History, Politics, And Sociology Of Education

In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto criticizes America’s system of schooling children, arguing that the whole system is bad and unfixable. In the majority of the essay Gatto relies on personal anecdotes, historical examples that do not correspond with modern day society, and bold unsubstantiated claims. Due to this, instead of convincing parents to take their children out of school and rethink our societies schooling structure, he just leaves the reader confused over what the problems he’s criticizing truly are.

Education has come a long way evolving from wealthy families teaching their children at home to public schools where every race, religion, and status gets an education. Along the way there have been key people and events which shaped the way education plays a part in all our lives. The following paper will expound on a few of those cases. The four people and events contributing to the basis of this paper are Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, John Dewey, and the court case of Brown vs. Brown.

America used to thrive on its education system and that is why it became one of the greatest nations in the world. Education is the backbone of our country, and we must give high priority to improve its current condition. Unfortunately, in the past couple of decades, the education system has been regressing. It has been on the decline and not as effective. The quality of education in a country has an influence on GDP growth, social cohesion and social well being in general. In order to improve the quality of education in the U.S., the following must be taken into consideration: the structure of our education system must be reanalyzed, we must compare and contrast our education system to systems of other countries with higher rankings, and finally, there must be a solution.

In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto satirically poses several questions concerning the purpose, structure, function, and need of the current educational system in the United States. Utilizing anecdotes from his thirty years of teaching experience and extensive research on the historical origins of many modern school customs to justify his tantalizing arguments, Gatto rhetorically inquires about the true motives and rationale behind an outdated institution system which continually steals more than a dozen years of precious life from millions of Americans in the pursuit of furthering a prejudicial class-separation bound together by conformity.

In this essay the topic of discussion is the social values in American society in the last fifty years and how it has changed the face of education in the United States. Along with social issues that schools face. Some changes that happened in the American society in the last fifty years that has changed the face of education are laws being updated, schools are being filled with different cultures and races. A law that was formed to do with education was No Child Left Behind act (NCLB). This law was passed in 2002 to update the act of elementary and secondary education act of 1965 (Klein, 2015). This act was updated to close the gap of achievement between the minority and poor to the ones that are more advanced. Before this act was created

The Ultimate goal of Education system is one of the most frequently asked questions from all stakeholders and their answer mainly depends on their different prospective. David Labree (1997) in his article “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goal” shows how the three main purposes, which interact and interfere sometimes, have shaped the American education goals, throughout out its practices and policies, democratic equality, social efficiency and Social mobility. On the same track, Nickols and Cuenca (2014) found in their work “Two Roadmaps, One Destination: The Economic Progress Paradigm in Teacher Education Accountability in Georgia and Missouri” That teacher preparation programs influence by what they called “the economic progress paradigm” (p. 457), which is the social efficiency that Labree (1997) had pointed out. Considering the fact that, which of the three schooling purposes is the most important, I believe the social mobility to be given number one priority, and to be considered among the other two that can benefit, both individuals and public.

The American Education System is not meeting the needs of current students. If anything, the system is not building a sturdy foundation for the future working class. Schools have existed for many years and every period they have worked differently. However, every school’s main purpose was to educate students to be efficacious later in life. Modern day schools are corrupting students with added pressure, standardized tests, making less accommodations for special education students, not following laws, and take away individualism from the students’. The students of modern times are the people of our future and the future does not look too bright with the current American Education System.

The greatest country in the world still has problems evenly distributing education to its youth. The articles I have read for this unit have a common theme regarding our education system. The authors illustrate to the reader about the struggles in America concerning how we obtain and education. Oppression, politics, racism, and socioeconomic status are a few examples of what is wrong with our country and its means of delivering a fair education to all Americans.

John Taylor Gatto, who was a teacher at the public school for twenty-six years, and the writer of the essay “Against School” that first appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2001, censures the American Educational System in his argumentative essay. Gatto argues that the demands of schooling are essential problems. Gatto shows some positive examples, and models of the ‘success without forced modern schooling’, and he insists that historically forced schooling is not related to intellectual and financial success. James Bryant Conant encourages reader has interests in modern schools, which is the result of the ‘industrial revolution in nineteenth-century’. Moreover, Alexander Inglis’s study of modern schooling in the Gatto’s essay supports and helps the idea of John Gatto’s writing. Gatto develops his idea compared with “schooling” and “educating” based on personal teacher experiences, and demonstrates why the American Educational System needs a better solution, which is “educating” for a bright future to children, and descendants.

Historically, American education has really served as both economic and political needs, which verbalized the function of education. Nowadays, sociologists and educators discuss the various roles of education. Many would probably make the assumption that without argument that adequate professional instruction in the education arena is not wholly theoretical, but does involve a particular amount of practical work. The main query as to the latter is the goal with which it shall be lead. With that said, this essay will examine the impact the Sociological theories, Functionalism, Conflict, and Interactionism regarding their impact on education.

Firstly, the book pinpoints on the high levels of inequality associated with our Education System. Markedly, the author was inspired by the experiences that a group of ten of his students faced as they progressed through the system. Paradoxically, a look at the American Education System depicts a system with many entry points that serves the interest of every child in a balanced way.

Education is considered as the main resource that provides for the good health in every community. Education is a treasure which provides, knowledge, and the opportunities to move up into a more comfortable life. The problem sometimes with this treasure is how it is distributed into every class in a society. Where constantly the most necessitate residents do not have a full access to this treasure of education. In the article Standards for What? Accountability for Whom? Gives a long-detailed explanation of many objections and obstacle in education present in the US. This article was written by Pedro Noguera a professor in the New York University “At the Graduate School

Social, cultural and political changes have immense influences on the education sector. This has been witnessed from the onset African and Asian immigration into the United States from 1954 till present times. During the last quarter of the 20th century, immigrants to the US were denied education and those who received education did so under great threats. The dominant view of society about immigrants during this period was extremely negative and rejecting; thereby not deserving of an education. Currently, the education has been made affordable to everybody due to changing atmosphere of unprecedented social change. In education, this change resulted in the legal dismantling of segregated education for African American children (Collins, 2008). As African American children integrated the schools in the United States, they came to school with the stigma of slavery and the negative attitudes held by the agents of the educational institution. Attitudes and held perceptions were the catalyst for constructions such as biased assessment and the retardation paradigm. From these constructions emerged practices in special education that held large numbers of African American students captive in not only the educational milieu, but also limited their work potential. For this reason, the sociopolitical landscape as a context for curriculum, instruction, and assessment has continued to play a significant role in the education

Since the establishment of America’s first schools, the American people have disagreed not only about what the purpose of school is, but also about what schools should teach. Initially schools were supposed to “prepare men to vote intelligently and prepare women to train their sons properly. Moral training based on the Protestant Bible would produce virtuous, well-behaved citizens [who knew not only] the three R’s but [also] the general principles of law, commerce, money, and government” (Kaestle, 1983, p. 5). During the 1780’s educational theorists began calling for reform and in 1785 Massachusetts law

The sociology of education is a condition of human survival. This means education is a social institution through which a community of people and people in the world teach children the basic related to school and learning. The knowledge, learning skills,normal and accepted behavior or beliefs in a group of people. Every nation has some form of teaching though their individual systems with the major factors affecting the useful valuable supplies and money that are used to support those systems in different Émile Durkheim and Max Weber were known as the fathers of education in sociology. Émile Durkheim a French sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher, who started the academic discipline and the principal of modern social science. Durkheim was also known as the father of sociology. Max Weber a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist. His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research. This was considered the beginning of sociology of education.