One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of teaching children moral values, which schools may inadvertently undermine.
John Taylor Gatto's quote highlights a critical perspective on education, suggesting that while families aim to instill a clear understanding of morality in children, the educational system can sometimes blur these ethical lines. Gatto advocates for the need for educators to reinforce these moral teachings rather than detract from them, pointing out a fundamental conflict between familial values and institutional teachings.
In practice
In discussions about curriculum changes, we can refer to Gatto's insights on the moral responsibilities of education.
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.
If we want to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, it starts with a fair wage, adequate working conditions, and the resources and support to succeed. Remember: teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions.
It is easier to go to the Internet than to go to the library, undoubtedly. But the shift from no libraries to the existence of libraries was a much greater shift than what we've seen with the Internet's development.
Someday, hopefully very soon, 'diving within' as a preparation for learning and as a tool for developing the creative potential of the mind will be a standard part of every school’s curriculum.
My law school class in the late 1950s numbered over 500. That class included less than 10 women.
I was too worried about the grades and I should have been more worried about learning.
History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.
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