Mr. John Taylor Gatto:  Homeschool Conference Speaker and Workshop Leader Details

Everything You Know About Institutional Schooling Is Wrong & Open Source Education Is A Way to Break Out of the Trap
From the Biblical Solomon to Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA) and Thomas Edison, important, successful, and influential men and women have always understood that classroom schooling is an inadequate way to become educated. Whatever its limited uses one must break out into a wider arena of largely self-directed learning, one full of explorations, experiments, observations, risk-taking, and more before the power of education can be achieved.The builders of institutional education, well-educated, but unschooled men themselves, understood this.

Their intention was to school, not to educate.

Following Charles Darwin, they believed that most of the human race was biologically retarded, permanently, and would be dangerous if educated. That is the un-American, un-Christian component quietly built into school's design. The way out of this trap is to start with different assumption of human possibility, different texts, and a different use of time and space.

"John Gatto's New Research: The Story Behind Public Education"

"Weapons of Mass Instruction"

• Author: Weapons of Mass Instruction
• Author: A Different Kind of Teacher
• Author: The Underground History Of American Education
• Author: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
• Author: The Exhausted School
• Author: The Empty Child
• Formerly (for 30 years): Public school teacher in New York City
• Was New York City's Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991
• Was New York State's Teacher of the Year in 1991