Headline, July17, 2013

'''THE PHILOSOPHE​R KING OF 

EDUCATION : JOHN TAYLOR GATTO'''

The whole world is awash in contradictions ; and the new economy is even worse so....But few things are more troubling than this one : At the very moment that brainpower is more important than ever, and in this context, education seems more backward than ever. The whole world talks of a new economy but outdated schools.

Out of this disconnect has emerged a quiet grassroots rebellion aimed at reinventing both the form and function of American Education. Charter schools -publicly funded startup schools that operate mostly free of regulation   -have boomed. In 1992 there was one charter school in the United States. Today there are more than 2,000. 

The fastest growing education movement is home schooling. Today millions of children learn at home. Just as Internet startups and free agents rattled big business, charter schools and homeschooling are shaking up ''big schoolhouse''. And leading them is John Taylor Gatto, education's most original,  -and perhaps most controversial- Thinker.

Gatto earned his reformers's credentials the hard way. For 30 years he taught English in some of New York's toughest schools, and became the teacher immortalized in the film Stand and Deliver. Gatto was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime teacher who changed lives. Hundreds by hundreds of former students  remain in touch with him, -even as he outraged Administrators.

In 1991, he was New York State's Teacher of the Year. Then he quit.

''When I left school teaching, I was blind with rage. I didn't know whose throat to grab first,'' growls Gatto. 'After a while, I could see that responsibility for education had to be reinvested in ordinary people.'' So he began writing articles and essays that recommended a systematic overhaul of learning in America and soon attracted a nearly cultish following among homeschoolers, charter-school advocates, and other education reformers.

To many members of that incipient movement, Gatto has become their Philosopher King. But Gatto gives himself a different Job Title : ''I am a Saboteur,'' he says.''I am sabotaging the idea that you know best what my family needs.''

Schools, he says, are irremediably broken. Built to supply a mass production economy with a docile workforce, they ask too little of children, and thereby drain youngsters of curiosity and autonomy.

Tougher discipline, more standardized tests, longer days, and most other solutions are laughably stupid and way off the mark. ''We need to kill the poison plant we created,'' Gatto has written. ''School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged.'' His alternative to get rid of institutional mass-production schools, allow every imaginable experiment to blossom, make free public libraries universal, and expand hands on apprenticeships.

'Professor Gatto, let's shift to the world of business and work for a moment: Grades and Gold Stars in school prepare people for pay raises and promotions on the job, don't they?'

They're BS. I'm against those things. But don't make me look one of those romantic people who are against them because I don't want the kids to compete against one another.

Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a Manager. 

Remarkable Work!! And this Unique Post continues. Please share forward to every Learning Institution

With respectable dedication to HBO for their impressive record of Cult hits among the smart set.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless