Monday, July 11, 2016

Parents and Teachers are Natural Adversaries

Parents and school personnel are just plain natural adversaries.  One group is trying to make a living; the other is trying to make a work of art called a family.  If you allow yourself to be co-opted by flattery, seduced with worthless payoffs such as special classes or programs, intimidated by Alice in Wonderland titles and degrees, you will become the enemy within, the extension of state schooling into your own home.  

Shame on you if you allow that.  Your job is to educate; the school teacher’s is to school.  You work for love, the teacher for money.

The interests are radically different: one is an individual thing, the other a collective.  You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so.  School can only make them part of a hive, a herd, or an anthill.


John Taylor Gatto, “What’s Really Wrong With Our Schools?” pg.6-7

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