John Taylor Gatto Quotes

I am pro-education. I'm just anti the system.

Teach For America was built on the idea that our best hope of reaching 'One Day' is to have thousands of alumni use their diverse experiences and ideas to effect change from inside and outside the education system.

When you put more than a million kids in school, you take a plane today and go to Haiti, you cannot see the results. You will see the results in 30 years when you see a different type of Haitian.

This is not a skill problem, this is a will problem. Does America have the will to make education a priority? We know the things that work. Why don't we scale up those things that do work.

The question is, will we continue to fight what may be a rearguard action to defend universal literacy as a central goal of our education system, or are we bold enough to see what's actually happening to our culture?

To me, the burden of proof isn't on people looking for ways to improve our schools; it's on people who want to keep things the same. Our current system isn't working, and too many kids are being left behind.

I genuinely believe we have an opportunity to revolutionize how we educate our children.

If American schooling is inadequate now, just imagine how much more obsolete it will be when today's kindergarten students graduate from high school in just 12 years.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

We've been doing this here since 1968, so we have been identified as an example of a free, democratic school, and many professors want to expose their students to our philosophy.

A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

Inner city education must change. Our responsibility is not merely to provide access to knowledge; we must produce educated people.

For many years we have spent a great deal of effort and money on school reform. Yet where are we today?

The only way to beat poverty in America is to completely transform American public education

If we get public education right, everything else will follow. But if we get it wrong, not much else will matter.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

That's why I created the New America School - to fill the cracks in our public education system.

What I see is democratizing education will change everything.

Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities.

I've worked in public education for 30 years - as a teacher, a lawyer and union leader. I've visited hundreds of schools and districts. I've seen leaders from the classroom to the national stage who have been willing to set aside their differences and do the hard work that's necessary to create real, enduring change.

Where educators are raising and combining their voices, the seeds of positive change have emerged. Collective voice, exercised through the union, is power - the power to drive real change for our kids, families and communities.

To change the media, you're gonna have to totally throw out every journalism school and get rid of everybody in every newsroom, and then you're gonna have to change the grade school and middle school and high school curriculum.

We talk nonstop about what needs to be changed, and everyone has excuses for why the changes can't happen. I believe we must change our educational system first to get the changes moving forward. I'm happy to be a voice and get in front of an audience who can help by making education a priority.

The revision of any kind of established model is always a political act.

There's a million things wrong with government that need to get fixed, but none of its ever going to get fixed unless we start educating our children better.