Another Quote!

Okay, this one is not because I'm losing my mind. It's actually because I have little computer access, and I'm so tired, I feel like I'm going to cry.

"In the words of the Albany Free School, if you aren't making it up as you go along, you aren't doing it right."
-John Taylor Gatto

"Take Back Your Education"

Here is a very good article which synopsizes quite a bit of John Taylor Gatto's basic message! It's from Yes! Magazine. Sorry I have no other commentary right now - our family is being ravaged by a very unpleasant illness. Enjoy!

Conference Notes

Though I did not remember to take pictures at the unschooling conference,
I did find on my computer this photo of some people at another conference, which had a few similarities to the one in Madison

I didn't do enough to explain the Madison Unschooling Conference in yesterday's post, so here are a few quotes/thoughts I scribbled on my notepad there*:

-watch The Harlem Globetrotters to see an example of adults engaging in pure play.
-standardized testing industry is an 80 billion dollar empire.
-epidemic of diabetes in this country being blamed on food, but media is not covering the other main cause, which is immobilization (which occurs most of the day in schools).
-schools are the creators (along with the fast-food industry, etc.) of the diabetes epidemic
-book recommendation: Strangers in the Land
-Find out what people want. Then either give it to them cheaper or of better quality. Or be the only one.
-Look up his former student, B.J. Cummings
-small, private airfields - sometimes the pilots there will let you ride for free, just to have someone to talk to.
-John Taylor Gatto put kids back into the community doing what kids did before WWII - "adding value."
-Previous to WWII, kids were expected to make their own pocket money by age 7, usually doing things older people didn't want to do. These days this is considered child abuse.
-re: teenagers obsessed with video games: "If he loves video games, why not incorporate him into the video game industry. Designing video games, etc. Courses at the university. Video games are the largest single profit-making source in the media industry.
-read Dan Greenberg books
-Question from workshop participant: "Why do parents get worried about very intense non-academic pursuits?" JTG says there is no such thing as a non-academic pursuit.
-On the topic of "educational conspiracy" - JTG says, these people are/were not evil. But people have been conditioned, on purpose, and by "brilliant thinkers," for over 100 years, to "think down blind alleys." These people are not evil - they just believe what Calvin, Spinoza, etc., say, which is that you're dangerous. They spoke openly about it, though.
-Horace Mann, in a diary in 1845: "break the bonds of the working class." Or something like that.
-In a school setting where kids are in the back of the room copying out of comic books, JTG would go back and watch what the kids were doing and say "do you think you're copying that comic book?" Bring up something about what they're doing: "I notice all the characters in the panels - but in the comic books, the arms and legs stick out, and the panels are all of different sizes." Told student to take a week out of school, go to the library, and sit in a pile of 20 books at a time, in order to learn how to do it the way the professionals do - Where does the paper come from? What's the best comic book? What about foreign comics?
-Comic books - jobs in graphic arts are very well paid and the artists don't have to wear a coat and tie!
-Question from a workshop participant - How did you get away with not getting caught for the way you were teaching? JTG: wore pinstripes, volunteered for horrible jobs like lunchroom monitor, and pretended to be a "stickler" for discipline. Threw the scent off for long enough to try things and find out if they worked. He also visited homes: "If I don't know the parents I'm not going to know the kids."
-Advice: Look for opportunities. Then you can draw liasons/ligatures between casual interests and things that those interests might develop into in the future. Parents have been so excluded from "cooking a new life." That is poison. Parents become unpaid assistants of the classroom teacher.
-More advice to teachers: Start with projects that will make the school look good. Say, "A group of parents has approached me and said. . . . and I think it's a good idea!" Also, work through assistant principals because 75% of them won't survive.
-Colonial aristocrats used to teach their children, "If you can't draw what you're seeing, then you haven't seen what you think you're looking at."
-Get the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.
-On JTG's documentary film project - guy in charge says, "It's useless to make a small documentary because it will only be watched by the True Believers."
-Watch this movie: High School
-our economy depends on continuous warfare. Our economy can't survive without it.
-look up Penn-Gillette - read book.

Well, there you go. Hopefully there is something in there for everyone!


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*Please keep in mind that these are just my notes, and I urge you to do your own research on their validity.
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The Madison Unschooling Conference!

I accidentally forgot to take a picture yesterday, but Kenny and I attended the Madison Unschooling Conference, with Special Guest John Taylor Gatto. It was great. John Taylor Gatto was amazing. I already was a great admirer after reading his books Dumbing Us Down, A Different Kind of Teacher, and The Underground History of American Education, but now I'm an even bigger fan because he was so much more interesting and funny in person than I expected him to be.

Above is a picture of his newest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, which I have not yet read, and was going to buy at the conference, but they ran out before I nabbed one. I'm sure it's excellent because almost everything this man says is mind-blowing.

Besides that, it was nice to just be in a beautiful venue with a huge group of very like-minded people, eating delicious food and socializing. Kenny also got a lot out of attending a lecture on play by Allison McKee (he was slightly weirded out that it was actually a long lecture on play, but whatever). And I attended a very bizarre workshop on "Wholemovement" by Bradford Hansen-Smith. I really had no idea what he was talking about until the end, when I realized he was teaching us how to fold ordinary paper plates into **amazing** shapes. Now I wish I'd gotten one of his books to work on with my kids, but here it is in case *you* would like to. I'll never look at a paper plate the same way again. That's for sure.

Anyone who knows me knows how I hate to explain things. But hopefully I'll be writing more about what I learned at the conference soon.

Oh, and here is my favorite quote that I copied off the wall there:

The opposite of play is not work. It's depression.
-Brian Sutton-Smith, contemporary American folklorist

Quote Break Again

"I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to *prevent* children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior."

– John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto Always Gives Me the Chills!

I just got this Michael Mendizza/John Taylor Gatto interview in my inbox. A great read, especially for those who have not yet taken the opportunity to read Gatto's revolutionary books such as Dumbing Us Down, A Different Kind of Teacher, and The Underground History of American Education.

Unfortunately the interview is *horribly* edited (note that he even spelled Gatto's last name wrong!!). Grrrrr.

Anyway, here's my favorite Gatto quote from it, which comes right after he is explaining how he won New York State Teacher of the Year, something he says only happened because they never asked him how his students achieved such amazing things (since then, they always ask), because, for example, he was allowing kids to not attend class. Which totally cracks me up.

The [school] system imposes certain boundaries, certain restrictions, by simply demanding attendance twelve or more years. Imagine all the 'real life' experiences young people might have during that time. And the money - imagine if all the money that went into salaries, buildings, and books were given to families to invest in these experiences. When you really see what is taking place - you become a saboteur.

Okay, I take it back - that is not my favorite quote from it - there are too many to count. Read it! Let's discuss! I'm so excited!