When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.
Interpretation
Without free will, education becomes a mere process of schooling.
John Taylor Gatto emphasizes the importance of free will in the learning process, suggesting that education should be a self-directed journey rather than a rigid imposition of knowledge. He argues that when individuals are deprived of their autonomy in learning, the experience becomes mechanical and lacking in true educational value.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of student engagement, I might say, 'As John Taylor Gatto noted, when you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.'
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.
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.
I had never seen a white teacher before, but Mrs. Henry was the nicest teacher I ever had.
I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.
Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,βcall it which you will,βis a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.