John Taylor Gatto: "Angry Every Day"

John Taylor Gatto

"God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day." (Psalm 7: 11)

John Taylor Gatto is one of the most vetted and sought-after experts in public education.

He slogged through thirty years of New York public schools, working in the elite and execrable  schools, all races, shapes, and sizes.

His article, "Against School", witty summary of his larger study "The Underground History of American History, exposed the statist agenda of pushing hordes of immigrant children into socialization plants, grilling students into becoming lock-step consumers who would purchase without purpose.

School, to Gatto, is not about students learning, nor about feeding the inner depths of man searching for meaning.

The public school has brought out the worst in our kids, Gatto contends in book after speech after article. "Schooling"has replaced real education, and our students are suffering for it.

At the beginning of his well-received piece "Against School", Gatto admitted that he went to work as a public school teacher "mad every day."

He was made at the purposive incompetence. He despised the disrespect which he and his students had to endure on a daily basis. He loathed the chopped-up versions of classical literature which were designed and implemented merely to help students pass a bunch of stultifying standardized tests.

I loved reading "Against School" while earning my teaching credential at Cal State Long Beach.

I should have heeded the ominous yet overt protestations of this class-act educator.

Public education is ruthlessly anti-human, anti-spirit — at least to the extent that one can accept Gatto's heated rhetoric in light of his chronic frustrations. Students are housed and pushed and prodded in something akin to a Kafkasesque nightmare, one which the goals, the goads, and the goods are lost on students who are herded like angry goats into one stall after another, connecting and remembering nothing of their educational experiences.

I did not go to work for thirty years angry. Instead, I walked off of jobs where I got tired of banging my head against a wall or where the "leadership" at these schools grew weary of the unfounded and unjustified complaints lodged against me time and again.

Schooling is no longer a viable option for preparing anyone for anything. Mr. Gatto signaled that to me long before I ever crashed and burned in my first student teaching assignment. I was not a bad teacher, but I was trying to make sense of the bureaucratic and polarized insanity endemic to public schools.

Even the graduation ceremonies seem to be turning into trite affairs — what can the young graduates of every year really boast about? What have they learned that will advance their opportunities? I can testify as a French and US History teacher in local schools that many students are not really learning anything. The pacing — rather, rushing plans — are  ruse  of gleeful bureaucratic torture which does not one thing to enhance the well-being of well-wishing of the younger generation. The Ipods and Iphones of techie high school/college dropouts has outpaced anything that public school reform can offer.

John Taylor Gatto respected real life, real experience, and eternal verities which force us to look at the things, the thoughts, and the thick of it all with enquiring minds and hearts. I loved reading about the challenging exploits which he foisted upon his students, giving them an overwhelming taste of the world that could be managed not adulterated, and could not scare anyone who possesses enough self-respect to take up the highs and lows and shove past failure.

Education is the life-long process, one which engaged the all of man, one which a  public school seems more intent on crushing or cramming into a corner.

"Angry every day" describes my own experience as a public school teacher, complete with parents and students who felt helpless and hapless in the face of a cold and distant bureaucracy that care about raking taxpayer dollars and providing lavish pensions and perks for all politically connected staff.

"Angry every day" describes every teacher who ever wanted to teach, but because of unruly kids — or adults — never could.

"Angry every day" described me from the South Bay to South Gate, trying with no avail to make sense of the culture of insanity and failure which has dotted and demoted our public schools. Students more tech-savvy than the previous generation are also getting mad, refusing to tolerate the meandering mediocrities of tenure and academic sclerosis which has taken advantage  of previously quiet and unassuming youth.

I applaud John Taylor Gatto for walking off the job after thirty years. I am certain that he is teaching more people about the facts and faith of life than he ever could have done as a teacher working in every P.S. in NYC.