John Gatto Against School Essay

Amidst his essay, “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto conceptualizes that our academic facilities are designed as laboratories with sole purpose of producing uniformed consumers and stationary victims through compulsory schooling. A way of cyphering through the breeding grounds of our population and plucking the most desirable of species whom are pre-selected for specific positions. Moreover, insuring that our industrialization is grown through our children’s forced intellect. Ultimately, connecting Gatto to the concept that we should determine our education within ourselves, and not the one that was institutionalized upon us.

Carl Kaestle’s Pillars of the Republic focuses on the history of schooling. Kaestle writes about the common school movement in England, the Midwest, the South, and the American Northwest. Kaestle argues that common school systems, the tuition-based elementary school that served all children in the area, were continued and accepted due to the Americans’ commitment to the republican government, the assertiveness of native Protestant culture, and through the development of capitalism (1983, p. X).

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.

The meaning of the word education is defined as an enlightening experience in which one receives or gives some form of systematic instruction. This definition is further facilitated through John Taylor Gatto’s utilization of the literary techniques pathos and logos within his own article Against School. While this specific work strives to describe what an ideal education would include, it also presents a more encapsulated view of how flawed some contemporary schools have become to this very day: using fifth column determination and other techniques to suppress student creative ability and efface motivation within students.

To furthermore explain his reasoning, he rhetorically questioned his own hypothesis of there being a problem in our system. “What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up” (Gatto 5). “Do we really need school” is the question he asks the reader. By doing this he made the reader rethink about the compulsory schooling students have to go through to be “successful” in life. Gatto questions why we have to go to school, “six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve

John Gatto’s “Against School” is a persuasive essay arguing both the ineffectiveness and negative outcomes of today’s public school system. Not only does Gatto provide credibility with his experience as a teacher, but he also presents historical evidence that suggests that the public school system is an outdated structure, originally meant to dumb down students as well as program them to be obedient pawns in society. Fact and authority alone do not supplement his argument. Gatto also uses emotional appeals, such as fear and doubt, to tear down the reader’s trust in the schooling system. Although it may seem to be so, Gatto’s argument is not one sided. He also offers suggestions to make the educational system more efficient at the hands of

However, through the piece, several of his points lack evidence, and has you looking warily at the rest of what he says. For instance, in paragraphs 6 and 7, Gatto mentions several people who never were traditionally schooled as examples of why we do not need mandatory schooling. While at first, it seems like Edison, Rockefeller, and Twain are all wonderful

First, Gatto who taught in the school system for thirty years uses his personal experience, and the rhetorical strategy ethos to show that he believes that being in the public-school system for twelve years is not good or helping the children in their lives outside of school. Gatto says “I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency” (607). In this quote Gatto is saying that when children are in the school system they are not learning things they will need in life. They are getting used to repeating the same process over and over again. They are also learning to be dependent on an instructor to tell them when where and how to do things and not relying on themselves for anything. Kids in the system become dependent on being around others and a lot of time do not know how to handle themselves. The author states, “well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned” (615). In this quote Gatto is saying that people in the system get accustomed to being around a group of people and they cannot stand to be by themselves. The author is also saying that when the kids in the system are not around a group of people they fill the gap by watching television, being on a computer, and/or on a cell phone.

Another mode of development Gatto used in his essay was compare/contrast. Gatto shows his opinion by saying, “if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling” (149). He then questions if “we really need school?” Not meaning education, “just forced schooling” (149). Gatto obviously shows a contrast of “schooling” and “education”. Notice he emphasizes the difference between “receive schooling” and “take an education” which is also another mode, extended definition. Another compare/contrast he shows in the essay is how a number of American heroes were never involved in a school system, yet they still were incredibly smart and managed to succeed while making an indent in history. But now in the modern world “we have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of ‘success’ as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, ‘schooling’, but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense” (Gatto 150). This also is indeed a very effective argument, simply because he uses factual history and the modern world to show a compare and contrast.

With this essay Gatto intends to get the proverbial wheels by changing the reader 's mind by presenting them his own view of the educational world.He argues that the public school system crippled children ,he writes on how schooling has made some non-useful changes in the past generation following the others. He touches base with what was the purpose of schooling and what effects it has on students and how they may benefit from schooling and also how it harms them in some way. He shares a great deal about his own experience of teaching and his student’s response; he also refers to some articles written on schooling by great authors.

The author compares today’s school system to that of the past, which concerned itself with teaching students,

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.

The American Dream has had people working and fighting to achieve the guidelines of “success” that society has created. The ideals in which equal opportunity and freedom are for everybody and success is possible to obtain if one works hard for it. American writer and historian, James Truslow Adams, stated, “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement.” (Clark, par 1). Is it possible to achieve or are we just holding on to an illusion and simply wanting economic stability? Equal opportunity to reach success is claimed to be for everybody, but how true can it be when social economic status has an advantage or disadvantage depending on

Botstein once argued in his book Jefferson’s Children that “the American high school are obsolete”. In detail, the dissemination

Education has been the subject of some of the most heated discussions in American history. It is a key point in political platforms. It has been subject to countless attempts at reform, most recently No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Ardent supporters of institutional schools say that schools provide access to quality education that will allow the youth of our country to gain necessary skills to succeed in life. Critics take a far more cynical view. The book Rereading America poses the question, “Does education empower us? Or does it stifle personal growth by squeezing us into prefabricated cultural molds?” The authors of this question miss a key distinction between education and schooling that leaves the answer far from clear-cut. While education empowers, the one-size-fits-all compulsory delivery system is stifling personal growth by squeezing us into prefabricated cultural molds.