John Taylor Gatto Against School Analysis

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.

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

In “Against School”, Gatto told the readers about the boredom in the schools through the teachers because the students were as bored as they, the teacher, were. In school, boredom strikes amongst both teachers and students. Gatto said it best when he stated, “Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as often as I did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were as every bit of bored as they were.” (Gatto, page 608). Most students do not want to be at school anyways so therefore, boring school work, unprepared teachers, and pure lecture class time would not help the matter. This next quote can still relate to today’s society, “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteacher, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers’ lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there.” (Gatto, page 608). When the teacher comes unprepared with a mindset of boredom then nothing will ever change. Although a teacher may have a routine for teaching , because they have taught the same material for years, they should never just recite it. The students have not heard this, because it is new information for

The school is the secondary agent of socialisation that children introduced to throughout growing up. School socialises children in many different ways. Children in this period of socialisation (The School) learn to become a productive member of the society, formal set of skills and knowledge such as writing, reading and maths, and strength their socials abilities by interacting with colleagues and schoolteachers. But mainly children learn that in society everyone’s equal regardless of how special they’re in their families. (Barkan 2012, p. 127)

At the start of 2016’s new school year, approximately 60.4 million children will attend public elementary and secondary schools in America (National Centre for Education Statistics, 26 July 2007. Web). With so many children going through compulsory education every year, it is important to ask questions about the purpose, structure and success of the education system, so people can be made aware of areas that may need improvement. John Gatto is a teacher and author in America who argues that the education system here is not designed to educate its students like most people assume, but instead, to keep them in line and maintain the current social hierarchy. He begins his article, ‘Against School’, by recounting his time as a school teacher in Manhattan, explaining that the students and teachers always seem to be bored. He asserts that boredom is a symptom of childishness and that the reason students act this way is because schools are designed to prevent children from maturing and growing up. Schools do this to make sure students grow into predictable and easy to manipulate adults. It is clear from the amount of supporting evidence John Gatto is correct; the school system exists to create a conformist obedient population and it does so by reducing creativity, over medicating children, and dividing students in order to maintain class hierarchy.

We grew up hearing from elders that education is the path to success. We learned from an early age that the reason we go to school five days a week it is so we can become a member of the successful group. As I read “Against School” written by former New York State teacher John Taylor Gatto in 2003 for Harper’s Magazine I started to question his claims when he wrote that school teaches students how to be consumers and school limits students from growing up by teaching them how to obey. Those statements are spurious. As a matter of fact, the school prepares students for life. Lastly, technology plays a major role in school because it expands the learning for the children.

Education should not only be looked at as attending college and passing exams to succeed in school. It should be seen more as the complete development of one's personality, intellectual development, and moral evolution. The system tells everyone to learn the same material, even if the students are bored and even if they’re sleeping during class. In the article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto states, “teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subject and clearly weren’t interested in learning” (Gatto). This shows the teachers and the students disconnect from the context because either it’s irrelevant or not being taught in inspiring ways.

She recalls her mother’s comments, “Could you imagine if she had light skin at all? [With her features] she’d be gorgeous” (Dark Girls). This shows the extent to which the color complex affected the minds of most people including mothers- the way they viewed their children. Both the book and the film show how colorism affected notions of beauty within the African American

In America, the system of education has one of the greatest influences on the people of the country. From the common workers of the U.S.A, to the teachers, the entrepreneurs, and even to the parents of the students, everybody is impacted by our current education system. Most importantly, the children playing the role of the students are impacted the most from this. At the end of the day, these children are the ones receiving this experience. After all, it is the education that a person receives that shapes their future. It is the morals they grow up with, and most importantly, their educational experience at school. Sadly, this “educational experience” does not affect the students of the generation in a positive way. There are many flaws with

In James Baldwin’s speech “A Talk to Teachers,” he says, “The paradox of education is precisely this -- that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.” During elementary and middle school, a very impressionable time period in students’ lives, children are taught what will be the foundation of their moral compasses. While learning is not entirely the responsibility of the education system, it still does have a major impact. Despite the fact that teenagers’ minds have matured, high school is still a very pivotal and confusing time in their lives. This is the point at which students are examining the society in which they are being educated, in some cases they are even encouraged to do so. While the foundation may have been laid, it can still be altered and built upon. As teenagers search to find themselves, the education system “assists” them in the

How Americans learn is important topic for debate because it is essential to continue our global dominance. With that said, it is necessary to do whatever we can to improve our learning institutes, but Gatto who authored “Against School” and Kozol who wrote “Preparing Minds for Markets” don’t give enough credit to what our schools are doing successfully. There is absolutely no reason to tear down a system that has shaped Americans for decades, especially not because we are bored there or being prepared to be a manager.

School is an institution that serves as a means to provide the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully function in society, such as literacy and punctuality. Not only do students acquire these skills, but also knowledge of “hidden curriculum,” which teaches certain societal norms and values. This concept was introduced in Lecture 4.2, with the examples being obedience, hierarchy/powerlessness, and acceptance of inequality. In regards to obedience, students learn that obeying authority is essential for success, that we must learn to be quiet and be interested, even if it means acting like it. With hierarchy/powerlessness, individuals come to accept their impotence in regards to having a voice towards how school is ran. The acceptance

“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with an education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning” (“Jiddu Krishnamurti”). Although youth spend most of their time in school, they are most often educated outside the classroom. Children and adolescents are influenced and shaped by their environments, friends, sports, experiences, and countless other factors in their daily lives. School is important, but it’s only a small portion of their education. Through their peers, the media, and their family, youth are taught and shaped in a way that’s much more influential than at school.

Humans are constantly learning. Whether inside a physical school building or in the middle of a desert, a person can learn so much about the world around them, and it has always been that way. The idea of school has evolved from learning from experience to the system that currently exists. Although school has changed over time, it still supposedly exists for the same reason it always did: education, but its goals and methods have changed along with the system itself. People should consider reevaluating the school system in America and whether it still serves its purpose. Presently, school works, in the sense that ‘working’ means achieving the goals it was created to achieve, but those goals no longer benefit students in the way they should.

How does one define beauty? The term white is often associated with synonyms like purity, godly and innocence. In comparison, the color black is typically associated with ugliness, darkness and evil. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye illustrates the struggles many black women faced in a patriarchal society, as they struggled to meet an impossible standard of beauty. “Black females were double oppressed. First, they have been sexually oppressed by white masters under the institutionalized slavery. Second, they have been victimized by family members and social institutions” (Tahir 3). From a feminist perspective, I will examine how The Bluest Eye depicts a standard of white beauty that led to the oppression and self-destruction of black women