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Many People Speak Out
Links to websites, books, and quotes that condemn public school.

Selected Websites

Gentle Wind School Newsletters
www.homeschoolmedia.com/gems/contents.phtml

School Survival . net
www.school-survival.net

John Taylor Gatto
www.johntaylorgatto.com

Nobel Prize Winners Hate School
learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html

Selected Quotes

“Most of us would say we love to learn, but we hated school.” – Derrick Jensen

“Even students who are getting good grades often hate school.” – applest.com

"School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence." – H.L. Mencken

"I have not the least doubt that school developed in me nothing but what was evil and left the good untouched." – Edvard Grieg

"The most serious and irreparable psychological harm done to people in this society was incurred in school during their so-called educational experiences." – Gentle Wind School Newsletter

"The premise upon which mass compulsion schooling is based is dead wrong. It tries to shoehorn every style, culture, and personality into one ugly boot that fits nobody." – John Taylor Gatto

"[T]he result desired by the state is a wholly different one from that desired by parents, guardians, and pupils." – Lester Frank Ward, 1897

"Public school is fundamentally flawed. The flaw is that public school is a bureaucracy that is distantly controlled by a centralized bureaucracy.  Public school is controlled by bureaucracies, not people; thus, public school is always going to be horrible. Even if public school had better education methods and had students successfully learn many sustainable wisdoms and skills and had students get higher test scores, public school would still be horrible and fundamentally flawed." – Z. Elrick

"Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." – Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

"In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician's major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success." - Walter Williams

"Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities." – Seymour Papert

"Education in America today functions exactly as it did in ancient Rome. It is a system of prestige and vanity and has no other purpose." – Gentle Wind School Newsletter

"Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school." – Ivan Illich

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child." – George Santayana

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." – Albert Einstein

"All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education." – Sir Walter Scott

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." – Mark Twain

"My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school." – Margaret Mead

"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality." – Beatrix Potter

"I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas." – Agatha Christie

"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." – George Bernard Shaw

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein

"I hated school so intensely. It interfered with my freedom" – Sigrid Undset

"There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison." – William Glasser

"There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school" – George Bernard Shaw

More Quotes Against Public School
www.school-survival.net/quotes.php

“Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child.” – Charles Handy

“Education is not a product: mark, diploma, job, money in that order; it is a process, a never ending one.” – Bel Kaufman

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." – Albert Einstein.  Public school standardized tests may be scored, but the scores do not count for indicating hardly anything about education.  Standardized testing is predominantly used as a witch hunt in which children, school districts, states, and nations are the victims.  Furthermore, standardized testing distracts and impedes a useful education.  While there is standardized testing, children are forced to be burdened with trifles and artificial concerns.  While there is standardized testing, children are not learning how to be a benefit to society and nature.  Thus, society and nature deteriorates.  Count the rate of species extinction, count the rate that natural resources are being depleted, count how many acres of rainforest are lost per day, and count how many people are starving in the world:  these are some genuine signs of how harmful standardized testing, report card grades, and public school are in general to children, society, and nature.

Selected You Tube videos

"You Gotta Go To School"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BKXi6OhhhY
The video expresses that today public school is not meaningful, uplifting, nor liberating; public school merely tries to prepare people for being trapped in dreary robotic jobs.

"History of compulsory schooling"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uexMYBkfCic
The video shows the history of compulsory schooling. It starts 200 years ago with Prussian absolutism. There, under the regime of a dictatorship, compulsory schooling was invented and implemented on a massive scale. America copied the Prussia. Thus, today, the same system is found in America's public schools. Following, the video advocates choice in education such as private schools or homeschooling. Parents should take the initiative to decide what education their children should get, not a state or national government.

“Sir Ken Robinson – Do schools kill creativity?”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&feature=channel
Sir Ken Robinson says yes, that throughout the world, public schools kill creativity. All kids are born highly creative. However, schools are so focused on narrow academics and single correct answers that kids are being educated to be uncreative. Academics are important; however they are not more important than the arts. A school that fosters creativity would emphasize art, music, and dance as much as it would emphasize language, math, and science.

"The perils of the teacher-centered classroom"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz2B1nNNUeY
There is no question that the typical public school classroom regimen has largely caused today's society to be so anti-social, boring, wasteful, and destructive. Since when does a dictating teacher set an example of desirable social relations? There is just no question that the typical public school classroom regimen has largely caused today's teenagers to be so bored and depressed that it leads many to destructive and self-destructive behaviors. 

"No Child Left Behind: Truths and Consequences"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSTzLILQx3c
The video includes teachers and students who speak out against the state standardized testing.  For instance, the state standardized tests do not prepare kids for any job nor are the tests relevant to anything in life.  State standardized tests are a waste of time, money, and effort.  The current state standardized tests are forcing students to be stupid and are destroying public education.  "Testing improves education the same way that bombing promotes democracy," quote by Steve Cohn, professor of education at Tufts University.

You-Tube "George Carlin - Owners of America" from Life is Worth Losing, 2005
www.movietranscriptions.com/319043_George_Carlin....
Native Americans lived freely and sustainably and kept America beautiful and pristine. Then, civilization stole America from the Native Americans and established corporations to destroy America with shopping malls.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0OJEFlq7A
www.movietranscriptions.com/319043_George_Carlin...
Furthermore, civilization's rampant corporate powers control America’s current public school system.  Corporations don’t want smart kids.  That’s why they keep kids stupid.  They only want people who are mindlessly obedient to excessively watch TV, shop, eat, drive, and work at dreary pigeonholed jobs, which are managed by the bureaucracies of globalized corporations.

"Dismantle Public Education"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swl8frWSNEQ
The video explains that public school does not currently teach diversity. Also, the video explains how the government has a monopoly on raising children while children attend today's public schools. Public Schools should be gotten rid of to encourage parents to retake responsibility of their own children.  

Selected Discussion Board

Newsletter / Discussion Board on Public School
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/newsletter/index.htm

Selected Books

The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto, 2000.
www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

Walking on Water: Reading and Writing Revolution, Derrick Jensen, 2004.
“Most of us would say we love to learn, but we hated school. Why is that?” – Derrick Jensen

Endgame, by Derrick Jensen, 2006.

The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling, by Rachel Gathercole (2007). 

Links:

Imagine a Beneficial School
40 ways a school can be a benefit to children, society, and nature.

The Beneficial Alternative to Public School
Homeschooling.

Back to The Problems of Public School.

Back to All About School.

© 2008-2010 Pocket Pumpkin Press, last updated April 2010
Three Oaks, Michigan, USA