Thursday 21st of August '08 6pm: Open Source Learning Future Salon with John Taylor Gatto at SAP in Palo Alto Please RSVP: http://snurl.
John Taylor Gatto's ended his teaching career after 30 years, while being New York City Teacher of the Year for the third time and New York State Teacher of the year for the second time with on op-ed in the Wall Street Journal writing, that he was no longer willing to hurt children.
Since then he has written several books. Examples:
- Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling
- The Underground History of American Education
When I talked to him on the phone, he was just putting the finishing touches on his latest book out on the first of October: Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
Doc Searls as well as Jerry Michalski pointed him out to me years ago. Here is what Jerry wrote in 2003 about John's Harper's Bazar article:
Gatto's in Harper's
Doc first turned me on to John Taylor Gatto's ideas years ago by steering me
toward an essay Gatto had published in The Sun. I think it was his
Six-Lesson Schoolteacher (upgraded to seven, then eight: forgetfulness,
bewilderment and confusion, assigned classism, indifference, emotional
dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self-esteem and the "glass
house effect," a total lack of privacy). I've been a fan ever since, and a
questioner not only of compulsory education, which Gatto convincingly
eviscerates, but also of our society's other compulsions.
When I told Jerry that our next Future Salon would be with John Taylor Gatto, he said: You know that he is my hero, when is it? I'll be there. Doc's reaction was: This is great. Let me know when, if I am in Santa Barbara, I will come up for it.
You too should 'come up for it' if you are around: Open Source Learning Future Salon with John Taylor Gatto Thursday August 21st at SAP in Palo Alto.
Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation followed by questions and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross or Cafeteria depending on number of RSVPs. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVP so we know how many people to expect.