This link has been bookmarked by 94 people . It was first bookmarked on 04 Jul 2006, by Dan McCrea.
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16 Dec 17
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05 Oct 16
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children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.
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the school institution "schools" very well, but it does not "educate"
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t's just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.
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Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
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our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic
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Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.
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t 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.
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they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease if those things make sense in the kind of life that unfolds around them.
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almost nobody who reads, writes or does arithmetic gets much respect.
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we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most, and so our children talk constantly, following the public models of television and schoolteachers
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difficult to teach the "basics" anymore because they really aren't basic to the society we've made.
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Two institutions at present control our children's lives - television and schooling, in that order
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Out of the 168 hours in each week, my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self.
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My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up.
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My children attend school 30 hours a week
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not much, because they've lost the tradition of family dining, but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals, we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.
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The richer the kid, or course, the less television he watches
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It's a national disease, this dependency and aimlessness, and I think schooling and television and lessons - the entire Chautauqua idea - has a lot to do with it.
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The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory
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The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today
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The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives
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they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, and they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
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they cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong habit of preserving a secret inner self inside a larger outer personality made up of artificial bits and pieces of behavior borrowed from television or acquired to manipulate teachers
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so intimate relationships have to be avoided.
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materialistic
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dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges
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That's what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.
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scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair,
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Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology - drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach.
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Is it any wonder then that in manhood when he decided to make a film about Nicaragua, although he had no money and no prior experience with film-making, that it was an international award-winner - even though his regular work was as a carpenter.
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We need to invent curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.
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A few days later, two more of my twelve-year-old kids traveled alone to West First Street from Harlem where they began an apprenticeship with a newspaper editor, next week three of my kids will find themselves in the middle of the Jersey swamps at 6 A.M., studying the mind of a trucking company president as he dispatches 18-wheelers to Dallas, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
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Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer - these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling
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Family is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents - and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850
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Experts in education have never been right, their "solutions" are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization.
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08 Sep 16
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16 Mar 15
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18 Nov 14
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The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.
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Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you.
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Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.
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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.
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25 Sep 14
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The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.
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It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.
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- The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?
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children I teach are dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges. This is frequently masked by surface bravado, or by anger or aggressiveness but underneath is a vacuum without fortitude.
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Right now we are taking all the time from our children that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back, we need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school but which takes place away from the institutional setting. We need to invent curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.
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11 Jun 14
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08 Apr 14
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- The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupation of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days and who can blame them? Toys are us.
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- The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?
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- The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present, the exact moment they are at is the boundary of their consciousness.
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- The children I teach are ahistorical, they have no sense of how past has predestined their own present, limiting their choices, shaping their values and lives.
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- The children I teach are cruel to each other, they lack compassion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, and they have contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.
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24 Dec 13Bo Adams
A haunting, provocative, inspiring, and courageous expression of beliefs around the core differences between "schooling" and "education," given as the acceptance speech when John Taylor Gatto received the Teacher of the Year Award in New York in 1990. [HT: @ChipHouston1976]
education school edreform transformation real-world #MustRead
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05 Nov 13Dimitris Tzouris
I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I've known over the years who've struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and r...
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23 Aug 13
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The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders.
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Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.
-
the school institution "schools" very well, but it does not "educate"
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a disaster of ignorance
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instruments of the scientific management of a mass population.
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14 May 13
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21 Mar 13
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08 Jan 13
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Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom.
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We live in a time of great school crisis.
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teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part
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Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis
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nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present
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We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that.
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In fact, the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other.
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Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system
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schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet.
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No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes
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truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders
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abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions
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institution is psychopathic - it has no conscience
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Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850
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prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98%
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homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents
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children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.
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school institution "schools" very well, but it does not "educate" - that's inherent in the design of the thing
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Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
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our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic - because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead
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we force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.
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It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class.
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cuts you off from the immense diversity of life
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cuts you off from your own part and future
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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
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absurd and
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absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its "homework".
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land of talkers, we pay talkers the most and admire talkers the most, and so our children talk constantly
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Two institutions at present control our children's lives - television and schooling, in that order.
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time of a child and adolescent would be occupied in real work, real charity, real adventures, and the realistic search for mentors who might teach what you really wanted to learn
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a total of 45 hours. During that time, they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space
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It's a national disease, this dependency and aimlessness
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time they need to grow up - and forcing them to spend it on abstractions
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indifferent to the adult world
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children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory
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poor sense of the future, of how tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. As I said before, they have a continuous present
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ahistorical
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cruel to each other
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uneasy with intimacy or candor
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materialisti
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dependent, passive, and timid in the presence of new challenges.
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c, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That's what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children.
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looked backwards to regain an educational philosophy that works.
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core of this elite system of education is the belief that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.
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Can you imagine anyone who had mastered such a challenge ever lacking confidence in his ability to do anything?
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Right now we are taking all the time from our children that they need to develop self-knowledge. That has to stop. We have to invent school experiences that give a lot of that time back, we need to trust children from a very early age with independent study, perhaps arranged in school but which takes place away from the institutional setting.
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invent curriculum where each kid has a chance to develop private uniqueness and self-reliance.
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gain self-knowledge they'll also become self-teachers
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give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge
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re-involve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstraction
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stop being a parasite on the working community.
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make community service a required part of schooling
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quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life.
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Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer
-
effective ways to start a real reform of schooling
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no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of "school" open - to include family as the main engine of education
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Family is the main engine of education
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curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life, we've gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it.
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We've all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press
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Experts in education have never been right
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07 Jan 13
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08 Dec 12
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Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.
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08 Sep 12Chris Opitz
John Gatto acceptance speech
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26 Jul 12
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11 Jan 12
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09 Dec 11pojala
"Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves."
"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." -
08 Nov 11Elizabeth Pietila
This is quite a take by a teacher of the year from New York City who teaches excellent real life lessons outside of the classroom. Interesting theories.
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27 Sep 11
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23 Aug 11
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09 Jun 11
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12 Aug 10
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06 May 10brian edgar
"ce a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life."
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21 Feb 10Juan Rafael Fernández
This article is the text of a speech by John Taylor Gatto accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990. It is reprinted with permission of the author.
education Gatto deschooling escuela_fracaso historia_de_educación
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16 Jul 09
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06 Apr 09
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03 Mar 09
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01 Jun 08
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13 May 08
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05 May 08
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a disaster of ignorance
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Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
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03 May 08Sarah Hanawald
More John Gotto--his speech as he accepted the Teacher of the Year award. Written in 1990, but spot on today.
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The world's narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet.
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Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990
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in the United States almost nobody who reads, writes or does arithmetic gets much respect. We are a land of talkers,
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01 Jan 08
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11 Nov 07
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30 Oct 07ken .
"We seem to have lost our identity" -- Gatto (on the consumer lifestyle) and the key word it seems is "we", together - we don't need more information, do we need more sources of information, from outside our own familiar world, ask those who see different
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06 Mar 06
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J. J. DiUbaldi
'90Jan31 The Natural Child Project. NYC Teacher of the Year Award. Experts in education have never been right, their "solutions" are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to Democracy, Individuality,
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Stephen Bleakley
Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produ
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13 Feb 06
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10 Aug 05
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