The Boy Who Played With Fusion Book Review

Students today undergo constant pressure for perfection, going through extreme efforts to meet this expectation. Alexandra Robbins, an investigative journalist and author of The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, views modern educational culture as a danger to students because it advocates productivity over learning. On the other hand, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post believes that students today are more apathetic than stressed. Robbins perception of today’s schools is more accurate than Mathews’, for students cheat to appear smarter, burden themselves with grueling schedules to impress colleges, and develop mental disorders as a result.

After being enrolled in classes they are interested in, students will be more engaged in class, thus increasing student morale. People in charge are more likely to be happier and work harder. By giving students the option to choose what core course they want to sign up for, teachers can see what path their students are on and better prepare them for the outside world. “It was in reading and arguing about sports and toughness that I experienced what it felt like to propose a generalization, restate and respond to a counter argument, and perform other intellectual operations…,” which shows how the author found he was more engaged in his sports writing class than he had been in his broader high school English class (Graff 267). The curriculum must change to ensure the happiness and growth of the student. Child development should be the primary goal of every school district but, schools are now about making the grade. Now, interest is measured by how well a student is doing in the class not how much they are learning. “It is self- defeating to decline to introduce any text or subject that figures to engages students who will otherwise tune out academic work entirely,” illustrates how school boards are judging students equally and on the same level when they should be judged separately (Graff 270). Everyone does differently in academics because they are all different individual people who have different learning

In order to grow and prosper in society, one must gain knowledge from a variety of subjects and apply the information in real life situations. High school is one source of education where adolescents are able to gain knowledge by attending classes. However, the school system has numerous flaws

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.

As both the standards of school work and stress levels of student’s rise, the American school system remains unaltered, unchanged, and unaffected for over a hundred years. School is an institution that can serve as a massive gate in life granting you access to a job, stability, and a future or it can become a giant pillar in the way of everything you wish to achieve. While we recognize that a student’s own motivation, study habits, and will to learn, are cardinal in any schooling system, we must also understand the issues with an institution that is fundamentally unsound from the ground up. In today’s world, students are shoved with the hands of docility, and amenability as they render themselves in a system that has inadvertently failed them, by neglecting to celebrate their differences, and varying learning patterns. Conformity in the education system has shown to damage the personalization and

Activities and discussions on the book or books being read, depending on whether or not the children got to choose all of their books, would occur throughout the day. For many people, the problem with Gow’s proposition arises when the fact that math, science, geography, social studies, and history would be completely cut out of the curriculum. In spite of the large number of people who back this claim, it’s a simple misconception. Children could, and, if they were interested in the subjects, would, choose books on one or more of those topics. Moreover, the presence of maths, sciences, and social studies in a fourth grader’s education may not be as significant as some people make it out to

healthy, there are many students complaining about the unpleasant lunches they do receive. Schools make a lot of great choices regarding their students’ education, but their one major flaw

Graff starts out his work, hooking the audience, by saying what multiple students think about their school, that schools are making mistakes teaching us the things they do. Graff essentially calls out schools for the pickle that they have put their students in. Graff describes some curriculum, using Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution and Nuclear fission as examples of the mind-numbing topics that schools teach about. Graff then brings up topics, such as Cars, Dating, Fashion, Sports, TV, and Video Games, that many kids today enjoy talking about and discussing with one another. Graff emphasizes that despite the lack of “connection… established between any text or subject and the educational depth and weight of the discussion it can generate,” schools continue to assume that there is a connection (par. 3).

At Hazelwood High School, they do things differently than at my school. At Hazelwood, most of the people worry about themselves and nobody else. Most of the school doesn’t get good grades and the school does not do anything about it. One day in English class Andy walked out when they were reading Macbeth because it was too emotional for Andy to handle. His friends were concerned and told the school counselor. They said, “But… but… it seems like… like… he needs help or somethin’.” Then the counselor said, “Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you boys this, but he is getting some outside counseling… So you boys can relax and be assured that he is getting whatever help he needs”(100). At Harrisburg High School, if someone had an issue like that, the counselors and teachers would be concerned, even if the person was getting outside help. Another thing about education that is different than mine is the school. In Ronda’s English homework, she wrote, “Our school building must have been built about a million years ago, because it was brown and tall and raggedy-looking, but it fit right in with the rest of the day”(16). At my high school, we are very fortunate to have a very new building to learn inside of. At Hazelwood High, they were not fortunate enough to have a new high school be built. Culture and education are very important pieces of people’s

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.

At first, Eubank did not believe her son when he complained about his mean teacher. The staff at the school suggested at her son should take medication because he was not concentrating on class. She took him to get an evaluation at Baylor University, but he was fine. After visiting the school, her eyes were opened by a student who was classmates with her son. Jessica Kelmon, an author for greatschools.org, writes that “the teacher would regularly humiliate him in front of the other students, yelling at him and slamming her hand on his desk (Kelmon).” This fourth-grade teacher is an example as to how much a teacher’s attitude toward the students affects their excitement to learn. When a student is being treated poorly by a teacher, an interesting subject can be ruined for that student.

I did not grow up in the family where reading is valued. There were not many books in our house. However, in my cousin's house, there had some children's picture books, and some books like "Tell Me Why", the series uses simple language and pictures to answer and explain hundreds

The two stories for this week appear to share a common theme in their makeup and presentation. Both of these stories make a solid case on how established educational institutions, at any given level, have the capability to impact the mind to a great degree. The contrasting experiences from each narrative serves to highlight the potential effects of schools on its students based on experiences and influences outside of the classroom.

In the year 2020, Kevin Hanley works as a janitor. By 2050, his son is a beggar on the street. How did this happen to Kevin Hanley’s son? This story was just a fictional one, titled “The Fable of the Lazy Teenager” by Ben Stein. It is about the decline

School Matters “The child soon learns not to ask questions - the teacher is not there to satisfy his curiosity” (Holt 73). This is what John Holt thinks the American education system is all about. He thinks that school is a place where individuality and creativity come to die. He wrote an essay that explains his belief further that is titled, “School is bad for Children.” Holt uses several rhetorical devices and logical fallacies such as generalizations - stereotypes, making assumptions, and “either or fallacy” that weakens his argument.