11.15.06
John Taylor Gatto
Or: Crazy Man Reminds Me What I Hated About School
John Taylor Gatto is basically the wild man of American education. As a student who has come out of the system loving science, loving learning, loving self-motivation, reading this interview with him is making me rethink my experience of the educational system.
Gatto is a big advocate of student-directed learning, the sort of thing where the student does almost all of the work synthesizing their own concepts. That’s a huge, huge part of enjoying learning. Actually THINKING and creating new concepts is what gives us those ‘Aha!’ moments that bring the world to life for a moment. Sure, there’s a certain pleasure in being able to recall trivia, but the real pleasure in knowing those things is the ability to think about them and what their effects are. Knowing all the kings of England is much more fun when you know how that helped create modern English society, for example.
A lot of Gatto’s thoughts would basically bring lesson planning as it’s known today to an end. Time would not be nearly so managed as it is today, because the student’s motivation would propel learning rather than needing a teacher to tug them along. I know teachers hate making lesson plans. I know students hate following them. I loathed the phrase ‘We have to get through this today,’ because it was usually when a teacher was moving away from something interesting to something rote and boring.
So, educators of the world, rise up! Guide students instead of pounding knowledge in, and I think the returns will follow.