Against School

Posted on October 30th, 2003 in Otherways Magazine

How public education cripples our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education. He was a participant in the Harper’s Magazine forum “School on a Hill,” which appeared in Otherways September 2001 issue.

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.

Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers’ lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?

Australian Schooling: A History of Social Control

Posted on October 30th, 2003 in Otherways Magazine

We are all familiar with John Gatto’s work making extraordinary revelations in the History of American Schooling. But that is over there. Australia is different, isn’t it? We were curious about the beginnings of schooling in this country and thought we would take a look. Here we present our findings…..

By Susan Wight, Bendigo, Victoria

The history of Australian schooling is a history of social control. From the beginning the purpose of schooling was to control the population. Schooling was never intended to foster the development of individual children.

Schools in Australia were established very early - the first school in 1789 and three by 1793 under the guidance of Rev Richard Johnson. This was unusual for the time. In England less than 5% of children attended school.(1) Why then were schools thought necessary in the fledgling colony of New South Wales? This is particularly intriguing when you take into account that for the first five years the settlement struggled on the brink of starvation with only essential work carried out. Why was schooling a priority? The answer lies in the fact that NSW was a penal colony.