Unit 98

Drawbacks of Public Schooling

John Taylor Gatto had just been named New York State Teacher of the Year nine years ago when he made a shocking announcement. After teaching 26 years in New York City public schools, he was quitting saying he could no longer continue to "hurt kids". Since then, Mr. Gatto has written and lectured extensively on the negative effects of compulsory schooling, which he believes, has become a destructive activity to lock people up and drill them and confine them with low-level abstractions.

The following are excerpts from a recent interview:

1. On why he wrote the book The Underground History of Education

I had a need to understand after 30 years of fairly successful teaching why the business had evolved the way it had. The first thing I learned was that the school world is not independent, but a subordinate industry to government and industry and commerce.

2. On testing

There's no teacher worth his or her salt who, inside of a period at the start of a year, doesn't know who's going to get the As, who's going to get the Bs, who's going to cause trouble ... How do you know when you get a good haircut? You look in the mirror.

What we've allowed to happen is for normal good judgment and wisdom to be set aside for some kind of mathematical scale. There's nothing a standardized test measures other than your ability to score well on the next standardized test.

3. Some assumptions made in modern schooling

Government school is a central force of social cohesion. The certifiable expertise of school-teachers is superior to laypeople. Children will inevitably grow apart from parents in beliefs as they grow older, and this process must be encouraged.

4. On curriculum

There is no scientific evidence justifying any particular subject selection, any sequence of subjects, any internal arrangements of time. There is no body of knowledge inaccessible to a motivated elementary school student. The rationing of learning by age is indefensible.

5. On the role of the teacher

The balance of responsibility was once divided much differently. The assumption was that the kid would do 90 percent of the work and the teacher 10 percent. Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, that assumption was deliberately reversed.

6. On the future of schools

The most effective reform is home-school revolution. Approximately 2 million people from all social classes and cultural backgrounds, in effect, set up private labs of education.