
John Taylor Gatto's radical treatise on public education, a bestseller for 25 years, continues to advocate for the unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in a changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it's poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years.
John Gatto was a schoolteacher for 30 years. He resigned in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times upon receiving the New York State Teacher of the Year award. He has been a fierce advocate for self-directed "guerrilla" education for decades, and is also the author of Weapons of Mass Instruction and The Underground History of American Education. John Gatto lived in New York State.