We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that.
John Taylor GattoAnyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system.
John Taylor GattoAlthough 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.
John Taylor GattoI donโt think weโll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if weโre going to change whatโs rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the institution โschoolsโ very well, but it does not โeducateโ; thatโs inherent in the design of the thing. Itโs not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. Itโs just impossible for education and schooling to be the same thing.
John Taylor GattoThe shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real.
John Taylor Gatto