Quotes from John Taylor Gatto

I teach how to fit into a world I don't want to live in. I just can't do it anymore.

In a home school, the kid does 95% of the work. But in a school system, since it's an indoctrination system, a teacher has to do 95% of the work.

Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.

Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.

What's gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.

When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.

I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.

You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra!

The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.