A former teacher, Gatto left the classroom the same year he was named New York State Teacher of the Year. He announced his decision in a letter to the Wall Street Jounal titled "I Quit, I Think". Using anecdotes gathered from thirty years of teaching, alongside documentation, Gatto presents his view of modern compulsion schooling as opposed to genuine education, describing a "conflict between systems which offer physical safety and certainty at the cost of suppressing free will, and those which offer liberty at the price of constant risk". Gatto argues that educational strategies promoted by government and industry leaders for over a century included the creation of a system that keeps real power in the hands of very few people.