John Taylor Gatto is a retired school teacher of 30 years, and author of several books on education. He is an activist against compulsory schooling.

Biography

Gatto was born in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. In his youth, he attended public schools in Swissvale, Monongahela, and Uniontown, as well as a Catholic boarding school in Latrobe. He did undergraduate work at Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia, then served in the U.S. Army medical corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Following army service he did graduate work at the City University of New York, Hunter College, Yeshiva, the University of California, and Cornell.

He worked as a writer and held several odd jobs before becoming a teacher. He was named New York City Teacher of the year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1990, and 1991. In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled I Quit, I Think (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm), to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he did not want to "hurt children anymore". He then began a public speaking and writing career, and has received several awards from libertarian organizations, including the Alexis de Tocqueville Award in 1998. He promotes homeschooling, and specifically unschooling.

Inspired by Ken Burns's Civil War, Gatto is currently working to produce a 3-part documentary about compulsory schooling, titled The Fourth Purpose.

Works

• Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992) see also hidden curriculum
• The Exhausted School (1993)
• A Different Kind of Teacher (2000)
• The Underground History Of American Education (2001)

External links

• Official Website (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com)
• The Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm) - complete text online