Analysis Of John Taylor Gatto 's ' Against School ' Essay

John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School” is his own portrayal on the educational system he perceived throughout his time teaching, observing the “schooling” method, and contrasting the differences between education and the “laboratories of experimentation on young minds” known to Gatto as the Standard educational system. Education is only an acceptable means of “learning” through a “forced schooling” method, which in turn; creates a method of maintaining a controlled society, and developing “role oriented” citizens. The labeling of students in an “assembly line” format provides the country with set statistics based on education profiling, as what Prussia experienced in the 1820’s. The division of children via test rankings, class rankings, and categorizing a set statistic for those of a “higher intelligence” and a “lower intelligence” throughout the years of schooling; limiting or enhancing the amount of education individuals may or may not attain, thus creating what Gatto explains to be not education, but “a threshold of boredom; Schooling”. Gatto’s expression of “boredom” comes from our society’s dependency on a system of “thoughtless entertainment” venues such as television, computers, and cellphones. This includes quickly abandoned, meaningful life accommodations such as friendships and marriages; according to Gatto. Our blind education has resulted in a “consumer- based society” dependent on the Marketing system. In turn; this provides an “unconscious” society of…