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John Taylor Gatto
American teacher and author (1935-2018) · United States · On the map · Educators · Died at 82
He spent nearly three decades inside public school classrooms, then walked away and spent the rest of his life arguing that the entire system was designed to produce obedience, not thought.
John Taylor Gatto is read about 70 times a day, in 13 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 13 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
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John Taylor Gatto taught in American schools for close to 30 years before turning his experience into an indictment. His books - Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling - took apart the machinery of compulsory education and made a case for unschooling and homeschooling instead. He died October 25, 2018, at 82, decades after leaving the classroom but never the argument.
