Joh John Taylor Gatto's Against Public Schools

Public education has been the subject of scrutiny as far back as I can remember. Overcrowding, tenure, one-size-fits-all approaches to teaching. All topics that you’ve probably seen debated at one point or another in a web article or on your local news. Perhaps it is because so many of us have experienced public schooling that we so readily form opinions on the various aspects of education. After all, twelve years can feel like an eternity. Twelve years, that’s around 15 percent of the average life expectancy of 79(according to the National Vital Statistics Report). Six classes a day, five days a week, 175-180 days a year, we spend our adolescence and early adulthood. Surely, this massive investment of time and effort is an integral part of developing our innate abilities? Or does the answer lie elsewhere? …show more content…
In 2003, Gatto penned the short story titled “Against Schools”, a bleak look into the inner workings of our school system. Gatto argues that formal education as it currently stands is a tool of populace control. Designed to inhibit personal growth and outward thinking, the K-12 format produces drones to keep the societal gears shifting, at the cost of individuality. Adults are stunted in a form of perpetual arrested development; their only purpose being to cement the status quo (par. 11). Gatto’s musing is almost terrifyingly dystopian, yet hits closer to home than I would like to admit. The American school system is an outdated relic that needs to be brought up to the standards of today’s modern technology and readily accessible information; stripped of its industrial