A Quote by John Taylor Gatto

School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. — © John Taylor Gatto
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.
Only in mathematics and physics was I, through self-study, far beyond the school curriculum, and also with regard to philosophy as it was taught in the school curriculum.
The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority."
A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned. But while truth is truth however learned, the bearing of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part but all, of the curriculum of the school.
The U.N. brings everybody together. And without it, we can't deal with Ebola or terrorism or climate change. But it's 70 years old. It's tired. It's acquired a lot of bad habits. And often it feels like only new bad habits get added and old bad habits don't get taken away.
You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I've learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you.
When I was born, my father was in jail. He only had me because it was going to get him a lesser jail sentence... that's exactly... he told me that.
There were times when I was terrified to go to school because it felt like a jail sentence.
In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office. This desk. But now that school is over and I've been working at the same place in the same office at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it's only if it goes on and on that will have to look for other ways to identify the time.
I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.
But who are we, really? Just a bundle of good genes and bad genes mixed with good habits and bad habits. And since there's no gene for coolness or confidence, then being uncool and unconfident are just bad habits, which can be changed with enough guidance and will power.
Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very possibly they make the same mistakes in their own speech, but they know-unconsciously, not as a set of rules they learned in school-when a sentence is incorrect.
Habits are funny things. What's funny, or rather tragic, is that bad habits are so predictable and avoidable. Despite this, there are people by the millions who insist on acquiring habits that are bad, expensive, and create problems. The habit they weren't going to get, got them!
In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which precedeth all others is - I will form good habits and become their slave.
Whether you are a twelve-year-old princess or a twelve-year-old regular kid, you need to know you are loved and respected.
I was pretty much a mess out of primary school. I really experienced a lot more of that stuff from the ages of seven to twelve, where there was a really popular girl at my school, and I was obsessed with her, like you'd go to jail for that stuff today. I'm so embarrassed to say this, but I was in tears one day, because I couldn't sit next to her.
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