John T. Gatto Libros

Argues that compulsory education is a detriment to developing critical thinking skills and trains students to become subservient to the government.

Gatto reveals the deadening heart of compulsory state schooling: assumptions and structures that stamp out the self-knowledge, curiosity, concentration, and solitude essential to learning. In his 26 years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools, Gatto has found that independent study, community service, large doses of solitude, and apprenticeships with adults of all walks of life are the keys to helping children break the thrall of our conforming society. Gatto urges all of us to find ways to reengage children and families in actively controlling our culture, economy, and society.

With over 70,000 copies of the first edition in print, this radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers’ bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years in New York City’s public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. This second edition describes the wide-spread impact of the book and Gatto’s "guerrilla teaching." John Gatto has been a teacher for 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. His other titles include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000).