John Johnson > John's Quotes

“Few institutions are considered so universally to have failed as our schools, yet in spite of this dreary record a prescription of increased dosage is making its way to the national agenda. The specifics of this proposal: a) Schools should be open year-round, avoiding long summer holidays for children. b) Schools should extend from 9 to 5, not dismissing students in mid-afternoon as is currently the case. c) Schools should provide recreation, evening meals, and a variety of family services so that working-class parents will be free of the "burden" of their own children. The bottom line of these proposals is reduction of the damaging effects of "freedom" and "family" on a subject population.”
― John Taylor Gatto, The Exhausted School: Bending the Bars of Traditional Education

“A large fraction of our total economy has grown up around providing service and counseling to inadequate people -- and inadequate people are the main product of government compulsion schools.”
― John Taylor Gatto, The Exhausted School: Bending the Bars of Traditional Education

“Regimentation, methodization, systematization, standardization, organization, coordination, disciplined arrangements, conformity -- these things are at the very heart of our national state policies, and are the poison that has killed our families and left individual survivors in a numbed, angry, nearly hysterical condition.”
― John Taylor Gatto, The Exhausted School: Bending the Bars of Traditional Education