John Taylor Gatto

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Title & Subtitle Abstract Contributors Pages Year Purchase

Weapons of Mass Instruction

A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

John Taylor Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction, now available in paperback, focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and … 241 View
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Prologue

Against School

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time, I became an expert in boredom. 11 $1.10 Add
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Everything You Know About Schools is Wrong

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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Forced schooling seduces the trapped into believing that inert knowledge, memorized fact bits and sequences is the gold standard of intellectual achievement. Learning to connect those bits into … 26 $2.60 Add
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Walkabout

London

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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Nick Schulman, a neighbor of mine, cut junior high to play pool, and dropped out of high school to play poker. He became a millionaire at the age of 21 this year, on the World Poker Tour. His new … 34 $3.40 Add
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Fat Stanley and the Lancaster Amish

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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Fat Stanley told me he had to cut school almost every day because he didn’t want to end up like me, working for someone else. He was 13 when he said that to me. An Amish man in Ohio told me … 9 $0.90 Add
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David Sarnoff’s Classroom

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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Sarnoff, the founder of RCA dropped out of elementary school to sell newspapers on the street. What he learned there he could never have learned in school. 12 $1.20 Add
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Hector Isn’t the Problem

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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I was the official New York State Teacher of the Year when I quit on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, because I couldn’t stand to hurt children any more. 7 $0.70 Add
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The Camino de Santiago

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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Inspired by the pilgrimage to St. James’ tomb which draws young and old from around the world each year to walk across Spain, I decided to help kids toward lives as producers rather than … 8 $0.80 Add
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Weapons of Mass Instruction

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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The trapped flea strategy; ugliness; the horse-in-box effect; the artificial extension of childhood; misdirection; the cauldron of broken time: these and more are some deadly Weapons of Mass … 46 $4.60 Add
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What is Education?

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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According to Kant, four questions live at the heart of all educational quests: What can I know? What may I hope? What ought I to do? What is man? School policy in America is made by people who … 12 $1.20 Add
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A Letter to my Granddaughter about Dartmouth

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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You just turned 17 this month, granddaughter, and you’ll be leaving the nest for college soon, I suppose. I wish you wouldn’t, but I know better than to say that, so at least let me … 17 $1.70 Add
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Incident at Highland High

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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Last January, a sixteen-year-old German girl — shy and well-behaved — was arrested in her home in Nuremberg, Germany, by fifteen armed policemen. Her crime was homeschooling. Reading … 16 $1.60 Add
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Afterword

Invitation to an Open Conspiracy: The Bartleby Project

From: Weapons of Mass Instruction

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The whole diseased empire of institutional schooling is, like the wonderful one-horse shay, extremely fragile. Its most vulnerable point, the glue that holds the thing together, is standardized … 14 $1.40 Add