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Getting Off the Conveyor Belt

Do kids need more school? Not so, say education innovators Gary North and John Taylor Gatto.


By Shawn Cohen and Joseph Moss

Traditional schooling hurts kids. This realization caused a New York State Teacher of the Year to leave the public school system after serving for nearly three decades. John Taylor Gatto is his name and in 2001, he published The Underground History of American Education and has written extensively on the need for parents to abandon the traditional school setting in favor of true education for their kids.

The Real Value of "School"

According to Gatto, it is essential for parents to differentiate between “school” and “education.” In an essay that appeared in Harper’s several years ago, Gatto wrote that “success” and “school” are often viewed as synonymous but “historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense.” In other words, attending a good school doesn’t guarantee that a student will make it big in their career. The environment alone doesn’t ensure positive growth or development.

Gatto and others like him are encouraging parents to pursue a “leadership model” of education heavily rooted in mentorships and internships. The problem with school these days is that it’s institutional—students are required to conform to a system that, in Gatto’s words, is merely a “twelve-year wringer” that kids are forcibly squeezed through. Some have called the modern system of schooling a “conveyor belt” system where children are put in at one end and human resource units come out at the other end, all being indoctrinated and trained identically.

Leadership Education

“Find a great leader in history and you’ll find an individualized education,” writes Oliver DeMille, author of A Thomas Jefferson Education.1 Instead of fitting into a set of prescribed courses of study, children on the leadership track take ownership of what they learn. They take in information—like history, science, and math—at their own pace and end up loving to learn because they are not forced to assimilate information before they are ready.

According to Gatto, the most famous of the founding fathers pursued a leadership education that enabled them to found a nation at an unusually young age. He writes that “when I was a schoolboy… I learned with a shock that the men who won our revolution were barely out of high school by the standards of our time.”2 It’s true: Alexander Hamilton was 20, Aaron Burr was 21, and Lafayette was 19. Yet these men had been prepared to lead through a mentor-based training module unlike what most students experience today.

Active Education or Passive Schooling?

Again, Gatto reveals the integral ingredients to a leadership education. “Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the large world are always superior to those who are passively schooled,” he writes.3 This means that it is essential for students not only to learn the theoretical subjects of education but that they should also take part in practical learning opportunities, like internships.

Dr. Gary North, a prolific author and former college professor, has seen for decades that there is a better way to earn a degree than to simply attend a college campus. In an essay several years ago, he wrote:

“Instead of going to college full time at 18, a wise student will seek employment by a company on a part-time basis and take his college work by examination. His college degree will cost him $12,000 instead of costing his parents $35,000 to $140,000. He can pay his own way through school. He can gain his independence at 18. “He will be trained on the job by people who know how to make a buck. He will have a four-year to six-year head start on his peers. At age 22 or 23, he will have a college degree and work experience that will impress a would-be employer. He will be in a position to rise in the existing chain of command because his employer knows he is now a marketable commodity in the business world. The employer will have to pay him more money.”

At CollegePlus!, students are departing from the age-segregated grade scale system as well as the problematic method of studying multiple subjects simultaneously. In the traditional system, students are constantly forced to change gears (from English, to history, to math), and many find themselves lost in all of the facts as their brains fight to assimilate the information.

Rather, CollegePlus! students employ a focused approach to their coursework where one subject is studied intently for an extended period of time. Then, after mastering one subject, they move on to the next.

The question every parent must ask is simple: are my children learning how to learn or are they simply learning to conform to a system? Encourage them to think about life and about their ability to learn, as the founding fathers did. Who knows, there may be another George Washington in your house, just waiting for his chance to take the lead.

1DeMille, Oliver. A Thomas Jefferson Education. Cedar City, UT: George Wythe College Press, 2006. 30

2Gatto, John Taylor. The Underground History of American Education. New York: Oxford Village Press, 2006. 25

3Ibid. xv

Shawn Cohen is the editor of Acceleration, CollegePlus! Public Relations Manager, and a CollegePlus! coach. Joseph Moss recently finished a yearlong internship at CollegePlus! and now resides on the East Coast where he works as a CollegePlus! coach.

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