John was a man of the people and perhaps one of the finest researchers and minds of the last 100 years. His research and deconstruction of the Prussian schooling system that now infests every nation on earth is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. It is both illuminating and frightening to the thinking human being.
I love this story he tells in one video and transcribed it. The truth and lie of higher education. It is not enough to educate ourselves and oppose that which we determine to be detrimental and unhealthy for ourselves, our families and our communities; it is also vitally important that we must actively engage and support what we find to be beneficial, noble, and worthy of our time, effort and wealth.
The following is an excerpt of a talk given by JTG:
Education and the Discipline of Love
The most famous discipline in western tradition is that of Jesus Christ. That’s true today and it was true fifteen hundred years ago; and the most famous disciples are his twelve apostles. What did Christ’s model of educational discipline look like. Well, attendance wasn’t mandatory for one thing. Christ didn’t set up the Judaeo compulsory school system. He issued an invitation, “Follow me”; and some did and some didn’t, and Christ didn’t send the truant officer after those who didn’t.
The first characteristic of this model is a calling. Those who pursued Christ’s discipline did so out of desire. It was their own choice. They were called to it by an inner voice, a voice we never give students enough time alone to possibly hear. And that’s more true of the good schools than it is of the bad ones.
The second characteristic of Christ’s discipline was commitment. Following Jesus was not easy. You had to drop everything else and there was zero chance you could get rich doing it. You had to love what you were doing. Only love could induce you to walk across deserts, sleep in the wilderness, hang out with riffraff and suffer scorn from all the established folks you encountered. Our present system of schooling alienates us so sharply from our inner genius, most of us are barred from being able ever to hear our calling. Calling in most of us shrivels to fantasy and daydreams as a remnant of what might have been.
The third characteristic of Christ’s model of discipleship was self awareness and independence. Christ’s disciples were not stooges. They had to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions from the shared experience. Christ didn’t give lectures or handouts. He taught by example, by his own practice and through parables which were open to interpretation. Aron , my coach personally doubts that Christ ever intended to start a school or an institutional religion. For institutions invariably corrupt ideas unless they are kept small. They regiment thinking and they tend toward military forms of discipline. Christ’s followers started the church, not Christ.
And finally Christ’s model of discipline requires a master to follow who has himself or herself submitted to discipline and still practices it. Christ didn’t say “You guys stay here in the desert and fast for a month. I’ll be over at the Ramada. You can find me in the bar if you need help.” He did not begin his own public life until he was himself a Rabbi. One fully versed in his tradition.
One way out of the fix we’re in with schools would be a return to discipleship in education. During early adolescence students without a clear sense of calling might have a series of apprenticeships and mentorships which mostly involve self-education. Our students have pressing needs to be alone with themselves on quests to test themselves against obstacles. Both the internal ones, the personal demons and the external barricades to self direction. As it is we currently drown students in low level busy work, shove them together in forced associations which teach them to hate other people, not to love them. We subject them to the filthiest, most pornographic regimen of constant surveillance and ranking, so they never experience the solitude and reflection necessary to become a whole man or woman.
You are perfectly at liberty to believe these foolish practices evolved accidentally or through bad judgment, and I will defend your right to believe that right up to the minute the men with nets come to take you away.
And now the challenge of original sin. The net effect of holding a child in confinement for twelve years and longer without any honour paid to the spirit, is an extended demonstration of the fact that the state considers the western god tradition to be dangerous. And of course it is. Schooling is about creating loyalty to an abstract central authourity; and no serious rival can be welcome in a school. That includes mother and father, tradition, local custom, self management or God.
John Taylor Gatto