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.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the educational system, highlighting the lessons of patience and compliance over genuine knowledge and self-expression.
John Taylor Gatto's quote reflects on the paradoxes present in the education system, where students are often taught to comply and wait for approval from authority figures rather than fostering their own critical thinking and self-confidence. It suggests that the primary skills gained through formal education are not necessarily those that empower individuals but rather those that prepare them for conformity and acceptance of external judgment, even when such judgments may be flawed or insincere.
In practice
In a discussion about the shortcomings of the educational system.
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.
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.
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.
My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It s the letter I use to spell yuzz a ma tuzz. You ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond Z and start poking around
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.
What is important for kids to learn is that no matter how much money they have, earn, win, or inherit, they need to know how to spend it, how to save it, and how to give it to others in need. This is what handling money is about, and this is why we give kids an allowance.
We shouldn't be profiting from our students who are drowning in debt while giving a great deal to the banks. That's just wrong.
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
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