John Taylor Gatto (born December 15, 1935) is an
American retired school
teacher of 29 years and 8 months and author of several books on
education. He is an activist critical of
compulsory schooling and of what he characterizes as the
hegemonic nature of discourse on education and the education professions.
Biography
Gatto was born in the
Pittsburgh-area steel town of
Monongahela, Pennsylvania. In his youth he attended public schools throughout the
Pittsburgh Metro Area including
Swissvale,
Monongahela, and
Uniontown as well as a Catholic boarding school in
Latrobe. He did undergraduate work at
Cornell, the
University of Pittsburgh, and
Columbia, then served in the
U.S. Army medical corps at
Fort Knox,
Kentucky, and
Fort Sam Houston,
Texas. Following army service he did graduate work at the
City University of New York,
Hunter College,
Yeshiva University, the
University of California, and Cornell.
He worked as a writer and held several odd jobs before borrowing his roommate's license to investigate teaching. Gatto also ran for the
New York State Senate, 29th District in 1985 and 1988 as a member of the
Conservative Party of New York against incumbent
David Paterson. He was named New York City Teacher of the year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled , to the op-ed pages of the
Wall Street Journal, saying that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living." He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received several awards from
libertarian organizations, including the
Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Excellence in Advancement of Educational Freedom in 1997. He promotes
homeschooling, and specifically
unschooling. One professor of education has called his books "scathing" and "one-sided and hyperbolic, [but] not inaccurate."
Gatto is currently working on a 3-part documentary about compulsory schooling, titled
The Fourth Purpose. He says he was inspired by
Ken Burns's
Civil War.
Bibliography
- The Exhausted School (1993).
- A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling (2000). ISBN 1-893163-21-0
- Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008). ISBN 0-865716-31-5
See also
