Quote

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

John Taylor Gatto

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Taylor Gatto
Age: 82 †
Born: 1935
Born: December 15
Died: 2018
Died: October 25
Author
Essayist
Teacher
Writer
Mon City
Creative
Conditioning
Knowledge
Produces
Thought
Happenings
Ever
Happening
Work
Critical
Things
Indeed
Produce
Conditioned
Learning
Prevents

More quotes by John Taylor Gatto

Image
Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
God was pitched out of forced schooling on his ear after WWII. This wasn't because of any constitutional proscription-there was none that anyone had been able to find in over a century and a half-but because the political state and corporate economy considered the Western spiritual tradition too dangerous a competitor. And it is.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so school can only make them part of a hive, herd or anthill.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop - then they blame the family for its failure to be a family.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Schools [are]...institutions monopolizing the daytimes of childhood.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
...good things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
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.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a manager.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy-these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
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.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
The 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
Image
The economy schoolchildren currently expect to live under and serve would not survive a generation of young people trained to think critically.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
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
Image
Is it any wonder that Socrates was outraged at the accusation he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, that of pre-empting the teaching function, which, in a healthy community, belongs to everyone.
John Taylor Gatto
Image
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.
John Taylor Gatto