Why Some Schools Feel Like Prisons

In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto submits his conspiratorial beliefs apropos the suggested chicanery and skulduggery present in American school systems to a wide range of audience members, ranging from concerned parents to the worldwide educational community. Throughout his article, Gatto calls into question several aspects of the modern education present in the United States, his scathing and unnervingly well reasoned timbre astonishing readers into reassessing their own experience in the education system. These appalling points, which one may at first believe only exist to steal the attention of any reader, are a key strategy in Gatto’s article which allow readers to set aside prior notions of skepticism towards educational

Each day school children learn valuable skills and lessons from their teachers as well as through interactions with their peers. Although school, undoubtedly,

Let’s do away with the school system. In “Against school, John Taylor Gatto says, “They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said that they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around” (Gatto 608). Gatto uses his article “Against School” to talk about how the school system is not necessary. He uses certain rhetorical strategies and personal experiences to do so. In “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto uses his personal experience in his thirty years of working in the school system and some rhetorical strategies to convince people who have children in the public-school system that kids do not need to be put in the system to have an education.

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

Class after class, day after day, I often sense a massive amount of repetition with school. Each lesson feels more like a chore than an actual learning experience. That’s the way school has always been though, like a job. It is hard to note that there is any sort of progress being made in terms of the everyday learning experience. In his essay, Against School, educator John Taylor Gatto claims that the everyday boredom of school is truly meant to demoralize and dumb down students, destroying individuality and the ability to create independent and critical thinkers. Gatto explains how children are not really growing up, they are only getting older, indicating that public schools exist only to “cripple our kids.” By using his experience in the classroom, Gatto creates an element of pathos and develops a structure which almost fools readers into inferencing what his opinion truly is. Gatto ultimately, through these rhetorical devices, wants to ignite thoughts about what the true purpose of school is, displaying the modern day public school education as a factory to create a mindless population of students.

The experiences she’s had have had their effect on her attitude regarding school. She rejects the standards of the school system, believing it to be too limiting for children who may learn differently, and can disenfranchise youth that may not conform to the mold. She also shuns the practicality of what she has been learning, and its proposed “applicability” in the real world.

For a portion of their lives, the average person most likely believes that the criminal justice system executes justice and disciplines offenders accordingly. Reflecting upon the United States’ history, it is proven that this is not always the case. When the phrases “school” and “prison” come to mind, they typically have no correlation to each other⎼until the topic of the "school-to-prison pipeline" is introduced. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to policies and procedures within the classroom that push our nation's schoolchildren, especially those most at-risk, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. This pipeline reflects the prioritization of incarceration over education. Reform within schools is crucial

The rhetorical strategies that format Don’t Stay in School are distinct and efficient in that Brown’s personal apprehensions are accurately revealed in virtue of the lyrical influence. For instance, Don’t Stay in School opens with Brown enumerating which indispensable life lessons were disregarded in schools’ curriculums. Specifically, he presents cases in which topics possessing little to no correspondence to average life were instead educated. During the whole of his track, Brown attempts to vocalize how utterly impractical it is that required subjects are taught over basic abilities that may manage to free masses of students from impending adversity. Therefore, Brown establishes his argument concerning the school system by way of indicating

Students shouldn't feel ashamed, indifferent or humiliated by these conditions. There are things that Kozol has seen in elementary schools in New York that are missing besides a commendable appearance like a library and programs like art and music. A principal from a

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.

Many children of incarcerated parents are extremely likely to misbehave in a school environment, due to underlying issues that have been left unanswered. They often question if it was their fault, if they drove them away or if they were simply unwanted and left abandoned. Due to this, many children choose to rebel at school, as they become a target towards other students by venting their anger and frustration from home. They see this as a way of receiving attention or even a little recognition and importance. As children begin to refuse to attend school, the result is that they underachieve at school and often struggle academically as

Melinda Gates once said, “kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what's wrong with the school system.” The American school system claims to want every child to thrive, but teachers give up on students they feel are not worthy of their time. In “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose, Rose discusses how his school placed him on a certain path that eliminated his motivation and love for learning. The labels that brand every student make or break their educational careers. Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” depresses me as an alumna of a public school system. Having seen friends and classmates caught by the current of my school’s expectations, I know that students are put on tracks as soon as they step

School systems sometimes make promises they have no intention of keeping. Other times, they can deliver a world of opportunities to our neediest children. They may or may not want to listen to parents or even teachers, but school systems always attend to the demands of the most powerful individuals and institutions in their communities. (Koonce, 2016, p. 204).

Truancy is part of the school to prison channel, a system that the state tells schools to have an absolute zero tolerance for unexcused absences. Sending students to court, a criminal court and having them experience the feeling on being a criminal just for skipping class exposes our children and derail them to the world of being a criminal. Nathan Hecht asked the Judicial Council, the policy-making body for the state’s courts, “Playing hooky is bad, but is it criminal?” So why do we get to treat our young children as criminals

Former United States Secretary John King once spoke, “The ideal school would be a place where students want to show up every day, parents are involved and confident their students are being well served, and the adults in the building enthusiastically embrace their responsibility to do whatever it might take to help students succeed” (). John King’s vision of what his ideal school includes describes similar concepts to other adults and children, some of which include more participation from adults and a diversity of not only students but also teachers and staff. Almost all parents want their children to have the best education possible as well as being able to attend dependable schools with a reliable setting. The environment of a school can have a great effect on children’s attitudes towards life, authority, and even themselves. Diane Reay, the writer of Identity Making in Schools and Classrooms,