I am no longer willing to hurt children - John Taylor Gatto (A compilation)

John Taylor Gatto spent 26 years as a New York City public school teacher. In 1991after winning his third Teacher of the Year Award, Gatto wrote a resignation letter which he submitted to the Wall Street Journal called, “I Quit, I Think” and left his job, stating that he was “no longer willing to hurt children.” Gatto’s outline his reasons for becoming disheartened in The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher where he shares that the American public school system is largely responsible for a national humanitarian crisis. In that essay Gatto points out, this system:

• Teaches children that their worth is determined by other people
• Causes children to be dependent on teachers/experts rather than on themselves
• Praises total conformity and condemns individuality as a threat to the system
• Teaches that schedule, not interesting work, is what has value
• Teaches that value is only possible under conditions of competition
• Leaves children with almost no private time

Gatto went on to become a celebrated author who speaks around the world. This is a compilation of just some of his writing, lectures, and talks.

Articles by Gatto

• I Quit, I Think, to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal
• Universal Education
• Take Back Your Education
• Against School
• Shocking Origins of Public Education
• Preservation Institute: Beyond Progressive and Conservative
• The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
• Personal Solutions, Family Solutions
• What Really Matters - Part 1
• What Really Matters – Part 2
• Why Schools Don’t Educate – The Natural Child Project
• The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?
• The Curriculum of Necessity or What Must an Educated Person Know?
• The Real History Tour of Modern Schooling

Books by Gatto

• Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling,
• The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling
• Note you can read the whole book for free online here.
• Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.

Audio

Listen to internet radio with The Unplugged Mom on Blog Talk Radio

The Paradox of Extended Childhood
Weapons Of Mass Instruction
Dumbing Us Down and Weapons of Mass Instruction
We don’t need no education. We dont need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teachers leave them kids alone.’
Interview with John Taylor Gatto
The Future of Education Interview with Steve Hargadon


Audio Compilation
Helping Other Altruists International has a collection of Gatto Audio Files here.

Video

• John Taylor Gatto on Unschooling Part 1
• John Taylor Gatto on Unschooling Part 2
• John Taylor Gatto: Schooling is not Education - Part 1
• John Taylor Gatto: Schooling is not Education - Part 2
• John Taylor Gatto: Schooling is not Education Pt. 3/5

• Video recorded in his last year of teaching (1990-1991) at Booker T. Washington Junior High School, NYC.
  

Video Compilations

• "The Underground History Of American Education" - Complete Prologue and Chapter 1
• Deschooling Society Channel on YouTube
• Edflix Educational Video Downloads brings us this terrific collection of videos from John Taylor Gatto. These videos constitute about 2 1/2 hours of material.

  01 The Elite Private Boarding Schools 02 Separation of Powers 03 A Complete Theory of Access 04 Caution in Reasoning to Conclusions 05 Breaking Out of Dependent Thinking 06 An Enemy of Mental Alertness

  07 An Apartment Floor Plan 08 Shadowing a News Anchor 09 Lessons in Citizenship 10 Experiences in Solitude 11 The Psychopathic School 12 An Underground History 13 The Prussian System 14 The High Priest of Scientific Management

  15 The Daughters of the Barons of Runnymede 16 The Empty Child 17 The Psychopathology of Everyday Schooling 18 The Politics of Schooling 19 The Wealth of Nations

  
  Xtranormal
  • Bartleby Project 2011: Do not take your state tests!
  • What is the Bartleby Project? (1 of 3)
  • What is the Bartleby Project? (2 of 3)
  • What is the Bartleby Project? (3 of 3)
  
  Quotes
  • The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn — nor is it supposed to. Schools were conceived to serve the economy and the social order rather than kids and families — that is why it is compulsory. As a consequence, the school can not help anybody grow up, because its prime directive is to retard maturity. It does that by teaching that everything is difficult, that other people run our lives, that our neighbors are untrustworthy even dangerous. School is the first impression children get of society. Because first impressions are often the decisive ones, school imprints kids with fear, suspicion of one another, and certain addictions for life. It ambushes natural intuition, faith, and love of adventure, wiping these out in favor of a gospel of rational procedure and rational management. Shocking Origins of Public Education – Gatto:
  • 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.... - The Underground History of American Education
  • 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. - The Underground History of American Education
  • School is the first impression children get of organized society. Like most first impressions it is the lasting one. Life is dull and stupid, only Coke provides relief. And other products, too, of course. - The Underground History of American Education
  • 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. - The Underground History of American Education
  • Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory. - The Underground History of American Education
  • Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880's when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard. - The Underground History of American Education