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.
Our higher education system is one of the things that makes America exceptional. There's no place else that has the assets we do when it comes to higher education. People from all over the world aspire to come here and study here. And that is a good thing.
Access to quality education has enabled me to reach far beyond the Bangladeshi village I grew up in.
You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.
Children not only have to learn what their parents learned in school, but also have to learn how to learn. This has to be recognized as a new problem which is only partly solved.
The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.
Let us thank all those who teach in Catholic schools. Educating is an act of love; it is like giving life.
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