9 Thoughts: What is an Education? — John Taylor Gatto
This publication focuses on “What is an Education?”, by John Taylor Gatto
Allow your preconceived notion of what education is to be challenged.
- Misconceptions About Learning
“Once a kid is tuned to learning, nothing at all is hard to learn.”
There is a misconception that certain things can only be learned by individuals who are capable. Using calculus as an example, it may seem as though you need expertise in mathematics to even begin to understand advanced calculus. This is not the case, as John Gatto points out:
“Honey Escalante, who had the record for California for kids passing advanced calculus placement test, in fact had an audience exclusively of Mexican immigrants’ kids and ghetto black kids from LA. Year after year, Escalante was number one in California teaching advanced calculus to kids who had never eaten off a tablecloth before and had no tradition whatsoever of scholarship.”
There’s also a misconception that it would take years to learn to read. And yet, it’s possible to teach someone to read in thirty hours:
“We talk about a national reading emergency in the USA, yet a Jesuit priest named Paolo Ferreira would go into the hills in South America and teach farmers, who had no tradition of written language at all, to read in thirty hours.”
2. Misconceptions About Ability
“Any expert can tell you that it isn’t safe to let a 12-year-old drive, yet any expert could also tell you that a 12-year-old couldn’t command a warship from the Western coast of South America, around Cape Horn, to Boston. And yet, the very first admiral in the US Navy, David Farragut, did just that in 1815.”
Many experts say that it is unsafe to let a 12-year-old drive. Those same experts would praise a 12-year-old Navy Admiral for commanding a warship across the ocean. It’s not hard to tell which one is technically more difficult.
“In 1997, a 10-year-old girl was on the front page of the NY Times because she had designed and tested an experiment which seemed to prove that a profitable new medical specialty was bogus.”
At age 10, questioning a medical professional will get you laughed out of the room. How could a 10-year-old possibly have more foresight or knowledge than someone who has dedicated their entire life to the field? Yet, this example of an entire medical specialty being proven wrong by a 10-year-old and her experiment made headlines.
“The fellow who repaired the Hubble Space Telescope was driving a tractor all by himself, ploughing fields, at the age of 5 on his family farm.”
Most would think you are insane for letting a 5-year-old operate a tractor.
These are all examples of false limitations that are placed on what people’s abilities should be. What if at the age of 10 you taught yourself to fly a jet? It seems like an outrageous ability for a 10-year-old, but only because of misconception about the ability. There is huge praise for those who are successful, but until they are successful, there’s no encouragement. No one is going to tell the 10-year-old that it’s possible to fly a jet at their age until they go out and do it. Oddly enough, once they achieve the feat, they are considered genius.
3. School Is Not an Education
“A school is not an education. You can easily compensate for a lack of schooling, but there’s no way to make up for the damage that occurs without an education. Without an education, you are simply smaller than you might have been.”
You can go to school and learn from the words in a textbook, but you’ll be limited to that textbook. A school does not give you the practical experience or the knowledge required to understand the nuances of the world.
4. Self-Awareness
Gatto lays out the different kinds of awareness that should be considered when planning a curriculum:
“Personal reality. We all need to know as much as we can about our relatives, ancestors, their cultures, situations, goals, and struggles. Then, testing our own talents and weaknesses — limits that come from our biological and cultural heritage.”
It is important to develop a sense of identity. Having a strong sense of self is key in fostering individuality in a world designed for inside-of-the-box thinking.
“Intimate knowledge of history — local, regional, national, and global. The Prussians figured out that people who had a deep understanding of history were dangerous because they could think in context. What they wanted to produce were problem-solvers who had no idea whether the problem was going to make a problem for someone else.”
We have all heard of the theory that history repeats itself. This can only happen if the people repeating that history have no knowledge of it. When we erase chapters from our history books, we run the risk of recreating those events because people will have no knowledge of the catastrophic consequences of those events. If there is no history, there are no lessons.
“Know enough about the world of work to have an intelligent selection of vocation.”
If you know how the world of work functions you will be able to make decisions about your career that are beneficial to your wellbeing, with regard to both health and wealth.
“Philosophies and psychologies of human association. Knowing the difference between families and friends, friends and companions, and companions and comrades.”
This is key when creating a network of individuals that you know, like, and trust. There’s little value in having only one type of individual in your network. Without expanding your network to different kinds of people, you will get stuck.
“The intricacies of making a home.”
A home isn’t just a place to eat and sleep. There are many facets to a home, ranging from economics to cooking, and associations with ideas. A home is much more than just the four walls and a roof.
“The challenge of loss, ageing, and death. Nothing would mean anything at all if you didn’t age and die.”
It is a common thought that if we lived forever, we would get much more done. This is partially true if you are motivated to use all of your time to accomplish goals. However, it’s also true that if you don’t have a time limit, there is no urgency. You could learn something new, but would have no need to do it today, or even tomorrow.
“You have to constantly acknowledge the glimmering of the metaphysical reality.”
Metaphysics are a contentious issue in science because they cannot actually be measured scientifically. Funny; reconciling these ideas is a lifelong struggle for many.
5. The Mark of an Educated Person
“An educated person can write their own script, or a large part of it. He/she is self-determined. An educated man/woman knows the ways of the human heart so well that they’re hard to cheat or fool. An educated man/woman knows their rights and knows how to defend those rights. An educated man/woman possesses useful knowledge. They know how to build a house, write a song, make a boat, grow food, or design clothing. They know something real, and if there’s something that they don’t know, they know that they can learn it, and they know how to go about learning it. An educated man/woman can form healthy attachments anywhere they go, because they understand the dynamics of relationships. An educated person can discover truth without following the lead of experts. Not to say that in many cases that’s exactly what you would do, but you always reserve some scepticism that what you’re being told is the whole truth, and you know how to compare different accounts. An educated person has the capacity to create things — new things, new experiences, new ideas. They can make something out of something else. They can see the raw material around them that’s common, and they can use it to create new things. An educated man/woman possesses a blueprint of personal value. They know at all times who he/she is. Time does not hang heavily on an educated person’s hands. They could be alone, and very rarely experience a sense of boredom. An educated person understands and accepts why death and ageing are necessary. An educated person learns from each age of their life, even right down to the last age.”
These thoughts were covered in depth in a recent article.
The shape of an educated person revolves around their ability to control their life, justify their beliefs, defend their rights, contextualize their existence, understand rather than just know things, create things out of other things, have a sense of personal value, and not be content with the limits of their knowledge.
An effective education would cater to these core characteristics in order to create more educated individuals — the kinds of individuals that know what they want, who they are, how to do the right things, and why to do them.
6. Amish Education
“They don’t have high school educations, specialized training, they don’t use computers, electricity, or automobiles, and they don’t have training in how to create a marketing plan. They accept no government help with healthcare, old-age assistance, or with schooling after the 8th grade. There’s almost no crime, no violence, no alcoholism, no divorce, and no drug-taking in the community.”
These are conventionally seen as traits of a barely successful community, if at all, and yet:
“Virtually every adult has an independent livelihood as the owner of a farm or business. The success rate of Amish in small business is 95%.”
95% success rate without conventional education, accessibility, or technology.
“They are legendary good neighbors. They’re the first to volunteer in times of crisis. They open their farm to ghetto children, and they frequently rear handicapped children from the non-Amish world that no one else wants. They farm so well and so profitably, without tractors, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides, that Mexico, Canada, Russia, France, and Uruguay have hired them to advise those countries on raising agricultural productivity.”
The misconception that modernity knows best is consistently disproven.
“An education to an Amisher is being independent, living in a close community as a valuable neighbor, and living a godly life. On the cusp of the 21st Century, it hardly seems possible for a definition of education like this to have survived and thrived, yet how can we explain the baffling Amish who do it their own way in spite of expert advice, and have abundant prosperity and happiness? That the Amish have done so well puts a realistic base of possibility under the ideal of an independent citizenry as the proper goal for schooling.”
The Amish thrive under their independent model of education without following the mirage of the traditional Western schooling system. It’s difficult not to wonder about the effectiveness of sending children through the traditional school system. The Amish community has managed to keep themselves safe, educated, and successful in business. And also:
“Almost every group member, when interviewed by outside investigators, reports total satisfaction with their lives.”
7. Learning, Schooling, Education
“Learning is something that happens all the time. Schooling occurs when the content of learning is determined externally by other people. Education is consciously self-determined. It blends information acquired through schooling and accidental learning with a personal purpose. In education, school learning is critically screened and independently verified by each learner before permanent retention. An educated person learns when to trust strangers and doesn’t confer that trust indiscriminately. In our own society, schooling is the balance wheel in this child development engine. It can help learning, or it can hinder learning. It can encourage education, or it can discourage education.”
Learning happens all the time. For example, when you climb a tree, you learn something. If you fall out of the tree, you also learn something. These are all things that you can learn independently. When you are fed curated information in a controlled setting, it is not learning, it is schooling.
“It’s hard work to be educated. It really isn’t very hard work to be schooled, even to be brilliantly schooled.”
8. Schooling Principles
“None of the principles these parents seek costs a single penny to develop. Everybody could do one or all of these things with their own kids just as well as Exeter or St Pauls could.”
The common principles that parents use to justify sending their children to elite schools are, in fact, possible to learn without these schools.
Here are some of the principles:
“They want their children to learn good manners. They want hard, intellectual knowledge taught to their children undiluted. They want their children to be taught a love and appreciation for the natural world. They want their children to learn a public sense of decorum. They want their kids to be knowledgeable and sympathetic with ways that aren’t their own. They want a common core of western culture taught so that all the generations are certain to be comfortable with a shared set of ideas and values. They want leadership exercises taught to their children as an important ongoing theme of curriculum. They want continuous pressure on their children to stretch their individual limits.”
These qualities are what parents expect their children to learn in elite schools. It may be true that they acquire the qualities there, but there is no reason to believe that the “eliteness” of the school is the ultimate source. The Amish, again, are a great example of how a lack of expensive schooling does not lead to a lack of good qualities.
9. Education Comes From Within
“The stress is on a disciplined mind that knows itself, its limits, and its strengths. It’s on a theory of human nature, a strong knowledge of history, and an understanding of the origins of our political, economic, and legal systems. There’s an emphasis on hands-on, face-to-face experience. There’s an emphasis on writing. They want kids to develop the power of accurate observation. They want experience with the master creations of music, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, poetry, and the other arts.”
The Western schooling system has in essence monopolized the idea of education. The government gets paid to teach what can be learned at home.
In summary, you can do the following independently, and without the guidance of we are conditioned to think we need:
- Learn to read
- Learn about history, art, music, poetry, architecture, politics, economics, and the law
- Learn to write, sing, and dance
- Learn how to command a warship, or make medical breakthroughs
- Learn to be a good neighbor and have good values
- Learn advanced calculus, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, or agriculture and other sciences
- Learn to create the best webinars
You can have happiness, success, and education all without spending any money on schooling.
“Nothing you always thought was an education costs anything at all.”
