Analysis Of Against School By John T. Gatto

Education was provided to the children from higher classes to become more intelligent to be able to lead and be ahead of those that were in lower class systems. However the government created the public education system to allow children to have the same opportunities as any other kid in the country rich or poor. Yet, did the government really provide this experience for children to become more intelligent than those whom were rich, or is there more to the real meaning of public education? In “Against School”, written by John T. Gatto, looks into the “real” intentions of what the purpose of education is. Gatto looks beyond the meaning of children acquiring only knowledge from education, but comes to a point where he believes that educations

However there are people who believe that the process of schooling is a way of drilling children to become obedient servants to the government. Gatto’s article highlights children are part of an economic scheme which the government has concealed about the “true” meaning of education. Trying to illustrate how schooling works Gatto presumed, “Our schools are…factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned…And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down” (148). Gatto saw how the government is trying to standardize education by telling what teachers are supposed to teach each child in order to design the children to their specifications. Children are obligated to listen to every lecture and lesson, as the teacher’s job is to follow each standard the government provides. Anyon illustrated in his book how children in different social classes were taught by different techniques, due to the fact that some children were being trained to listen and others were drilled to create decisions. Documenting how the children were taught in the working class Anyon shows how children were being drilled to constantly listen to orders by stating, “The four fifth grade teachers observed in the working-class schools attempted to control classroom time and space by making decisions without consulting the children and without explaining the basis for their decisions” (169). Anyon recognized more than one fifth grade teacher taught their students in the way supervisors would treat blue-collared workers, by constantly telling them what to do. The children were told what to do and how to do it, but they were never asked if they knew other ways to do the same action, as if the child’s input didn’t matter. Anyon