John Taylor Gatto Against School Summary

An individual, who is built within the deceptive landscape of schooling, is determined through a consumer’s prospective. Gatto would concur that, “First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of

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.

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his experience as a teacher, but he also presents historical evidence that suggests that the public school system is an outdated structure, originally meant to dumb down students as well as program them to be obedient pawns in society.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

Mandatory, enforced schooling is common all over the world, and is generally seen as a public good, and a privilege of first world countries. However, author and teacher John Gatto argues that mandatory schooling destroys your ability to be free thinkers and therefore should not exist, in his piece “Against School”. Despite his effective use of ethos, Gatto’s argument fails to be convincing due to logical fallacies, and a lack of evidence or first hand experience.

“The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things” (Jean Piaget).

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

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

Our educational culture only satisfies a select group of students who are at the top and leaves others behind. These book smart kids deserve to go where they are going, however, what happens to the kids who are not as book smart as others? Many students are having a hard time because they are not book smart even if they may be good at something that is not educational. As stated in Jack Schneider’s article, America’s Not-So-Broken Education System, “The education system simply stopped working. It aged, declined, and broke, but we can fix it by first ripping it apart” (Schneider Par 2). As of now, the education system is very unsupportive of some students and teachers. Backed by the government, public school pay does not support teachers in America while in other countries, being an educator is considered a privilege. By not supporting teachers, it is hard to find educators who are willing to put in the work to help their students. As a result of not having good teachers who are motivated to teach their students, it is also likely that the students that they end up having to teach are also unmotivated as well. In this cycle, some teachers and students gain practically nothing from going to school, which demonstrates the broken education system that we have at this time. The ever aging education system is not up to date with either

The authors Mike Rose, Gerald Graff, and Charles Murray are all scholars in education. Each one of them brings concrete facts about education in America. They all believe that education is very diverse and that it can come from anywhere not just school. For example Mike Rose writer of the text “Blue Collar Brilliance” explains how intelligence is used more in labor jobs than normal jobs. He believes that intelligence is overlooked. For example he talks about how when he was in his mothers store he would observe and analyze the things around him. He then started to realize the amount of work that waiters do such as communicate with customers, write down orders, and memorize who ordered what. He believes that intelligence doesn't just come from school and that it can be from anywhere. Furthermore Gerald Graff a professor In education argues that what teachers teach to students in schools limit students intellectualism as he gives personal experiences such as topics that were interesting to him he seemed very knowledgeable and therefore his hidden intellectualism was shown. In addition Charles Murray an American Political Scientists writer of “Are too Many People Going To College” talks about how more people should be going to college. He believes that basic education should be taught early on in elementary and middle school. He also mentions that people who don't pursue higher education doesn't mean there intelligence are any less than the ones getting post secondary

Differently than some other countries, the United States has no national educational system since each state in the country has its own. However, some research from 1999 and 2006 shows that the American educational system is falling in a national scale. Experts argues that the system is ignoring cognitive and social aspects that are important for children’s development which would further help them for adult life. Studies indicates that the educational system is not achieving the real purpose of education: prepare kids for their personal and professional life. As a result, what could be worse than a school system that limits creativity and fails to develop kids with critical thinking and diverse social skills needed for adult life?

With today’s education, teachers are enforcing much academic work on students to, hopefully, increase their intelligence. The goal of this academic work is to give the students that they will need for their life later. All schools have a group of students that have a lot of “street smarts,” but don’t do well in school. There is a common argument of if “street smarts” and academic work should be combined to better teach students. In Gerald Graff’s piece, Hidden Intellectualism, Graff talks about the academics that teachers enforce on students and “street smarts.” Graff claims that “schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into good academic work” (Graff 1).

The human mind is perhaps the greatest object on the earth, animate or inanimate, but without the proper training, the mind is a relatively useless tool. Through the development of formal education systems, humans as a whole have tried to ensure the training of all minds so as to continue prosperity for the world. Most of the time, though, education systems do not realize the harm they are doing to developing minds and the subsequent negative consequences. Among the largest of these inadequate education systems is the American primary schooling system. The American education system is in fact failing; it continues to deplete children of their natural creativity and thirst for knowledge while preaching conformity, which in turn creates an

On the contrary, the educated person only has the knowledge of what the teachers chose to tell them instead of coexisting with their teachers. In this case, the modern education system treats students only as containers, which leaves them dehumanized for the reality of the world. The whole idea of the banking concept of education transforms students into objects while attempting “to control (their) thinking and action, leading women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (Freire 5). The idea is that men and women cannot think for themselves, but are rather told what to

Graff says that putting students in classes in the contemporary system is wasting and limiting students’ potential and creativity (198). Complaining that intellects do not meet the success standard set by schools, Graff proves that schools limit the intellect students can achieve in their academic career (198-199).