I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free. - John Taylor Gatto
Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. - John Taylor Gatto
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. - John Taylor Gatto
When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling. - John Taylor Gatto
Shouldn't we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the "most" of everything to our children in a world of fast dwindling resources? - John Taylor Gatto
Genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. - John Taylor Gatto
School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony. - John Taylor Gatto