Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Dragon Analysis

John Taylor Gatto, former New York City Teacher of the Year and author of “Against School: How public education cripples our kids, and why,” believes that forced schooling essentially molds young minds into society’s servants. Gatto begins his argument by drawing on his own experience as a teacher and the history of schooling. He then demonstrates how schools turn children into consumers. Despite the fact that he believes that public education cripples young minds, he concludes by offering a solution. Although Gatto argues his point well by bringing in personal experience, background history, and effects, he generalizes many points, lowering his credibility.

The need to succeed hinders students from finding their true potential. For years, headlines have read "American students are behind other international students." In Gerald W. Bracey’s article, Are U.S. Students Behind?: "American students look better in international tests than the critics would have us believe, and the schools have little to do with the "competitiveness" of economy" (Bracey 1). The government is pressuring students to do better than other country counter parts for no other reason than to fulfill their own agenda. "One reason why Americans believe their children compare poorly to foreign students is that for 12 years, the Reagan and Bush administration promoted a conservative agenda hostile to the public schools and gave bad news about education far more publicity than good news" (Bracey 2). This was a result from the race between the Russians and Americans in the space program. The government’s own agenda abolished the whole concept of being patient with students.

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.

Chasing the Dragon, a documentary produced by Jim Comey and Chuck Rosenberg, was is intended to inform young men and women across the world about the prescription drug and heroin epidemic. This film displays the horrific journey many teens and young adults have gone through, all starting with a drug called marijuana and graduating to other harmful and extremely dangerous narcotics. In the beginning of the film, Comey and Rosenberg show clips of people struggling with the addictive drugs and their distraught parents trying to get them through the pain they are experiencing. Sarah, one of the interviewees, was prescribed oxycodone by her doctor after an accident. After returning to refill too many times her doctor refused to prescribe more resulting in buying oxycodone off of the street. With oxycodone being too expensive she was introduced to heroin by a friend, getting a higher quantity for far less than what oxycodone was priced at.

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.

In a progressively more globalized world that necessitates more effective educational practices, the U.S., once the biggest global force in education, has seen its dominance slowly slip out, and its educational status fall even lower than that of several third-world countries. The decline experienced in American school system academic achievement is not as a result of lack of funding, but as a consequence of the overall educational system watering down. According to Gatto, educating children through the existing public school system of America is crippling rather than helping them. From his essay, ‘Against School,’ it is established that the goal of the whole public school system is to limit people’s intelligence in an attempt to create a society that is manageable. Gatto continues to state that action is needed to change this situation. He supports his assertions using current and historical information about the American school system and his personal experience. After reading his article, one realizes that most of Gatto’s arguments are true. It is true that the American education system is making the students comfort to the government and society norms, which is why they are easily bored. This essay’s goal will, therefore, be to support John Gatto’s beliefs.

The United States is one of the best country in many areas such as technology and health care or education, but compared with other develop nations, the united states education system is still behind many country including United Kingdom, Japan, China. America’s standards of education are far lower than several other countries, because the American public education systems is less effective, students are lack of motivation to learn. According to Michael Moore, in the book Idiot Nation, and John Taylor Gatto in Against School, they argue that the education system in the United States is deeply flawed. America’s schools having a poor curriculum, many facilities are in bad conditions and lack of resources that students need to learn. The

In the book, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? : Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World, published by John Wiley & Sons on August 14, 2014, the author, Yong Zhao, states that while China gets the highest test scores on the PISA exam, parents in China often send their children to western schools. In short Yong Zhao, a Chinese native who was born in Sichuan, claims that Western countries, Britain and America, should not try and adopt China’s education system for many reasons. I my opinion this book did not seem important to pre-service teachers, but after further thought and reading, I conclude that this book is valuable to not only pre-service teachers, but to anyone that is involved in education because it provides reasons why we should not try to adopt China’s education system.

“The antiquated educational model our schools stubbornly cling to was designed well over a century ago to meet the demands of an emerging industrial economy”(Mercogliano, 2005, p.2). In his article,

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.

The United States used to be ranked higher amongst other countries when came to education. People came from all over the world to study here. Unfortunately, for the past years it have been ranked in the twenties amongst other countries based on standardized testing. Now its time to revamp our education system, but the question is where we should we look. Based on student performance, the only countries that have proven that most components of their system works is Finland and Korea; Finland being ranked one and Korea ranked two. In order for the U.S. education system to move in a positive direction we must make significant changes in the structure of our system. First we need to raise the qualifications for becoming a teacher because in some states you don’t even have to attend and educational school; all you have to do is pass a test. Secondly, we need to expand the time of school so that teachers have more time to teach the kids and the students can have more interaction with the teachers. Although this is where we need to look, we don’t need to adopt their entire system.

America’s test scores are barely average compared to other countries. 470,000 15-year-old students took the OECD test in math, science, and language arts. The test was scored on a 1,000 point scale. The U.S average score in math was 487 meaning that 24 out of the 34 countries ranked higher. This includes Finland who scored a 541. In science, America scored an average of 502 which placed them at 17th. Once again Finland was a leader on the scoreboard. Finally, in language arts the U.S scored a 500 putting them in 14th place. Finland still ranked higher; they were in the ranks with places like Shanghai. “The brutal fact here is there are many countries that are far ahead of us… this should be a massive wake up call”, says U.S Education Secretary Arnie Duncan (Hechinger). So why is education so important?

Today, a school education is no longer an option or privilege, but rather a need in the United States of America. The author of “Against School,” John Taylor Gatto says, “Do we really need school?” (143). What if children will not go to school, then how will they learn to read and write? Education is the demonstration of learning things around us and helps us to comprehend an objective in life. Most people who believe that children need higher education in order to succeed in life. We often don’t understand why we have to go to school every day, but when we grow up we realize that children need to attend the school for a wide range of reasons, for instance; for new experiences, increased knowledge or career preparation. School

Throughout her article, Chu emotionally targets her American audience by complementing the educational system in the United States in comparison to that in China. She begins by describing the “traditional Chinese approach to education,” which produces “undue psychological burdens,” as “outdated” and “discouraging” to establish its myriad of flaws. Moreover, Chu describes

In “Against School,” John Taylor Gatto indicates that dullness and detachment is a crucial factor of our progression in our education system. I agree that this is true for both the teachers and the students that are disinterested in our modern long-suffering system where one is to stipulate and the other to obtain an education. Schooling has to be much more alive and active so children can take an education. Furthermore, Gatto took this complication and suggested an outrageous result of getting rid of the schooling system as all together. He attests that people in the past have come to do amazing and spectacular things with their life without a boring and obligatory education.