For those who don't know, John Taylor Gatto was a teacher in New York City for 30 years. He received numerous awards during his time as a teacher, and later quite publicly became an advocate of radical educational reform. This book was, as far as I can tell, the first in a line of books he wrote to discuss his ideas for why we needed educational reform, and what kind of reforms were needed. He scratches the surface in this book, which is a simple reprinting of speeches and essays he had given and written at previous points in his career before he began publishing books.
I don't recall when, but I am sure I've heard of him before. Recently, however, I heard CJ Killmer discussing him with two others on his Dangerous History Podcast Episode 173. It was because of this podcast that I decided to really look into Gatto, and I purchased the aformentioned book.
Gatto's ideas resonate with me on a deeply personal level. I wanted most of my life to be a teacher; I recall many encounters with teachers in my childhood that helped shape me into the person that I am today, and I wanted to be that person for future generations of children. Unfortunately, I also recall many horrible teachers, terrible policies, and boring, uninspiring curriculum. I remember being a straight A student that hated school as often as I liked it. I remember how disappointed I was with so many aspects of my education, and how easily I could have walked down so many other paths due to my growing distaste for schooling in general. I remember being told time and again how much potential I have, and how I was destined to do great things with my life, only to be disappointed when, upon encountering real adult life, how few real adults there are in life to work with toward any real achievements of worth.
I nearly chose not to go to college, but, like many people my age, I was convinced that without college I couldn't do the things I wanted to do with my life. Specifically, becoming a certified teacher without a bachelor's degree at minimum is nearly impossible. I chose my school based on very few criteria, and very little information for that matter, which would turn out to be both beneficial and harmful later in my career. First, I chose a school on the mistaken assumption that I needed to get out of my current locality in order to fully grow up and explore my personality. I learned rather quickly that, wherever you go, there you are. Second, I was looking for a school with a good program for getting a teaching certification, which seemed like a great idea at the time but later led to difficulty when I no longer wanted to pursue that degree. Finally, I was looking for a school which would not be too costly, as I was intending to become a teacher who notoriously do not get paid very well, and I did not want to be completely hamstrung by debt. This choice has been probably the best choice I could make of a bad situation, though I will still be paying for this degree for another ten years or so.
My first semester I had an Intro to Education course, and one of the assignments was to find either a local school, or to contact the school system we had matriculated from, and schedule a day to shadow some current teacher or teachers. The local school was quite small, and I had no contacts there (as I mentioned before: I moved quite a way to go to school), so on one of my breaks for classes I sat in a day at my old alma mater. I can tell you for certain that it was quite a different experience to be on the other side of the classroom, and a complete shock to sit in the teachers' lounge for lunch. This experience, for me, was unsettling to say the least. Listening to teachers denigrate students was difficult for me; listening to those same teachers classify some students as successful and others as outright, unrepentant failures was nearly impossible.
In my third semester, the state passed new mandates for what was required to be a certified teacher, and my university (being state funded) quickly made the changes to their curriculum to account for these new requirements. Unfortunately, since I was not on the standard track for a variety of reasons, I was faced with the need to either take the old classes that were no longer being offered during summer school, or start over with my degree and spend, at minimum, an extra year getting my degree. I knew either of these options meant putting more money into a system I was quickly becoming disenfranchised with, and I actually disagreed with the new requirements, anyhow, so I dropped the education from my major and graduated three semesters later with a degree in applied mathematics.
As a quick aside, applying for graduate school was made more difficult by the choice I had made to study at a teachers' college instead of some better school, as my education was actually limited on many topics that most graduate schools want students with a degree like mine to have spent more time with.
Getting back to the story, though, I had spent time in school as a math tutor, and in times of financial difficulty, I was able to fall back on that as an extra form of income. While Megan and I were living in California, I worked with a few students to augment my income since Megan was unable to find lasting work. One student in particular really struck a chord with me, going back to the teacher talk in the lunchroom. She was good, like, really good, just not in the specific sense that this particular geometry teacher apparently wanted her to be. He had seemingly made up his mind that she was going to be a bad student, and continued pushing that narrative to himself, her, and her mother, even though every time I worked with her we were able to find a way to get her to fully understand the material.
Her story is just one of many that I could go into of students who are struggling with their current math classes. Many of these kids can and do fully grasp the concepts, but are unable to fully communicate that understanding in a way that the teacher finds acceptable. Others just are not currently capable of understanding concepts that they aren't ready for. Some may never be ready for advanced mathematical concepts like algebra, trigonometry, etc, and that's perfectly acceptable. Just because a person doesn't understand trigonometry, that doesn't mean that person is dumb or unable to succeed in life.
Between my experiences in schooling, and my time spent with these children in schools currently, I began developing a real desire to look elsewhere for educational opportunities for myself, and my (at the time) future children. I spent some time researching and even advocating for reform, including a few posts from 2016 I made about the issues I had seen with education on this blog. I started listening to podcasts in 2015, and that led me to start looking into research into alternatives instead of reforms.
This finally gets us back to Gatto: his book is all about how modern schooling cannot be reformed, at least not in any way that has lasting repercussions on actual education. Gatto claims that learning does not and can not happen in schools. This idea has really connected all the dots for me on all of my previous ideas and complaints.
My advise: read the book. I can't recommend it enough. I'll probably read it at least once more to try to more fully understand all of Gatto's ideas.
