John Taylor Gatto--The Truth about Public Schools--or Reasons Why to Homeschool

"...‘How will they learn to read?’ you ask, and my answer is ‘Remember the lessons of Massachusetts.’ When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks, they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them."

– John Taylor Gatto

"It’s absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does..."
– John Taylor Gatto

Have you read these articles by John Taylor Gatto? They’re worth reading—and printing out to share! They will make you glad you’re homeschooling—or help you to decide to homeschool. I’m going to print some of them out to make them available for people who are thinking of homeschooling or who have relatives with objections to it.

I’ve found quite a few articles, several mp3’s to listen to while you browse the web and if you have lots of time on your hands, John Taylor Gatto’s latest book, The Underground History of American Education is online at his website at http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm . You can even take his History of Education Tour at http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm .

(For those you don’t know, John Taylor Gatto is a former award-winning school teacher from New York. He’s written some excellent books on education which address the problems of our public education--coming from a secular perspective and first hand experience.

The Six Lesson Teacher
http://www.afhe.org/resources/articles/gatto_the_six_lesson_schoolteacher.pdf

What an Educated Person Must Know
http://www.afhe.org/resources/articles/gatto_what_must_an_educated_person_know.pdf

Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech, 1990
http://www.afhe.org/resources/articles/gatto_teacher_of_year_speech_1990.pdf

The Nature of Public Education
http://www.homeschooloasis.com/art_john_taylor_gatto.htm

Dumbing Us Down The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/10-4article4.htm

What Really Matters, part 1
http://www.life.ca/nl/40/gatto.html

What Really Matters, part2
http://www.life.ca/nl/41/gatto.html

Why Schools Don’t Educate
http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html

A Short Angry History of American Forced Schooling
http://4brevard.com/choice/Public_Education.htm

The Seven Lesson School Teacher
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
http://www.dvschool.org/psngatto.htm

Personal Solutions, Family Solutions
http://www.life.ca/nl/45/gatto.html

Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why
http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm

Absolute Absolution
http://www.spinninglobe.net/absolution.htm

We Need Less School Not More
http://www.spinninglobe.net/lesschool.htm

Institutional School Must Be Destroyed
http://www.spinninglobe.net/institsch.htm

Nine Assumptions of Schooling--and Twenty-one Facts the Institution Would Rather Not Discuss
http://www.spinninglobe.net/9assumptions.htm

Confederacy of Dunces: The Tyranny of Compulsory Schooling
http://www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm

The Underground History of the United States – You can read the whole book online here.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

Here are a lot of mp3’s of John Taylor Gatto’s lectures or interviews including “Outing School”, “A Schooling is Not an Education”, “The Paradox of Extended Childhood, Real Purposes of Schooling”, “The Guerilla Curriculum”, and more. These are put on by Radio Free School. Be sure and click on the symbol at the left to “download” to play in Quicktime.
http://www.altruists.org/downloads/by_subject/others/education/

70 Minute Interview with John Taylor Gatto
http://www.teachmeteamwork.com/teachmeteamwork/files/john_taylor_gatto_sm.mp3

Videos of John Taylor Gatto
http://www.edflix.org/gatto.htm

The Paradox of Extended Childhood mp3
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/multimedia/jtgsound_paradox.htm