Quoted from the 1990 "New York's Teacher of the Year" acceptance speech by John Taylor Gatto.

____"We live in a time of great social crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of 19 industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. The world's narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of this commodity. If we didn't buy so many powdered dreams, the business would collapse-schools are an important outlet for this. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world-and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor."

____"Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world without precedent; nobody talks to them anymore. Without children and old people mixing in daily life, a community has no future and no past; only a continuous present. In fact the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way, a school is a major actor in this tragedy; just as it is a major actor in the widening gulf among social classes"

____"The truth is that schools really don't teach anything except how to obey orders."

After delivering the completed version of this speech he then resigned his position as an educator in the public school system. If you care about anything discussed here, or want to read more, click here to read the entire speech. The TechVoodoo Crew believes this to be a powerful speech and one that truely reflects our social environment, Kudos to Mr. Gatto.

Greetz to Rhino9, Hamish Ninjas, Technotronic, L0pht, FlashBack, POWERJUNKIE!!!, DarkTangent, Makavelli. Peace.

The Pascal Trio can go munch on some triscuits.

Now returning you to your regularly scheduled programming. Literally.