Are our kids being educated, or are we all just getting schooled?
John Taylor Gatto was named New York State’s Teacher of the Year three years in a row from 1988-1990. Nearly 400,000 active teachers currently belong to the union in the Empire State, so even being mentioned in a conversation about the state’s best teachers has you breathing rarified air. Winning the award outright three straight years is an astounding singular achievement. Gatto was clearly at the pinnacle of his profession.
I stumbled onto the transcript of his third and final acceptance speech, and despite a quarter-century having passed, I find that he raised many of the same questions I have been wrestling with myself — and many I don’t think I had quite reached yet, or been quite bold enough to even ask myself.
I find that Gatto also echoes much of the stifling rigidity I struggled against as a kid growing up in the schools he’s describing. It echoes just as loudly the fears I’ve struggled as an adult to name when I think about sending my own kids into the same system of public schools — a fear that is only magnified by having kids of color.
