Gatto is certainly in favor of learning, but he feels the routine and lack of intellectual challenge found in the institution of school gets in the way of learning. We used to use an excerpt from this essay as part of an entrance placement test at SHU, so I used to encounter the responses from quite a few entering freshman when they were exposed to this basic idea. Many students didn't see the difference between "education" and "schooling."

Full disclosure: my eight-year-old son is home-schooled, and we'll be sending our four-year-old to a half-day Montessori preschool this fall.

Dennis G. Jerz
Jerz's Literacy Weblog

It is evident that schooling is to bring the masses to a position where they can be exploitable, or, to be kinder, where they can manage to work to the benefit of those who set up the structure and have something left over to feed themselves. School prepares kids for the type of society they live in: a "long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement" at some mundane task for five days a week, eleven and a half months a year.

Homeschooling is a wonderful option, for those who can afford to have someone take on the role of full-time 'tutor' , for those who have the knowledge themselves to impart to their pupils, for those who, in short, are themselves educated. What do we do to educate (in an empowering way) the children of the rest?