Be Self-Determined
You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else’s script.
— John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto spent much of his teaching and writing career thinking about what it means to be an educated person.
Gatto was a New York state high school teacher and three-time recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award. He had a nearly 30 year career teaching students who were among the poorest, most troubled students in New York.
This article is based on a talk called “What Is An Education”, where Gatto discusses the meaning of education and the characteristics and skills a person develops as a result.
Introduction
Despite being the recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award multiple times, Gatto was an outspoken critic of the New York public school system. His method of teaching more closely resembles homeschooling or unschooling of today. It was this unconventional teaching style that led him to quit his job.
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Children are often asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answers are anything from teacher to firefighter to astronaut to athlete.
The one thing all kids seem to want to be is an adult, free to do what they want, when they want.
And who could blame them?
As adults, we can stay up late at night watching TV, eat whatever they want whenever they want and basically don’t have to ask permission to do anything.
We are adults. We are free to make our own choices.
Kids don’t realize that our lives have even more constraints, and many of them we create for ourselves, sometimes with dire consequences.
For example, we feel locked into jobs we hate, pressured to maintain a fancy lifestyle we can’t afford, and this causes us to lose touch with the things that make us feel fulfilled and challenged in life.
Learning new things used to excite us and now, we don’t have the energy to pursue anything outside the day to day responsibilities of our jobs and family life.
Being Educated Requires Self-Knowledge
Today, we typically think of a formal education when we think about what it means to be an educated person.
But being well-educated involves self-knowledge that one needs to explore outside of the context of formal education. For example, acquiring a deeper knowledge of yourself, your history and family. Gatto emphasizes the importance of developing awareness of this “personal reality”.
Understanding Your Personal History
We are deeply influenced by our parents, who were influenced by their parents, and the pattern continues.
For that reason, Gatto emphasizes the importance of learning about your ancestors’, their lives, their goals and setbacks. When reflecting on your own life’s struggles and triumphs, do so in the context of your family, past and present. Think about yourself in the context of this network.
For example, who of your family, past and present, are you most in harmony with and what can you learn from them?
The purpose of this awareness is not to make excuses for having a poor lot in life. The purpose is to better navigate through your decision making process in life against the backdrop of other people and know when you are being steered in a direction that is against your interests.
Matching Yourself Up With The World
To know where you fit into the world of work requires learning about what the world of work has to offer you.
For example, as a child, you may have been aware of a handful of possible vocations: a mother, father, teacher, pastor, policeman, astronaut etc.
If you were passionate about creating quirky voices for your collection of sock puppets and staging performances for anyone who would watch, and didn’t know about voice acting was a job, then you might rule out voice acting as a future career.
If you apply your self-knowledge to this list of possible vocations, you have a better chance of finding a good fit.
Matching yourself with the world of work is an evolving process but you take a shortcut when you have consciously taken stock of the world of work and matched this up with self-knowledge.
Gatto says something we all intuitively understand but do not always practice. Money is not enough compensation to destroy yourself.
Self-knowledge plays a role in all decisions from deciding which school to attend, whether to attend college or get a job, what hobbies to pursue, which clubs to join, your friend group, romantic partner etc.
An Educated Person is Self-Determined
As Gatto puts it, a well-educated person writes their own script. In other words, an educated person aims to be self-determined.
This means possessing self-knowledge and knowing how one fits in the society as a whole. This includes the world of work, family, friendships and romantic relationships.
Your background, experiences, strengths and weaknesses are unlike no other person on earth.
No one else has this deep knowledge about you and your life, and therefore that makes you the most qualified person to make decisions for yourself.
An educated person is always learning about the world in the context of what they know about themselves, and strives to be self-determined.
References:
Podcast: “Mark of an Educated Man” from Doug Casey’s Take
Recorded Lecture: “What is an Education” by John Taylor Gatto
