In “Against School,” a piece written by John Taylor Gatto, a former New York Teacher of the Year. The piece shows his view on “How public education cripples our kids and why.” Gatto taught for thirty years in what he refers to as some of the best and worst schools throughout Manhattan. He claims the teachers as well as the students were equally bored in school. “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, 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 had been unknowingly fired from his job when having returned from medical leave, only to find the granted papers of the leave had been destroyed. He had to receive his teaching license again after nine months of trying, and had finally retired in 1991 with a low opinion of schooling all together. Gatto questioned if our schools are purposefully designed the way they are. He asks “Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?” Gatto often compared common schools to resemble prisons and mentions how a former president of Harvard as well as a veteran, James Bryant Conant, may be likely responsible for the reason behind why our schools are the style they are today, along with packaging thousands of students into the warehouse-like buildings at one time.
Gatto believes that our educational system was adopted. “Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.” He continues on about how many have pointed out in the past that America has taken on such on oppressed schooling system, that system being of the Prussians. “But what shocks is that we so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to produce mediocre life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace “manageable.””
He writes about how those high up who brought, supported, and funded the Prussian-like system did so to only enforce having a guarantee of a “servile labor force” and “mindless consumers.” Gattos supports the idea that it is more than obvious that schooling is simply meant to separate, demoralize and “dumb the people down.”
I would have to agree for the most part with John Gatto’s argument. The boredom in schooling along with the monotone teachings and textbook answers is rather familiar. Although Gatto argues that boredom is only one selves fault. How it is our own responsibilities to entertain ourselves, and that those who didn’t do such were untrustworthy and childish. Gatto continues on about the grueling twelve year process of schooling, how it perhaps isn’t really necessary. He mentions how others in the past had become successful as well as educated without the means of schooling. I agree to the fullest on this as he uses examples; “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them ever “graduated” from a secondary school.” I agree on this the aspect that you need education, not necessarily schooling, or as Gatto had put it that “success” did not necessarily mean “schooled.
“Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole” Why we are so dangerous with free thinking creative minds, or leadership skills is beyond me. I think it was beyond Gatto as well as he seems to be rather frustrated with why it is the way it is and why there has been no change.
He writes about the six basic functions that the 1918 author of “Principals of Secondary Education”, Alexander Inglis, had listed as what made the actual purpose of school. I find it rather scary, something that makes you truly think on it, as well as a little sad at the same time. The basic functions were written to involve everything from giving the children boring material, make the children all be alike one another as opposed to being individuals, determine what a students’ role in society is, keeping them level grounded as opposed to going higher in life to be their best, selection of the better ones and humiliate the weaker with bad grades and the like, and even so much as having “chosen ones” that will excel to learn management and leadership skills, unlike the others, and rein over the oppressed ones.
He argues that the economic stand point of schooling is to only benefit large corporations, to teach students simply not to think for themselves, causing future needless and impulsive buying and following. “Now, you needn’t have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children.” It’s sad to think on this at all whether you agree or disagree, I believe that it is now more important than ever to teach our children just the opposite of this, to not leave them oppressed at all, whether they are in school or not our input can mean everything.
Gatto argues how schooling was created to not so much “educate” the people, but more so create good citizens and good people out of them, as well as oppress them to keep society at a “safe” level. This makes me so curious of what the leaders behind schooling, and thus still running it this way, are so afraid of. He continues about how everything in today’s society has become easy, and how we have become a nation of children due to how we were trained in school. How we are told to believe that America is the land of the free, yet we must be careful what we say. Gatto does mention something that eases my mind though on my own children’s future, how if you have the knowledge of how schooling is and what it is meant for, you can avoid the oppressed outcome all together simply by teaching your children to have a creative mind, to think and speak freely, and to be a leader. I personally do not like the sound of my children being schooled only to become a “servant” to society. He believes that genius is actually rather common, if we do not suppress it, and I must agree as I plan my child’s future with ease and an open mind, to encourage her open and creative mind as well.
Cited Source: http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
A.C. 2010
