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.
Interpretation
Young people learn best through exploration rather than direct instruction.
John Taylor Gatto suggests that traditional teaching methods do not effectively facilitate true learning in young people. Instead, he argues that they often learn through experience and exploration, and that excessive teaching can hinder their ability to absorb knowledge organically. The challenge lies in recognizing that the best learning occurs outside structured educational frameworks.
In practice
In a discussion about modern educational practices, this quote can highlight the importance of experiential learning.
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 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.
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.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
The essence of education is not to transfer knowledge; it is to guide the learning process, to put responsibility for study in the student's own hands...[and] place people on their own path of discovery and invention.
Education can, and should be, dangerous.
Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
I remember being in a history lesson and saying to my teacher, 'How come you never talk about black scientists and inventors and pioneers?' And she looked at me and said, 'Because there aren't any.'
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