by John Taylor Gatto
New Society Publishers
6/13/2017, paperback
SKU: 9780865718548
A bestseller for 25 years, John Taylor Gatto's radical treatise on public education continues to advocate for the unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling.
After over 100 years of mandatory schooling in the U.S., literacy rates have dropped, families are fragmented, learning "disabilities" are skyrocketing, and children and youth are increasingly disaffected. Thirty years of teaching in the public school system led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling is to blame.
He became a fierce advocate of families and young people taking back education and learning, arguing that "genius is as common as dirt," but that conventional schooling is driving out the natural curiosity and problem-solving skills we're born with, replacing it with rule-following, fragmented time, and disillusionment. Gatto continues to bang the drum for an unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly 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.
About the Author:
John Taylor Gatto was a schoolteacher for 30 years. He resigned in the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal upon receiving the New York State Teacher of the Year award. He has been a fierce advocate for self directed "guerrilla" education for decades, and is also the author of Weapons of Mass Instruction and The Underground History of American Education