to manufacture the continuous low level of discontent upon which mass production and finance rely. Gatto, The Underground History of American Education. His words will continue to have a lasting impact on education for years to come. The priorities of such a system are to pigeonhole kids, use humiliation to enforce conformity, and feed them ignorance instead of knowledge. Against School is an essay he wrote expressing his hate for it. John Taylor Gatto. Bell admired what he saw as a rigid social hierarchy in Hindu village schools characterized by intellectual and religious instruction for a tiny minority at the top and caste-appropriate technical training for everyone else. Schools are scrambling to provide asylum seekers with everything from warm clothing to emotional support. From Rockefellers General Education Boards 1906 document: in our dreams people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding handsThe task we set before ourselves is very simplewe will organize childrenand teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.. While other teachers were spending much of their day on behavioral management issues, Gattos students were actively engaged in his lectures and genuinely excited about learning. The Way Out. point in time. With a topic like this one, it is important to address the audience and capture their attention. But producing high-quality, independent work is not cost-free we rely heavily on your support. [13] Ron Paul strongly endorsed Gatto's work, calling him a "legendary teacher" who helped shape his own thinking and homeschooling curriculum. With the destruction of the commons in Europe, self-sustaining production systems and their accompanying home-based education practices were obliterated in the quest for profits derived from the labor of a new industrial proletariat. 0 references. He retired from teaching in 1991. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill," which appeared in the September 200 1 issue. Topics ebook Collection opensource Language English. . " School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. An Evaluation of John Taylor Gatto's Opposition to Compulsory School Education. It got the British disastrously routed, and Braddock killed. It is this connection between schooling and white supremacy which Gatto understood. 62 Copy quote. From this point of view, education systems, which are among the most important institutional structures of the society, have been formed in order to provide a better education service to the individuals of all countries. Views. enjoy Addeddate . In this particular essay Gatto attempts, as the essay's subtitle. With increasingly shrill calls for universal preschool leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Gattos history and analysis of the true motives of U.S. schooling could not be more relevant. The State shakes loose from Church, reaches out to School. 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. Wade A. Carpenter, associate professor of education at Berry College, has called his books "scathing" and "one-sided and hyperbolic, [but] not inaccurate"[12] and describes himself as in agreement with Gatto. Out of Stock. Gatto moved on to Lincoln Academy (now Horizons Middle School) in 1981, which was considered a dumping ground for kids with behavior problems. By Vincent Kelley , T ruthout October 25, 2019 Gatto envisioned an education system that placed freedom and justice above technology and efficiency. I dont believe anybody else in our time has fought as hard to restore the right of children to learn and to think independently. destination in the social machine, not one step beyond. 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. 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. I teach how to fit into a world I dont want to live in. 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. He inspired teachers to reassess their reasons for becoming educators and to challenge the status quo. The article "Against School" by John Taylor Gatto is an article that talks about the problem of schools and how the goals are not what they say they are. American education system. Analyzes gatto's aversion to the prussian educational system, which is designed to propel some forward, while leaving others behind. The story of the U.S.s adoption of a European mass schooling system designed to foster a rigid class system while at the same time sublimating class warfare is a pivotal development in Gattos history of American schooling. A weekend seminar with John Taylor Gatto John Taylor Gatto, one of the outstanding scholars and writers in the history of American education, is not only a truth-teller about the corrupting and dangerous American compulsory school system. ". In his nearly 30 years of classroom teaching, Gatto witnessed first hand some of the most radical experiments in mass schooling that the world has ever seen. Praised by leaders as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Mario Cuomo, he's a political maverick whose views defy easy categorization. English 1301. Gatto's description of the school system sounds more like the description of a prison or a sweat shop than a school. My previous article in this series, Theories of Power: Part 1, Pluralism, addresses the pluralist view of power. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem). The task we set before ourselves is very simple. ESSAY. Ellwood P. Cubberleys Public Education in the United States (1934) has a section entitled A New Lengthening of the Period of Dependence. Cubberly concedes that the forced nature of schooling was not what people wanted: The history of compulsory attendance legislation in the states has been much the same everywhere and everywhere laws have been enacted only after overcoming strenuous opposition., Arthur Calhouns Social History of the Family (1919) declared that the fondest wish of utopian writers was coming true, the child was passing from its family into the custody of community experts. He offered a significant forecast, that in time we could expect to see public education designed to check the mating of the unfit., The Behavioral Science Teacher Education Project identified the future as one in which a small elite will control all important matters, one where participatory democracy will largely disappear. No one can doubt the brilliance and effectiveness of Gatto when he taught public school in New York City. Let them manage themselves.. view less Conservative Party of New York State. This army with a country demanded malleable subjects rather than educated citizens, and it was for the production of the former that a new national school system was created. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. His book Dumbing Us Down explained why. A major turning point in our history as a free people took place there, with a decisive battle of the French and Indian War in 1755. Note: You are purchasing a standalone product; the . One month after the interview was recorded, John had a stroke that ended up paralyzing half of his body. Novelist, John Taylor Gatto, in his speech essay, "Why Schools Don't Education", conveys schools aren't as educational as they should be. Shortly after receiving those accolades, however, he decided hed had enough of a system that hurt children far more than it helped them. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. The senator will soon introduce legislation to set the minimum annual salary for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000. writer-marian. Watch here as Gatto rhetorically asks: What could be more crazy than agreeing to give your child over to total strangers for 12 years while they tinker with his mind?. He feels that the students are bored because the teachers are bored too. He wrote several books on his experience in the classroom including Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. In his own words: "School . Home education was the best decision I ever made in raising my kids. John Taylor Gatto is a fanner New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised. As Gatto writes in his 2010 book, Weapons of Mass Instruction: Ive concluded that genius is as common as dirt. by John Taylor Gatto. Gatto painstakingly provided documentation of it in his book The Underground History of American Education. (The latest edition includes a forward by former congressman Ron Paul.). Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. Twentieth-century scientific schooling is best described as the social experiment of inculcating into children what Gatto calls the seven lessons of school teaching. These lessons of mass forced schooling merit lengthy quotation: It confuses the students. 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. Gatto was New York State Teacher of the Year. 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. John Taylor Gatto is a well known critic of schooling. John Taylor Gatto. If we hadnt gotten rid of the British, writes Gatto, the competence of ordinary people to educate themselves would never have had a fair test. Perhaps it was divine providence that Gatto heralded from a place that provided a special lesson about true education and the independent mind. It was a letter for his former employer, the New York City Public Schools I Quit, I Think. 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. 595 Words3 Pages. obvious and dull, repeated too often (found in the 6th paragraph) Paean. (To understand how idiotic such a program is, consider a piano teacher who never instructs beginners in how to read notes on the scale. John Taylor Gatto is an American retired school teacher of 30 years and author of several books on education. Now Texas legislators want to follow suit. Books are "dangerous to those in power. that's why we publish them," Haymarket Books said in a press release. Topcu, Ihsan. 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. Gatto points out that this aspect can be repressed, but never destroyed. And of course it is. I only wish I had done it from the beginning and more completely. I have read what is below in Ingles' book myself; it is all true. Gatto earned his teaching certificate in the summer of 1960. So as we honor the life of this great man, I leave you with a few of Gatto's most inspirational quotes. This is Part 2 in my series about different theories of power. Hi John. Gatto envisioned an education system that placed freedom and justice above technology and efficiency. He wrote several books on his experience in the classroom including, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the D, The Underground History of American Education. 36,988 Views . While the religious Right and the liberal Left argue over who should hold the highest authority in the classroom God or government Gatto argues against any central authority, and proposes that small groups of people are capable of deciding for themselves what works best. After teaching for nearly 30 years he authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. Following army service he did graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Cornell. What impulse triggers the pornographic urge to deprive kids of volition, to fiddle with their lives?. 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. Gatto was born to Andrew Michael Mario and Frances Virginia (ne Zimmer) Gatto in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a steel town near Pittsburgh. Those who cannot handle the dehumanization of the school system any longer often simply drop out, prepared to face the brutality of a labor market that is at least honest about its intentions to teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. Others quit early with great success, as the lives of high school drop-outs Thomas Edison, Thelonious Monk, Mark Twain, Aretha Franklin and many others demonstrate. It was written by John Taylor Gatto. He soldiered on even after suffering a debilitating stroke in 2011. He explains how school is boring for the students and teachers. This seminar is riveting. John Gatto lived in New York State. 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. Such a sentiment is a natural byproduct of a scientistic worldview which rejects the spiritual aspect of the human. It is no coincidence that this North German state subsequently became the most important country in the development of modern schooling. That isnt true. In addition to building its factory system on the backs of slave labor in the Americas and the looting of resources in its Asian colonies, the British Empire used its vast dominion abroad to refine its psychological management of the young at home. On July 25, 1991, at age 55, Gatto wrote a public letter of resignation that was published as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Much of Gattos writing is focused on the basic yet often overlooked distinction between schooling and education. At the time, a young George Washington served as a volunteer officer in the British efforts to take Fort Duquesne in the Ohio River Valley. 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. . John Taylor Gatto (2000). "[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.