Reading John Taylor Gatto Again

Do you know I'd never even heard of John Taylor Gatto, let alone read any of his books or other articles before 2006? Not until I began researching and discovering the world of Home Education did he appear on my radar. I read one of his books, "Dumbing Us Down" and I was also an interested attendee when he came to Australia as the keynote speaker for a weekend Homeschooling Conference Tony & I went to in 2007.

John Taylor Gatto was a teacher in the US public system for over 25 years. The acceptance speech he gave whilst being awarded the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1990, entitled "Why Schools Don’t Educate" is worthy of your reading. You can find it here:
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html

Here is a little snippet:-

here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal with:
Out of the 168 hours in each week, my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self. My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up. My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 6 hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework - a total of 45 hours. During that time, they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, my kids eat, and that takes some time - not much, because they've lost the tradition of family dining, but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals, we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.
It's not enough. It's not enough, is it?

and a little more:-

I want to tell you what the effect is on children of taking all their time from them - time they need to grow up - and forcing them to spend it on abstractions. You need to hear this, because no reform that doesn't attack these specific pathologies will be anything more than a facade.

1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days and who can blame them? Toys are us.

2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?

3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present, the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.

4. The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.

5. The children I teach are cruel to each other, they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, and they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.


The time factor is a crucial one, in my opinion. We all need time to rest, to think, to play, to dream, to unwind, to imagine, to plan, to pray, to do those things which relax us and energise us. Especially children, I believe.

Anyway, I'm going a bit off topic, but the reason I'm posting about John Taylor Gatto tonight, is that today I came across one of his quotes, and I thought to share it with you.


"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."

John Taylor Gatto

If you would like to read more of his views, have a look at http:// http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html

Thought provoking for sure.