It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
Interpretation
The quote criticizes a rigid education system that forces students to follow a one-size-fits-all approach, ignoring their individual interests and passions.
John Taylor Gatto's quote highlights the absurdity of an educational system that restricts students' learning experiences by enforcing a narrow curriculum. It underscores the idea that education should be tailored to individual interests, allowing students the freedom to explore their passions—whether that be architecture or poetry—rather than forcing them into predetermined roles that do not align with their personal aspirations.
In practice
In a discussion about educational reforms, one might use this quote to argue for more personalized learning approaches.
School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion on a daily basis, pitting potential associates against one another in contests for praise and other worthless prizes.
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest.
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.
It was never factually true that young people learn to read or do arithmetic primarily by being taught these things. These things are learned, but not really taught at all. Over-teaching interferes with learning, although the few who survive it may well come to imagine it was by an act of teaching.
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.
As parents, we teach our kids about things we feel competent in. That's why so many parents don't teach their kids about money.
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.
In Kenya, I met wonderful girls; girls who wanted to help their communities. I was with them in their school, listening to their dreams. They still have hope. They want to be doctor and teachers and engineers.
Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.
And I’ve said this all across the country when I talk to parents about education, government has to fulfill its obligations to fund education, but parents have to do their job too. We’ve got to turn off the TV set, we’ve got to put away the video game, and we have to tell our children that education is not a passive activity, you have to be actively engaged in it. If we encourage that attitude and our community is enforcing it, I have no doubt we can compete with anybody in the world.
It's not good enough to give it tender, loving care, to supply it with breakfast foods, to buy it expensive educations. Those things don't mean anything unless this generation has a future. And we're not sure that it does.
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