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John Taylor Gatto
Personal blog · johntaylorgatto.comwritinghistory
John Taylor Gatto writes - YouTube, a personal blog at johntaylorgatto.com about writing and history. Since 2008, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 62 times, most often “The Underground History of American Education”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
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62mentions?
34HN people?
2008–2026first – last linked?
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Most-linked posts?
- /9 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2009-02-02
- The Underground History of American Education5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2009-05-19
- /underground/toc1.htm5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2008-05-13
- /underground/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-04-28
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-02-07
- /underground/index.htm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-04-06
- /underground/index.htm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-05-06
- /chapters/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-01-20
What Hacker News says?
I believe the body of water was the Monongahela river, actually, but close enough :). Go to http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc3.htm and then click on Chapter 10. That's from the online version of "The Underground History of American Education", which is worth reading in its entirety. The published version is even better and has been updated and corrected. Enjoy!
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on “The Top Idea in Your Mind ”Submitted Underground History of American Education as a story · 27 points
HN discussionCompare from the article: "I Promise will feature longer school days, a non-traditional school year, and greater access to the school, its facilities, and its teachers during down time for students. That’s a formula aimed at replicating some of the at-home support children may be missing when it comes to schoolwork." With John Taylor Gatto (NYS Teacher of the year and also schooling critic) https://www.johntaylorgat…
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on “How LeBron James' new public school is the first of its kind”Submitted The Underground History of American Education as a story · 4 points
HN discussionhttp://johntaylorgatto.com/ -- his books are all worth reading, especially his Underground History of American Education .
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on “No grades, no timetable: Berlin school turns teaching upside down”Submitted Underground History of American Education as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReally!? Wow! I guess the journalist has read John Taylor Gatto too! ( http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ )
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on “School is a prison and damaging our kids”It only looks odd if you assume it was designed to educate children. On the other hand, if you assume it's designed to produce reliable, obedient consumers who won't rock the boat, it all makes perfect sense. You would probably enjoy The Underground History of American Education ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm ).
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on “9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians”I found one cite from Gatto, which is probably where I heard it: "Between 1840 and 1860, male schoolteachers were cleansed from the Massachusetts system and replaced by women. A variety of methods was used, including the novel one of paying women slightly more than men in order to bring shame into play in chasing men out of the business. Again, the move was part of a well-conceived strategy: "Experience teaches that…
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on “"Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem”> school is a prison camp used by vested interests to teach American citizens from a young age that they have no rights and to stymie any sort of real intellectual development There's a pretty strong argument made that that is actually the case and its intentional, backed by actual history. Have you read The Underground History of American Education? It's extremely interesting and well referenced. Read it free here,…
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on “Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes ”> Really just screw public school in general. The whole place was 95% waste of time followed by a "congratulatory" piece of paper. John Taylor Gatto (and John Holt, and many others) say "wasting time" is the whole point of compulsory education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis "Against School: How Public Education Criples our Kids, and Why" - http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm Archive.org…
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on “High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials”As was noted more than a decade ago: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/two-income-trap/ "Middle-class parents are stretched thin these days. Between health care costs, child care hassles, looking for a home in a good district, and paying for college, raising a child is becoming increasingly expensive. Little wonder, then, that married couples with children are more than twice as likely to file for bankrupt…
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on “Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society”KIPP? Also, I'ma huge fan of the Underground History of American Education ( http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ )
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on “Bill Gates's new website: The Gates Notes”>Don't all 18 year olds think they know how to run the world? Actually this seems to be a recent innovation, no more than about 100 years old. In preindustrial times teenage kids were junior members of the adult world and comparatively well aware of their shortcomings. This idea is fleshed out in the writing of John Taylor Gatto, a former Teacher of the Year who disagrees with near everything about modern education.…
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on “Lies We Tell Kids”And it was done deliberately, systematically and with full (or nearly full) understanding of the consequences. At least if you believe John Taylor Gatto. I would like to write him of as a loony, but having read his book (available for free http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm ) that isn't as easy as I assumed it would be. Thats not saying that he is right, only that he makes a damn good and interestin…
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on “Meet the New Super People”> Asking "is this going to be on the test" shows that you have no intention of actually learning everything you're taught, which is the point of the class, and instead you're only interested in memorizing the minimum to pass a limited test, which is not the point of the class. I think you have it backwards. The point of the class is to make kids pass tests. The fiction is that it's so that they learn the material. L…
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on “Who or What Broke My Kids?”At a guess: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#External_lin... And he's well worth looking into.
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on “Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative”It would be more helpful to ditch the 'myth' that age-segregated classrooms are an improvement over the one-room school house. It used to be that education was something people did for themselves. Parents or a teacher would help children learn what they wanted to learn, when they were ready to learn it. Modern schooling forces children to learn on the teacher's schedule. John Taylor Gatto wrote extensively of the co…
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on “Teachers must ditch 'neuromyth' of learning styles, say scientists”With more context and eloquence, John Taylor Gatto has been saying this for years: adolescence is artificial, and dangerously so. See his sketch of the future Admiral Farragut, who took his first command at age 12: http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1q.htm ...and of course, Ben Franklin: http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1r.htm
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on “Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today ”John Taylor Gatto[1] was a huge early influence for me. You are right about the religious saturation in the homeschool world. They paved the way (legally), so I respect that, but there is a lot more opportunity in home education outside of religious exclusion. The time we get together is amazing, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love the fact that they can spend a Thursday building Lego and making stop motion…
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on ““Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow”John Taylor Gatto's "Underground History of American Education": http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
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on “I Don't Want to be a Teacher Any More”And how did that work out for Germany? More seriously the Prussian system was created after the Napoleonic Wars to ensure that Prussia had a large reasonably well educated population suitable for warfare and for industry. That system was enforced in the USA later in the 19th Century. Read http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
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on “Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?”While it's a good to think about childcare, something more constructive needs to be done about growing up in the modern world than extending the caging of modern children. John Taylor Gatto (iirc) advised keeping kids out of school as long as possible, as nothing important is learned in the first few grades that wouldn't be learned anyways, or couldn't be learned more efficiently later. http://johntaylorgatto.com/ I…
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on “The reason employees aren't returning to work in America [video]”Gatto is a true prophet. See his writings at https://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ (though his site is having some problems, it looks like).
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on “Why Schools Don’t Educate (1990)”You don't really need to hypothesize. It isn't a conspiracy theory that schools were designed to produce good factory workers, it is documented historical fact. (Where by "documented historical fact" I mean as factual as any "historical" fact ever is.) See something like http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm . You do not have to agree with Gatto's prescription for what schools should become or agree with…
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on “Scott Adams: Future Jobs (and Irreplaceable Skill Sets)”the root of the problems in the education system lie in its prussian derived methodology. http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ compulsory schooling is stupid and wasteful, just like compulsory anything.
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on “Math is not linear, so why do we teach it like that?”Study here: http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF There are a couple example questions in that, but if you want to understand the full methodology you'd have to read this: http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11267 Basically the situation is that: According to the National Adult Assessment of Literacy (NAAL), the largest and most authoritative survey of adult literacy in America, only 13% of adults are able…
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on “America is losing another generation to science illiteracy”John Gatto used to send his 7th grade students out into the real world, to learn from adults doing real things. He would have them write a report about what they'd learned. [1] [1] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ Real learning is achieved with context. Government schools mostly teach theory without context, which is why the students have such a hard time. The local paper once had a story about the challenges faced b…
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on “Who Invented Homework?”His magnum opus: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ (free read)
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on “Against School - John Taylor Gatto”There is certainly a case to be made that the U.S. school system was designed to make "drones or conformists": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system Or for a more detailed argument: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm
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on “The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher”
