Learn The Underground History of American "Education"



Press PLAY to begin your journey. This video series is based on John Taylor Gatto's book, and arranged and edited by Brett Veinotte

Whether you're just now learning about John Taylor Gatto's work or well versed in it, this video series is a powerful and sharable resource. These videos consist of well-chosen excerpts from The Underground History of American Education , because they strike the root of the issues we see in American schools today.

The series includes eye opening accounts of Gatto's time as a school teacher, while elucidating the not-so-well-known history of modern schooling in America. Today's school critics and reformers stand on Gatto's shoulders, since it was Gatto who spent untold hours scouring through dry and bland writings of the architects of modern schooling to create this digestible and entertaining read. This is one of many books he wrote on the problems and history of compulsory schooling.

This playlist offers an ideal entry point into the work of John Taylor Gatto. It will also provide clarity for those already in the trenches of alternative education. This knowledge is of absolute necessity for anyone considering their own education or the education of their children.

Episode Guide: 15 Powerful Vignettes From John Taylor Gatto

Who is John Taylor Gatto? (The Educator)

There's a beautiful local television feature story on John from almost 30 years ago called "Classrooms of the Heart." The piece intersperses classroom and after-school footage between interviews with John and his students. In "I Quit, I Think," John suggested that the creation of the most meaningful educational experiences often required his ignoring school rules and procedures. In this twenty-seven-minute video, you’ll see exactly what he meant.

The narrator informs us that this man is a teacher in a public school. Yet the events and conversations that follow don’t seem consistent with that setting. Middle school students are spoken to like self-respecting professionals, rather than like children. There are no tests. No traditional homework assignments. And no rows of desks. Most of John’s interactions with students don’t even take place in a classroom. Furthermore, he invites students to ponder what it means to be self-teachers and to question all that surrounds them. He even invites students to direct this questioning at school itself.

"I am really trying to hand them back their lives and make myself available to them as a resource," John explained in 1991. He built his revolutionary curriculum around independent study and out-of-school apprenticeships. He encouraged students to create real-life experiences where they could teach and test themselves. And he challenged these young people to discover unguided settings with novel problems to solve. Consequently, he fostered motivation, perseverance, courage and dignity.

Real education is intrinsically motivated, self-directed living and learning. “Classrooms of the Heart,” offers numerous examples of increasingly confident, self-reliant and self-directed young adults. And they all seemed eager to teach that lesson.

Gatto Distinguishes School (public education) From Real Education

Education: "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist. It should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life." - Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling



Schooling: “I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders." - Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education

Other John Taylor Gatto Books

Recommended reading with selected quotes from the book.

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

"Slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior."

The Underground History of American Education, Volume I: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

“Work in classrooms isn’t significant work. It fails to satisfy real needs pressing on the individual. It doesn’t answer real questions experience raises in the young mind...The net effect of making all schoolwork external to individual longings, experiences, questions, and problems is to render the victim listless.”

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

"I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.”

A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"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."

Projecting The Underground History of American Education Further

A friend gave me a copy of this book in 2009, while I was gaining some recognition for School Sucks Podcast. Even after just a quick skim, I knew this was extremely important work. Therefore I prioritized spreading John's message to a new audience. Please check out our full John Taylor Gatto archives.

Fortunately I would not be alone in this continued pursuit.

Two years later, my friend and colleague Richard Grove featured John in a documentary called The Ultimate History Lesson. Along with this video series, Rich's documentary serves as a more accessible and immersive version of John's landmark book. The presentation stretches five hours - an absurdly long but also seemingly ideal length. It also features a series of clever questions that invite a stream-of-consciousness but highly educational dialog.

Like this: Like Loading...

Related

Related Posts