Gatto blames the society for the structure of the educational system as a daily
Gatto blames the society for the structure of the educational system as a daily
With that responsibility, the role of the teacher within this structure has become paramount to the type of citizen-produced by the school system. In some ways, the teacher serves as a middleman between the higher-ups that govern the school system and the students in a transmission process, but they also have the ability to transform the ways in which students internalize normative ideologies. It is for the latter reason, in large part, that I have the desire to become an educator. Prior to the start of this course, I saw the teacher as a…
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.…
Gatto uses the phrase “two million happy home-schooled individuals” when regarding those whose education was taught outside of a basic set curriculum, rather than the more common “boring” terminology. Gatto has made a point to express a happy individual as one who can have a more open-minded or self-taught education, along with the amount that one can accomplish in this manner; thus putting to rest the thought “do we really need forced…
Countless students and teachers go to school every day and work very hard to meet what is asked of each of them. Teachers work more than 40 hours a week, especially when there are events going on throughout the school year. Students go to class to earn an “A,” not to learn what the teacher is teaching the class due to the fact that students were taught to contently earn a letter grade in that class. However, teachers are not at fault either because the school board and administrators give the teachers a timeline of all the curriculum the students must learn to a certain point in time of each marking period. In “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, he describes how numerous students and teachers go to school and they are just dullness is so…
In today’s society, education equals freedom. Without putting forth more effort to properly educate children, the children will be easy prey for any person trying to persuade them. While many people do talk about the educational crisis in America, there is no effort from those people to change the situation. Benjamin Barber delves deeper into the problem in his article “America Skips School.” Barber explains exactly how American children have become intellectually inferior and supplies ideas to fix the situation.…
John Taylor Gatto is an award winning educator who has taught in New York public schools for over twenty years. Three separate times he was named New York City teacher of the year, and in 1991 was named New York State teacher of the year. He also has written such works as: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, A Different Kind of Teacher, The Underground History of American Education, and Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. In Gatto’s article from Harper’s magazine in 2006 entitled “Against School”, Gatto argues that the “real purpose of mandatory education is to turn children into servants. ”(155)…
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-…
Education Accommodation For everyone to get an equal opportunity when it comes to their education, many believe that schools should accommodate its students. Students are typically taught at one level, which should not be the case considering there are many different learning techniques. In school the main focus is for students to have an equal learning experience. In Acting Out Culture, many authors tell readers how education should accommodate to every student because of the different ways to learn.…
Gatto wonders if children actually need forced schooling, which means that you go to six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year for 12 years. Towards the end of the essay, Gatto explains that about modern schooling and how it teaches to be your own leader in the real world. If you want to be a leader when you grow up, you need to learn how to be challenged in many different ways. In the essay Gatto says, "that if I was bored it was my fault and no one…
Lyndon B. Johnson once said that “Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.” Education has always been a way for children to expand their knowledge, and expand their minds as well. However, it has been brought to the attention of many, that education is now a way to force ideals down the throats of knowledge thirsty children. In trying to fit in standardized tests, teachers and schools have lost sight of the true purpose of education: to teach young people the rights and responsibilities of citizens.…
“They had hoped to replace current methods – characterized by teacher led “telling” and student recitation – with curriculum packages that used “discovery” ”inquiry,” and inductive reasoning as methods of learning; the rationale was that students would find the field more interesting and would retain longer what they learned if they “figured out,” through carefully designed exercises or experiments (Ravich 324.” This method is utilized today in America’s school systems. She goes on to argue the point that the U.S. Commissioner in Education is quoted as saying that “more time, talent, and money than ever before in history have been invested in pushing educational knowledge, and in the next decades we may expect more significant developments (Ravich 324). This is concrete evidence the government was fully engaged in bettering our school system. Finally she explains the loss of motivation to continue funding America’s education because of racial inequality by her statement “No matter how well or how badly schools taught reading or writing or history, poor black children still lived in slums, black unemployment was still double the white rate, and black poverty remained high.…
In the short story “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto, the protagonist, Victor has a crush on a girl named Teresa. Teresa was in Victor's French class. The main conflict was that Victor truly wanted to date Teresa, but he didn’t know how to ask her. Although Victor didn’t know French, he put his hand up when the teacher asked if anyone knew French. He did it so that maybe Teresa would notice him. The lesson that Victor learned was to not lie.…
Diane Ravitch and John Gatto both set up their arguments to have a message mirroring each other, in that the current system that schools have in order to teach kids is failing and needs to be refined. Diane Ravitch approaches this view in contrast to Gatto. She builds her argument around the solution that children should be educated in such a way that sets them up for citizenhood during and after high school. Gatto’s approach takes a different view in which children are responsible for their own education and it should be left up to the individual students on whether or not they wish to “take away an education rather than merely receive a schooling,” (Gatto, page 115). Both build up to this belief through their separate experiences within the schooling system.…
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…
A cycle exists between the achievements of the students, efficiency of the teachers, and school funding provided by the government. A school cannot persist to act as an institution for educating children without the necessary…