John Taylor Gatto on School and Institutional Criticism

"And they created the school as the devil commanded. The child loves nature, so he was locked in four walls. He can not sit without moving, so he was forced into immobility. He likes to work with his hands, and he began to teach theories and ideas. He likes to talk - he was told to remain silent. He seeks to understand - he was commanded to learn by heart. He would like to explore and search for knowledge himself, but he was given them in ready form. And then the children learned what they would never have learned in other conditions. They learned to lie and pretend." Adolphe Ferrière

"The well-known school critic and teacher John Taylor Gatto identifies seven lessons as the real teachings of school: Confusing the student Awakening class consciousness Teaching indifference Creating intellectual and emotional dependence Weakening self-confidence and Accustoming students to constant supervision. "School condemns most people to being lowly building blocks in a pyramidal social model. In collaboration with television, schooling robs children of the time they need to develop a unique personality, thereby preventing them from growing up. School has replaced the ‘family curriculum’ with the components of privacy, independence, and social life. In its place has come the factory school, a prison for children's souls that fragments social relationships into networks and cannot be survived without damage." "It replaces the intellectual growth of children with the violent creation of subjects. It kills the curiosity of its subjects, places them in a dense fog of confusion from which many will never be able to free themselves in their entire lives, it blocks their path to individual freedom and denies them the fulfillment that comes with a free spirit."" John Taylor Gatto