Public School Reforms: A Hybrid School Essay

New York City consists of five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The borough that I reside in is Brooklyn. Brooklyn has approximately 2.592 million people inhabiting this district and approximately 23.4 percent of individuals who reside in Brooklyn, NY come from a low-income household or in other words come from poverty. With catholic and private schools being expensive, people have to rely on the education system to provide their children with a good education. In this paper I will be discussing the public school education system ranging solely up to high school in Brooklyn New York and giving a general idea of the New York education system as well.

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to justify his tantalizing arguments, Gatto rhetorically inquires about the true motives and rationale behind an outdated institution system which continually steals more than a dozen years of precious life from millions of Americans in the pursuit of furthering a prejudicial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.

Andrew R. Deras Dr. Jide Osikomaiya English 100 8 September 2016 The Most Compelling Problems In American Schools As we delve back into a new year for students and teachers alike returning to school to continue with the daily life of academics and learning, we all must be understanding of what exactly we are sending our peers and children back to. It should be no surprise to most of us that throughout the years we have seen countless upon countless examples from the news and through others, that our school system is flawed in some way, shape or form. It is no longer a coincidence that our students are only achieving 36th from the top in all total curriculum (Arnett). This is also evident to anyone who may happen to own a T.V. and has been a viewer to these numerous articles describing these horrible issues we have within schools firsthand (ABC News). Not only that, but schooling can also be further compromised by politics and law related issues (Ravitch). What my goal for the essay I am submitting to you is; to give my opinions on the current situation of public schooling in America, discuss the issues, and back my points I will be presenting, with concrete evidence I have uncovered in my research. I would like to make it clear that my stance on the current situation is that there is not only a singular problem with public education, but a number of issues that inhibit students to learn properly and function as productive members of society. An excellent place to start would

There are many controversies that American public education system does more harm than good. In “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto and “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, explains how school education destructively impacts us. Gatto states his experience as a public school teacher and why he “just can't-do it anymore”. He was tired how the schooling was programmed. He argues how school system are affecting students to be more like “childlike” citizens. Also, Anyon demonstrates her research on how there are many different kinds of education depending what “class” you were. She informs us that there is an inequality in “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”. She tells us that this difference in

Education in America is not as valued nationally as the current culture wants the societies of the world to think. There are occupations that are valued above educators, but our civilization wants to imply that our educational system is well advanced and tries to emphasize that we are a country of well-educated people. Unlike in Leonid Fridman’s “America Needs Its Nerds,” and Benjamin R. Barber’s “America Skips School”. Everywhere in this country we hear the government say how our schools are the future of this country, but if we listen carefully we will hear little in our civilization over education financially and how poverty mixes in with this issue.

All of the facts point to one prevailing conclusion; America’s school system is failing. No film makes this clearer than “Waiting for Superman,” directed by Davis Guggenheim. In the film, Guggenheim does not hold back in his onslaught of surprising, yet true, facts. Guggenheim points out that Americans are failing compared to the world in major areas of study, such as math and science. However, there is one place American children lead the world; Confidence. Guggenheim says that there is a simple way to fix this prevalent problem, especially for urban youth. The solution, he says, are charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded, but privately owned schools that do not have to follow curriculum guidelines like

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.

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.

After watching Waiting for Superman, I realize I haven’t given the schools I attended the credit they deserve when I have spoken of them before. I had no idea other schools in America could be failing worse than the elementary and high school I previously attended. Waiting for Superman gives a diverse view of how hard it is to actually get the free, public, education that every student is entitled to and deserving of. The documentary showcases five students along with their families trying to get into schools that guarantee them a better future. Because free, public, schools are failing the students by not giving them a proper education, these five students are left to look at private institutions with few spaces available.

Throughout this year, we have read two books, 50 Myths & Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools and Schooled: Ordinary, Extraordinary Teaching in an Age of Change, as well as several different articles spanning various topics regarding school and its purpose in society. We learned that each of us in class have had unique school experiences, whether we went to a public, private, charter, or home school. Each of our unique experiences have allowed us to share our personal encounters with school, both positive and negative. Through these readings we learned about how each of us has a stake in schools. We depend on one another to be educated enough to make important decisions, for example critically analyzing candidates and their platforms when deciding to vote. If I could suggest any three of our readings to a high school teacher, a parent, and to a fellow student, they would be the Postman and Weingartner section from Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Why Wrong is not Always Bad by Alina Tugend, and College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one. by Rawlings, respectively. These articles stood out to me as the most informative as well as the most relative to many of the issues we see today.

A proper education is one of the most important things in a child's life. In the powerful documentary, Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim, the audience is given an insight on charter, public, and private/ boarding schools. While the underlying tones of the film are leaning towards the positives of these prestigious schools, the main principle is how important an education is, and the steps the country is taking to improve it. Throughout the film, a strong pull of emotion is presented by showing the hardships of everyday families struggling for the education their kids deserve, as well as the multitude of statistics about the failing school systems in the country, and the credited charter schools, along with the people

The American public education system was founded on the radical notion that all members of society should have equal access to education. Also crucial was the notion that a basic common education was essential for a true democracy. This revolutionary system is now in indisputable trouble. Many worry about America’s ability to compete with foreign countries while others address the growing dichotomy between the quality of education in different economic areas. Recent rural shootings have only exasperated the problem, and caused many parents to entirely abandon the public system for a private alternative.

In the two articles, “school vs education” by Russell Baker and “the case against college” by Caroline Bird, both discuss how public schooling is corrupt in one way or another. Russell Baker discusses in his article that schooling does not truly educate you as much as real life situation will. Caroline Bird discusses how college for a lot of us is a waste of time and only a small margin of people are meant for college.

A good education is an essential part of a child’s development. Today, parents have a choice in their child’s education and can evaluate both public and private schools. Although both public and private schools provide education and opportunities for students, parents should evaluate the differences and choose the option that best suits their child and families’ needs. In this paper, I will compare and contrast five major areas that relate to public and private schools including class size, cost, curriculum, services, and teachers.

The touching documentary Waiting for Superman depicts the lives of multiple families involved in getting their child a better education; their goal: to get their children from public to private or charter schools where they will be more focused on by teachers and obtain the educational tools they need to succeed in high school, college, and the adult world. Though it seems obvious parents should just send their kids to the better schools, money is a major barrier and the spacing in charter and private schools is limited, which means the children whose parents can afford the school are put in a variety of lotteries that determine their futures.