I would have loved to have been at the ceremony in 1991 when John Taylor Gatto received the New York State Teacher of the Year award. Here is a synopsis of his acceptance speech. I’m sure those at the ceremony were a little surprised by what he had to say.

“These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will.”

1. Confusion – “Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach dis-connections.”

2. Class Position – “The lesson of numbered classes is that everyone has a place in the pyramid and there is  no way out of your class except by number magic.”

3. Indifference – “I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do.”

4. Emotional Dependency – “Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school… unless school authorities say they do.”

5. Intellectual Dependency – “Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. … Successful children do the thinking I assign them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm.”

6. Provisional Self-Esteem – “I teach that a kid’s self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.”

7. One Can’t Hide – “I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. … Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents.”

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking the schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that powerful interests cannot afford to let it happen.”

Gatto concluded his 1991 speech with “School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”

For the entire content of that speech, as well as one he gave in 1991 titled “The Psychopathic School” upon receiving the New York City Teach of the Year award, as well as additional chapters, read the book, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.