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John Taylor Gatto

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John Taylor Gatto
Gatto in 2009
Born(1935-12-15)December 15, 1935
Monongahela, Pennsylvania, US[1]
DiedOctober 25, 2018(2018-10-25) (aged 82)
New York City, US
Other nameJohn Gatto
EducationCornell University[citation needed]
University of Pittsburgh[citation needed]
Yeshiva University[citation needed]
Hunter College[citation needed]
Reed College[citation needed]
University of California, Berkeley[citation needed]
Occupations
  • Author
  • Speaker
  • Teacher
Known for
  • Educational activist
  • Scholar
  • New York State Teacher of the Year
SpouseJanet Gatto[2]

John Taylor Gatto (December 15, 1935[3] – October 25, 2018[4]) was an American author, school teacher and public figure. After teaching for nearly 30 years he authored several books on American schools. He is best known for his books Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling which promote self-study, unschooling and homeschooling.

Biography

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Gatto was born to Andrew Michael Mario and Frances Virginia (née Zimmer) Gatto in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a steel town near Pittsburgh. In his youth he attended public schools throughout the Pittsburgh Metro Area including Swissvale, Monongahela, and Uniontown as well as a Catholic boarding school in Latrobe. He attended numerous undergraduate and graduate institutions.

According to Gatto, he started working as a copywriter scripting commercials in New York City in the late 1950s. In the spring of 1960, he borrowed his roommate's teaching license, went into Harlem to work as a substitute teacher and earned his teaching certificate in 1960. In 1963, he was hired as a full-time 8th grade English teacher at Intermediate School 44 on New York City's Upper West Side. Gatto moved on to Lincoln Academy (now Horizons Middle School) in 1981, which he described as a "dumping ground" for kids with behavior problems.[5] Gatto ended his teaching career at Booker T. Washington Junior High in Spanish Harlem.[2]

Gatto also ran for the New York State Senate, 29th District in 1985 and 1988 as a member of the Conservative Party of New York against incumbent David Paterson.[6] He was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991[4][7][8][9] and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991.[10] In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled I Quit, I Think, to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living."[11] He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received awards from libertarian organizations, including the Alexis de Tocqueville 1997 Award for Excellence in Advancement of Educational Freedom.[12]

Gatto promoted homeschooling, and specifically unschooling and open source learning.

Gatto was featured in the 2011 Evangelical Christian film IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America.[13][14][15] The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto was released in early 2012 by Tragedy and Hope Communications.[16][17]

Personal life

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Gatto was married to Janet (MacAdam) with whom he spent half the year in New York City and the other half of the year at their farmhouse in upstate New York.[2]

Main thesis

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Gatto asserts the following regarding what school does to children in Dumbing Us Down:

  1. It confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the "free" time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
  2. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
  3. It makes them indifferent.
  4. It makes them emotionally dependent.
  5. It makes them intellectually dependent.
  6. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
  7. It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.[4][18]

Gatto drew a contrast between communities and "networks", with the former being healthy, and schools being examples of the latter. He says networks have become an unhealthy substitute for community in the United States.[19]

Use of sources

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Education historian Milton Gaither described Gatto's approach to sources as making an argument from authority.[20] A qualitative review of his writing on compulsory education determined it didn't accurately reflect the policy or historical evidence.[21]

In his essay Against School, Gatto argued that the apparent confusion and inefficiency of public schooling reflected its underlying social functions. He cited the six functions of schooling described by Alexander Inglis in his 1918 book Principles of Secondary Education, although Gatto did not quote Inglis directly and instead presented his own interpretation of Inglis's argument.[22][23][24]

Gatto's books contain citations but generally lack organized bibliographies. Some of his historical claims and quotations have subsequently been challenged by researchers. In 2025, Hazard Spence completed the Indiegogo-funded project openhistory.education, which attempted to trace claims and quotations in Gatto's The Underground History of American Education to their original sources. Spence reported several instances in which he could not identify Gatto's source, or found that quotations had been misattributed or altered in presentation[25].

Selected bibliography

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Articles and essays

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Books

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Filmography

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Documentaries

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See also

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Other critics of public education:

References

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  1. ↑ "John Taylor Gatto". IMDb. Retrieved 2022-05-25.
  2. 1 2 3 Ruenzel, David (March 1, 2001). "The World According To Gatto". Education Week. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  3. ↑ "Birthdatabase (.com)". Stephenmorse.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 Kelley, Vincent (October 25, 2019). "John Taylor Gatto Challenged the Ideas Inherent in US Mass Schooling". Truthout. Archived from the original on April 13, 2022. Retrieved March 14, 2022.
  5. ↑ Gatto, John Taylor (2010). Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers. ISBN 978-0-86571-669-8.
  6. ↑ "The Elections – New York State Senate Archived 2009-03-01 at the Wayback Machine". New York Times. November 10, 1988.
  7. ↑ Brown, Jerry (March 25, 1997). "John Taylor Gatto". We The People Radio. Archived from the original on 2021-02-11. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
  8. ↑ Glavin, Chris (2014-02-06). "John Taylor Gatto". K12 Academics. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
  9. ↑ "John Taylor Gatto, Frank Furedi and John Holt - Quotations and Abstracts – The Gold Scales". oaks.nvg.org. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
  10. ↑ New York's Teachers of the Year, New York State Education Department (accessed April 5, 2014). Archived February 18, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ Gatto, John Taylor (1991-07-25). "I Quit, I Think". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2022-05-25.
  12. ↑ " Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine". Alexis de Tocqueville Award. April 5, 2014.
  13. ↑ Gunn, Colin; Fernandez, Joaquin (18 October 2011), IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America, Commissioned Films, retrieved 2022-06-12
  14. ↑ "IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in…". Chalcedon. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
  15. ↑ "Indoctrination: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America (2011)". Joseph Smith Foundation. 2012-01-28. Retrieved 2022-06-12.
  16. ↑ "The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto (Intro + Hour 1 of 5)". YouTube. January 1, 2012. Archived from the original on March 9, 2014. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
  17. ↑ "The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto". Tragedyandhope.com. February 3, 2012. Archived from the original on March 4, 2014. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
  18. ↑ See John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down. The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, Iceland Gabriola: New Society Publishers, 2005, p. 2–11
  19. ↑ John Taylor Gatto, "Why Schools Don't Educate", The Natural Child Project https://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html Archived 2018-09-01 at the Wayback Machine
  20. ↑ "Gatto on the Evils of Public Education". Homeschooling Research Notes. 2009-02-03. Retrieved 2026-09-15.
  21. ↑ Topcu, İhsan (2022-09-01). "An Evaluation of John Taylor Gatto's Opposition to Compulsory School Education". Educational Policy Analysis and Strategic Research (in Turkish). 17 (3). Educational Policy Analysis and Strategic Research: 37–56. doi:10.29329/epasr.2022.461.2. ISSN 1949-4270.
  22. ↑ Gatto, John Taylor (2009), Weapons of Mass Instruction, pp. xviii–xix
  23. ↑ "Against School". wesjones. September 2003. Archived from the original on May 1, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
  24. ↑ Inglis, Alexander James (c. 1918). Principles of secondary education. Boston, New York [etc.]: Houghton Mifflin Company – via University of California Libraries.
  25. ↑ "Open History". openhistory.education. Retrieved 2026-09-15.
  26. ↑ The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteachers's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling. Archived 2021-07-28 at the Wayback Machine WorldCat. OCLC 992978582.
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