The National Youth Agency: Comment - Hey! Teacher!

In recent years, I've talked with old school friends who have crossed the floor and become teachers themselves. As we discuss their experiences of teaching, I am reminded of that speech, and of how much of my time at school felt like a strategic attack on my childhood's developing sense of self.

John Taylor Gatto, an American education reformer, summed it up with a renowned essay, The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher (the full essay can be found at http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html), in which he laid out, tongue slightly in cheek, the lessons he taught on a daily basis. By evaluating and judging the pupil's work, he taught that self-respect comes from an observer's measure of one's worth, by virtue of bells ending a lesson he taught that no work is ever worth completing, and by dictating a strict curriculum determined from above, he taught that there is no place for explorational learning. The school environment, with its lack of private space and short class changes, teaches children that they are constantly under surveillance.