Quotes by John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto

…good things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone.

Good Things

Inspiring

Spirit

• As society rapidly changes, individuals will have to be able to function comfortably in a world that is always in flux. Knowledge will continue to increase at a dizzying rate. This means that a content-based curriculum, with a set body of information to be imparted to students, is entirely inappropriate as a means of preparing children for their adult roles.

Adults

Children

Mean

A lot of the strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own minds. I’m not saying that there aren’t armies and police and various ways to punish deviants, but there isn’t any way to punish a large number of deviants. It’s too expensive to even try. So, the solution is to colonize the minds of children as they’re growing up, so that they become their own police, and to report on others who are deviating.

Army

Children

Growing Up

Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic-it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Moving

Notebook

Teacher

Anyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system.

Human Beings

Humans

Threat

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. (…)Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed.

Boys

Mother

School

By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive: if nothing is worth finishing then by extension nothing is worth starting either. Few children are so thick-skulled they miss the point.

Children

Errors

School

Child labor becomes a label of condemnation in spite of its ancient function as the quickest, most reliable way to human independence

Children

Independence

Labels

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.

Children

Play

Responsibility

Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market.

Children

Jobs

Reading

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Acquiring Things

Adults

Adventure

Ambition

Army

Avoided

Bases

Believe

Boys

Caring

Challenges

Childhood

Children

Choices

Class

Community

Conditioning

Conformity

Country

Crazy

Creating

Creative

Curiosity

Daughter

Dream

Educated

Education

Educational

Egyptian

Engineering

Errors

Exercise

Expectations

Exploration

Fingerprints

Free Will

Function

Generations

Giving

Giving Up

Goal

Good Things

Government

Growing Up

Hands

Healthy

Home

Honor

Human Beings

Humans

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto

…good things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone.

Anyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system.

By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive: if nothing is worth finishing then by extension nothing is worth starting either. Few children are so thick-skulled they miss the point.

Child labor becomes a label of condemnation in spite of its ancient function as the quickest, most reliable way to human independence

Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.

Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market.

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Topics by John Taylor Gatto

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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