John Taylor Gatto, a respected critic of compulsory schooling, offers a profound examination of the educational system. His work challenges the prevailing discourse surrounding education, revealing the constraining nature of conventional pedagogical approaches. Gatto advocates for a radical reimagining of how we teach and learn, prompting readers to question the true aims of schooling.
John Taylor Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a bestseller for 25 years, continues to advocate for the unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in a changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years.
Argues that compulsory education is a detriment to developing critical thinking skills and trains students to become subservient to the government.
Gatto reveals the deadening heart of compulsory state schooling: assumptions and structures that stamp out the self-knowledge, curiosity, concentration, and solitude essential to learning. In his 26 years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools, Gatto has found that independent study, community service, large doses of solitude, and apprenticeships with adults of all walks of life are the keys to helping children break the thrall of our conforming society. Gatto urges all of us to find ways to reengage children and families in actively controlling our culture, economy, and society.