Analysis Of Dude Where's My Job By John Taylor Gatto

Superior Essays
In “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why,” John Taylor Gatto discuss how schools are just a prison for children to dumb them down and destroy any possible for geniuses to be created. In “Dude, Where’s My Job?” Walter Benn Michaels discusses that the social standing of our student determine how high the degree we can puress. In "The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society" Jonathan Kozol explains the problems and difficulties that the illiterates in our society have today. Education is precious and wanting that knowledge is the first step to gaining it. Forcing it onto people will not help our society gain intelligent people, only people that can't think for themselves.
Gatto says that the “definition of public schools
…show more content…
Gatto explain that school are “laboratories of experimentation on young minds” (232) that builds the students habits to be integrated into society, but if the students can break away from the status quo they can become geniuses. School are factories that produce simple-minded people to than be integrated into an industry. Many people in the past have not gone through our schooling system and are more successful than the common student. Our students are smart but we suppress their intelligence by placing them into the institution called school. There are students in high school that have advanced farther than the common college school student. College student that are better than adults that are actually working in the industry. Those students have broken away from the laboratories and advanced on their own to become …show more content…
Gatto explains how schools aren't the problem but “forced schooling” (227). Students are forced into a loop of mandatory schooling for 12 years. 12 years of boredom and torture. Sitting in a classroom setting keeping quiet for hours on a day. It torture for young minds. The short breaks in between doesn't help them much. Schools and education is a good idea, but not forced schooling. There is said to be a 75% of increase of homeschooling in the past 8 years. Home schooling is what we should encourage. Or at least a form of it. The school system we have now is based on grades and numbers. I know for an instance that after I finish a test I tend to forget everything in that particular section. Home schooler emphasis on mastery and not grades. Learning something and retaining it is always better than forcing it into your brain and forgetting it

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In John Taylor Gatto’s essay, “Against School,” Gatto writes about his perspective on the American public school system that he believes is not as beneficial as it is expected to be. He begins by explaining that teachers and students are bored inside classrooms simply because students are not taught better qualities such as critical thinking or curiosity. Instead, they are “schooled” rather than “educated” so students only learn how to conform. Gatto goes on to describe the goals of school as, “making good people, making good citizens, and making each person their personal best” (117). He later comments on Inglis’ interpretation of the functions of modern schooling.…

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America’s education system is no longer one of the best in the world. Americans may act like education is the most important asset a person can earn. However, our country is falling way behind many Asian and European countries because children are lacking education in almost every subject. Benjamin R. Barber, author of “America Skips School”, explains what really is wrong with our education in in his essay. The article explains what is wrong with America’s educational system because we are focusing on other inputs but, not school.…

    • 1162 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Children from the early 1900s have been taught to learn in several ways. In the article “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto tells us how our school system needs improvement so we don't just go for a schooling but an education. Gatto also refers to the American schooling system as a joke and believes each kid can reach their true potential by taking risks and making their own…

    • 69 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In multiple places in his essay, he writes about how school is dumbing the society down, essentially “factories in which raw products are to be shaped and fashioned…” (Cubberley in Public School Administration). In another place, his anger is directed towards modern economy, where he expresses that schools don’t make the next Albert Einstein, but your average…

    • 1291 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The article the John Taylor Gatto "Against School" mentions that in his 30 years could see that the American school system is supplied as a bored child program of learning. I noticed when she asks children always gave the same answer and that work was absurd, that did not make sense, do they already knew. They said they wanted to do something real, not just be sitting all the time. They said teachers did not seem to know much of what they taught and clearly were not interested in learning more. Gatto could see not only in children but also in teachers.…

    • 210 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Referring back to a time in history when formal schooling did not exist, he argues that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, some of the most respected and brilliant people in this nation, were “not products of a school system”(2). But did they initiate their educational journey? No, even Gatto admits that “someone taught them, to be sure”(2). Just because formal education was not available does not mean children developed brilliant minds on their own, but instead learned from private mentors or adults. Even today, this mentor-student relationship can clearly be seen through homeschooling.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The school system has improved much in the last hundred-fifty years however it still has much to grow. Every parent wants their kids to have good grades and a good education, however a school can only do so much to in order for a child to be motivated to study. Most children will rather play, day dream, hang out, or goof off while in class just as Gregory did “ the main reason he went to class was to see Helene Tucker his crush. The school system has a hard time motivating kids to study, many of them don’t see their future selves past their next…

    • 735 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    John Taylor Gatto wrote “Against School” as a critique of the modern American education system. I agree with him that the system is flawed in that they do not teach many applicable concepts and they focus more on test taking than life skills such as leadership and initiative. I do not think, however, eliminating school altogether is the correct way to fix that though which is what Gatto suggests by asking “Do we really need school?” (273). I am convinced school is a good idea in theory, the current execution is just incorrect.…

    • 641 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The New York City Teacher of the Year, John Gatto, argues in “Against School- How public education cripples our kids today, and why” that the school system is taking advantage of the students mind. Gatto states that not everyone has to go to school in order to be successful, but the school system is enforcing that everyone must go to school. Education can be accomplished anywhere, according to Gatto, but schooling is tearing down peoples ability to think, also “dumbing down” society. John Gatto argues in “Against School-…

    • 1277 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to John Taylor Gatto, author of “Against Schools,” the public education system “cripples” the children of today. In the reading, Gatto claims that the public education system causes children to become bored with themselves, to obey the way of the school and its teachers, and lacks to teach them the ability to deal with issues that go on in the real world, outside of school. Moreover, Jean Anyon, author of “From Social Class and Hidden Curriculum of Work,” compares and contrasts the different social class school systems. This includes, working class, middle class, affluent professional, and executive elite. As Anyon goes into detail about the interactions in the classroom between the teachers and the students, it appears that the higher the social class, the better the education provided is.…

    • 867 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Public Education Failure

    • 1158 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The road to learning for American children (K-12) is currently filled with potholes and obstacles which prevent students from learning to their full potential and from progressing from one grade level to the next based on knowledge acquired. Many children are promoted each year despite their lack of meeting grade level expectations. I speak for my friend who barely graduated from high school and is now lucky to have a menial job working for Walmart. I speak for my cousin who could have used more help in school and now has five children, possibly destined to live off the state. I speak for my neighbor, a little girl in the fifth grade and only reading at a third grade level while the school refuses to provide extra help because she is progressing.…

    • 1158 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Most people believe that their opinions which have been formed throughout their life are accurate but in reality people based their opinions in what they we’re taught to believe in. People have a fear of knowing something because they’re afraid of being wrong. Many people have put a great amount of time and effort into their believes but confronted with their opinion being wrong people feel as though they have wasted a great deal of time and effort. The system of education is something the most of the public believes in is to make young children educated and ready for the world but that’s not true. The school setting is not what it seems and what is actually does is a horrible.…

    • 1370 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Against School,” John Gatto argues that the main purpose of public schools and the educational system in general is to produce a “manageable” populace. Gatto argues that the current educational system does this by slowly acclimating students into certain habits, confirming students to certain rules, and implementing a certain mindset into students that makes them respond well to authority. All of these things that Gatto argues adds up to make a system for training a complaint workforce. Firstly, schools achieve what Gatto states their purpose is by acclimating students to how factories are organized and what working in a factory is like. Secondary, schools also accomplish Gattos argument by restricting the class choices of students and…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Because of the number of students in a public school classroom, it is highly impossible for public schooled students to travel to historical places like homeschoolers can. Another advantage that homeschoolers have over public schoolers is the fact that they can graduate by the time they are sixteen, where in most cases, public schooled students must be eighteen. It is said that homeschooled students can graduate two years earlier than public schooled students. This accusation goes to show how much wasted time there is in public school. Things such as time in between classes, fire drills, or even having to wait for other students to finish their work when one student is already finished are all examples of why people who are educated from home get things done more productively.…

    • 1559 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Children go to school so they can learn and be taught a variety of subjects by a teacher qualified to teach them, alternatively to the lessons parents give their children when growing up at home. Parents however who decide to homeschool may say it is because they don 't trust the board of education to teach their children properly, but what they don 't realize is that they aren 't necessarily qualified unless they have a teacher 's license, even if it 's technically legal to teach your children without one. Teaching when your own personal views prevents children forming their own opinion does not help children, and that biased education starting at a young age can affect their interpretation of everything thereafter. When parents decide to…

    • 1496 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays