Upcoming Events

no events match your query!

New Events

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Promoting Human Rights in Ireland

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Trump Threatened With Lawsuit Over Withdrawal from WHO Wed Jan 22, 2025 11:11 | Will Jones
Donald Trump has been threatened with a lawsuit over his day-one decision to withdraw?from the World Health Organisation (WHO) because he didn't get the approval of Congress.
The post Trump Threatened With Lawsuit Over Withdrawal from WHO appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Prevent Isn?t Preventing Wed Jan 22, 2025 09:00 | Charlotte Gill
"You?ll never be wasting our time," reads the Prevent poster. So why did the anti-extremism programme fail to stop the Southport killer, who had been referred to it three times? He's not the only one, says Charlotte Gill.
The post Prevent Isn’t Preventing appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Trump Withdrawing From the Paris Climate Agreement May be an Epoch Defining Event Wed Jan 22, 2025 07:00 | Ben Pile
Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement feels like an epoch defining event. Yes he did it before, says Ben Pile, but this time is different. The world now is waking up to the folly of Net Zero.
The post Trump Withdrawing From the Paris Climate Agreement May be an Epoch Defining Event appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Wed Jan 22, 2025 02:29 | Toby Young
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Net Zero vs Growth: Sadiq Khan to Lead Labour Rebellion Against Reeves Over Heathrow Expansion Tue Jan 21, 2025 19:04 | Will Jones
Rachel Reeves's growth agenda has clashed with Net Zero as London Mayor Sadiq Khan prepares to lead a Labour rebellion against the Chancellor's backing for a third runway at Heathrow over environmental concerns.
The post Net Zero vs Growth: Sadiq Khan to Lead Labour Rebellion Against Reeves Over Heathrow Expansion appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?116 Sat Jan 18, 2025 06:46 | en

offsite link After the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark, the Trump team prepares an operat... Sat Jan 18, 2025 06:37 | en

offsite link Trump and Musk, Canada, Panama and Greenland, an old story, by Thierry Meyssan Tue Jan 14, 2025 07:03 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?114-115 Fri Jan 10, 2025 14:04 | en

offsite link End of Russian gas transit via Ukraine to the EU Fri Jan 10, 2025 13:45 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Education

Education is one of those key things in life. While the basics of food and shelter are fundamental closely followed by health, education is probably next and is a key to how life unfolds. We must not be caught up with the idea of interchanging the word education and school as they are not the same thing.

On this page, we present some of the ideas behind John Taylor Gatto (1935 - 2018) who was a teacher in New York city and a great educator. He, as he said himself, taught in the best and the worst schools and three times won the New York city's Teacher of the Year award. After he quit teaching he started to investigate the history of why compulsory school was setup and he spent the rest of his life trying to undo the harm that schools does.

Gatto through his essays, books and many interviews has tried to convey what education should be really about and it should be something we take ownership of ourselves and take on for our entire life.

The material on the rest of the page is taken from: https://www.garynorth.com/public/18741.cfm

There is a website dedicated to John Taylor Gatto at: https://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
Link to one of his most famous essay's: Against School

See also the Wikipedia page Waldorf Schools which are based on the work of Rudolf Steiner.or better still go to the Waldorf Foundation for Education website.

John Taylor Gatto died at age 82 on October 25.

He taught at the New York City public school system for 26 years. Three times he won the city's Teacher of the Year award. Once he won the New York state Teacher of the Year award.

Shortly after he won these final two awards, he quit teaching as a career. He made his announcement in a Wall Street Journal article, "I Quit, I Think." You can read it here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/18740.cfm

In a fine obituary of Gatto on the website of the Foundation for Economic Education, Brittany Hunter wrote this:

After three decades in the classroom, Gatto realized that the public school system was squashing individualism more than it was educating students and preparing them for the real world. To make matters worse, his later research would reveal that this dumbing down was not just by accident, but by design.

Gatto dedicated the rest of his life to repairing the damage done by the public education system.

Feeling the education system was beyond repair, Gatto could no longer in good conscience be an active participant. Rather than sending his letter of resignation to his superiors in his school district, he sent a copy of “I Quit, I Think” to the Wall Street Journal, where it was published as an op-ed on July 25, 1991.

In his biting resignation, he wrote:

I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.

I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.

Gatto dedicated the rest of his life to repairing the damage done by the public education system. He wrote several books on his experience in the classroom including Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. His book The Underground History of American Education is perhaps the most accurate and damning history of the American education system that has ever been written.

Here, we see what made him different. Warning: you will figure out in the first three minutes how you got shafted in school.

What went wrong? Gatto said it was planned. Here is a seven-minute video. It is an extract from his Underground History. His theory: schooling is a means of producing docile, obedient workers and citizens. He cites primary sources from influential American educators.

For those who have read R. J. Rushdoony's earlier book, The Messianic Character of American Education (1963), all this will be familiar. It started in the late 1830's in Massachusetts. Rushdoony followed the confessions of faith of two dozen progressive educators. Gatto followed the money.

He did great work in the public schools. He did greater work outside them.

Links

https://www.henireland.org -Home Educaiton Network Ireland
https://hslda.org/post/ireland -Legal status and resources on homeschooling in Ireland
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/irish-mother-of-six-jailed-for-homeschooling -Irish mother of six jailed for homeschooling (2014)
https://wicklowSudburySchool.com/ -Wicklow Sudbury School - Ireland's first democratic school of self-directed learning

You might be interested in this very short video: Peter Gray on self-directed learning Fundamentals
https://youtu.be/YoE480mzrk0

IMC network

© 2001-2025 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy