What is it that sets the difference between man and animal? Could it be our emotions? Maybe it might possibly be our wit. Or, it could be the massive amounts of knowledge and information we transfer through generation after generation. Education has been a part of humanity’s past for over 10,000 years. It’s all about preparing our children to thrive after we’re dead and gone. From learning to hunt, pick berries, and farm, to learning to read, utilize arithmetic, and conducting science, kids have been learning since homo erectus became homo sapiens. However, it’s only been in the recent century that a formal, standardized education has been forced upon most of the world. This new mandatory program put kids in a classroom for six hours a day, five days a week, jamming information they don’t want down their throats. Critics like John Taylor …show more content…
Gatto believe that this current standardized schooling is designed to be unfulfilling, and ultimately creates a dumbed down, sheep-like population straight out of multi medias like the movie Idiocracy and many Orwell-esque books. Though Gatto’s claims about the school systems leading our kids down the path to eternal youth, maturity wise, may be true, his reasoning for it doing so is superficial, and is specious reasoning at best.
The current schooling system limits growth potential as a side effect of general education, not as an intended result.
What is the heart of Gatto’s thesis, and what is the message he is trying to send? In summary, he says that school is dumbing us down, in 7 distinct ways, of which are: making students emotionally and intellectually dependent, indifferent, bored, paranoid, and provisionally esteemed (meaning that they “require constant confirmation by experts,” Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, Gatto, 1992). This is achieved through ‘brainwashing’ the students, encouraging and nourishing the growth of habits like seeking out approval or satisfaction from authorities. Gatto also compares our educational system to that of Prussian society, where the population was raised like cattle to more easily manage them through Pavlov-like conditioning, as the information taught to students is only there to confuse the students. It’s easy to fall back on the strawman fallacy to criticize Gatto’s argument, to say that Prussia has no relevance and doesn’t compare to the National School Board of
Education, but what he says does have a hint of truth to it. Is it not true that many of the kids today seek the approval of those around them, more so than a few generations ago? How many of our kids today are able to freely make their own choices without being guided? Why is it that, after twelve years of mandatory schooling, do our children still feel lost after entering the ‘adult’ world, wishing for somebody, anybody, to tell them what to do next? In this way, Gatto is correct. Our kids are still kids, even when they become adults. Their growths have been stunted. They will massively consume like robots, where it isn’t just the physical things they buy that they seek. Most will just try to return to the safe feeling of having an authority telling them what to do, which leads to a majority of the population going into jobs where they are just part of a corporate ladder, desperate to have a leader. Though this isn’t necessarily bad, as this situation is the basis of an entire economy, Gatto attempts to portray the fact that kids absorbing this habits are the main focus of the government in a highly pessimistic way. The truth is, Gatto is trying too hard to read between the lines, when the truth always was, and always will be, right out in the open. School isn’t the ceiling of our limits, it’s the walls of our potential. School isn’t stunting our growth; it’s constricting our possibilities. Most schools teach a combination of language arts, basic mathematics, and sciences at the very least. Of course, these are the very basics of functioning in a modern society. The simpler concepts are taught when our children are young, like learning that two plus two is four or cat is spelled C-A-T, which evolves into harder things when the kids grow older. At the beginning, there is no problem. The children are taught to sing their ABC’s and count to three. Some may count slower, or sing slower, but it’s all fine and dandy until their next year of school. Now, the kids who were slow begin to struggle, as the concepts become harder. This is also where some of the kids who grasped the ideas, and learned faster, become bored- the teacher has to spend time reviewing the subjects to help the kids who couldn’t learn as fast. This gap continues to grow as the years go by. The problem isn’t just with standardized teaching, but with teaching a classroom. Education is not a one-size-fits-all deal. One cannot simply expect that, in a room with 30 kids, that every single child is the same. The impersonal nature of the classroom is revealed- A single education standard will not work for all kids. Some kids learn faster, while some learn slower. Some may even learn in a different way. Gatto believed that the government designed school to raise our youth as fools. This is simply untrue. The government designed school to be all-purpose. It’s the only viable way to spread education affordably and effectively. If education standards were all personalized for each individual student, it would take too much time and money to carry out. After all, that’s called having a private tutor. The fact that school has to pander the general public at large, means that they have to use the average as a statistic and as a place to start. This is the problem. Many people are not average. The average person is taught mannerisms and habits to be an average person. This leads to many of the kids in that generation to be much more similar than if they were allowed to have their own personalities. Their education is also tailored to the average person’s lifestyle. The average person isn’t the CEO of a multimillionaire company. More likely, they’re one of the people working in a cubicle for said CEO. The ratio of leaders to followers is usually very big, so why aim to train the small group, when it won’t apply to the large majority? This is why we rarely see leadership classes. School doesn’t teach us to be sheep, or to be stupid. School teaches us to be average. Gatto believes that school fills us with useless information at a young age to confuse us. While it very well may confuse us, again, this is not the goal of education. There are many careers to choose from once you reach adulthood. All of these careers that require specific educations, with differing levels of knowledge and subjects, can be possibilities for anybody in a perfect world. School has to account for this. How can school manage to prepare every single student for the career of their dreams, when there are so many varieties of jobs? The answer’s simple. Teach them everything. A child aiming to be an English major may complain about never having to use an algebra formula ever again after class. The career they’re going into has no use for it. While that may be true, a different child, who is aiming to be a statistician will complain about never needing to know writing strategies. In situations like this, it has to be kept in mind that education is not personal. Education does not know you, and does not care for you only. The greater good has to be taken into account. A musician will not need to know higher level math, but a professor will. To account for all futures, school must teach for all futures. This is why information may seem to be useless- it’s only natural for it to do so in the grand scheme of things. This is the sacrifice of public education. It’s the loss of the individual for the public. General education is one of the best things to have happened to the modern world. World literacy is at 86.3% (The World Factbook, retrieved 2016, cia.gov), an all-time high. It’s easy to be pessimistic and say that the future is doomed to a world of shepherded ‘idiots’, but this is simply not true. On one hand, it may be true that public schooling is limiting our potential, but that’s what colleges and universities are for. If you want to specialize and continue education, you are free to do so. Gatto is telling us that school is teaching us to be mass consumer robots, but fails to realize that the true offender is manipulative advertisement. School teaches us to ‘improve our personality’, and grow as a person, pushing us towards a specific way of acting. It teaches us to like some things but not others, like approving happiness and disproving unhappiness. Advertising takes advantages of this, but without school’s moral lessons of what is wrong and what is right, the world would be filled with psychopaths without feeling or ethics. It is another necessary evil to providing the world with a bright future. General public education has given hope to many families who could not afford to hire tutors. The overload of information may be useless to many, but to those few that benefit from it- It may be invaluable. Teaching history to the world may just mean history, but to a historian, it may mean the world to them. Public education is like a medicine to cure a deadly disease. Of course it can’t cure every situation, and of course it can cause side effects. Such is the very nature of medicine. But, what is the result of it? The salvation of young children. The salvation of their future. The salvation of their possibilities and their dreams. Even if it wasn’t terribly effective, or it was flawed in a sort of way… Even if it only saves one young child’s life... In the end, isn’t it worth it?
The average human would think that going to school and getting an education are the two key items needed to make it in life. Another common belief is, the higher someone goes with their education, the more successful they ought to be. Some may even question if school really makes anyone smarter or not. In order to analyze it, there needs to be recognition of ethos, which is the writer 's appeal to their own credibility, followed by pathos that appeals to the writer’s mind and emotions, and lastly, logos that is a writer’s appeal to logical reasoning. While using the three appeals, I will be analyzing “Against School” an essay written by John Taylor Gatto that gives a glimpse of what modern day schooling is like, and if it actually help kids
This argument can be valid in some cases, but students cannot learn everything on their own, they need guidance and help from teachers to develop the skills they need for the future. Gatto’s theory that children are kept at a baseline education is true; however, there are students who are pushing themselves to be above average, and he leaves theses students out of his argument. Gatto compares students to addicts, but does not specify what they are addicted to, making this a faulty argument. He claims society’s rise in immaturity has lasting effects on students maturity; although this can be true, he has no evidence to back up this
A long, long time ago, God decided to punish the wicked people, but before he did that, he instructed Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every animal he can find along with his family. Animals and humans. The book I would like to use throughout this essay is “ Crossing ,” by Gary Paulsen. This book took place in Juarez, Mexico, where a bridge could mean so much. Each character in this book was being compared to an animal, to make us more understand about each of them. Each of them are also different. From the shape of their eyes, the way they react to something, and those are what made each of them different and special. Paulson compares animals and humans by their simliar characteristics and their behaviors.
The application of Prussian derived normal schools set in motion a series of obviously undemocratic trends that resulted in some extent to under educated teachers. Within the new system of common schooling, what was compulsory to the unique education of an educator was the minimum academic knowledge within elementary curriculum to be taught and extensive training related to instructional mechanics and pedagogy. These were criticized as “…training technicians but not educating scholars…” ( Tozer, S., & Senese, G. (2009)
Graff begins by talking about the educational system, and why it flawed in many ways, but in particular, one: Todays schools overlook the intellectual potential of street smart students, and how shaping lessons to work more readily with how people actually learn, we could develop into something capable of competing with the world. In schools, students are forced to recite and remember dull and subject heavy works in order to prepare them for the future, and for higher education. “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic. We assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, fashion, sports, TV, or video games.” (Graff, 198-199) In everyday life, students are able to learn and teach themselves something new everyday. It is those students, the “young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school” (Graff, 198), that we are sweeping away from education and forcing to seek life in places that are generally less successful than those who attend a college or university.
Within the walls of our educational system lie many adverse problems. Is there a solution to such problems? If so, what is the solution? As we take a look at two different essays by two different authors’ John Gatto and Alfie Kohn, both highlight what’s wrong within our educational system in today’s society. As John Gatto explores the concept if schools are really as necessary as they’re made out to be; Alfie Kohn analyzes the non-importance of letter grades within our schools. Although both essays are fairly different, they still pose some similarities in relation to the educational system in today’s society.
In John Gatto’s essay “Against Schools” he states from experience as a school teacher that are current educational system is at fault (148). He claims that classrooms are often filled with boredom manufactured by repetitive class work and unenthusiastic teachings. Students are not actively engaged and challenged by their work and more often than not they have either already covered the concepts taught in class or they just do not understand what is being taught to them. The children contained in classrooms have come to believe that their teachers are not all that knowledgeable about the subjects that they are teaching and this advances their apathy towards education. The teachers also feel disadvantaged while fulfilling their roles as teachers because the students often bring rude and careless attitudes to class. Teachers often wish to change the curriculums that are set for students in order to create a more effective lesson plan, but they are restricted by strict regulations and consequences that bind them to their compulsory teachings (148-149). An active illustration of John Gatto’s perspective on our educational system can be found in Mike Rose’s essay “I Just Wanna Be Average” (157). Throughout this piece of literature the author Mike Rose describes the kind of education he received while undergoing teachings in the vocational track. During Mike’s vocational experiences he was taught by teachers that were inexperienced and poorly trained in the subjects they taught. As a result, their lesson plan and the assignments they prepared for class were not designed to proficiently teach students anything practical. For example, the curriculum of Mike Rose’s English class for the entire semester consisted of the repeated reading of ...
Most high school students can 't wait for their school year to be over because they feel exhausted by the seven long periods of classes and not to mention boredom. John Taylor Gatto, a former New York State Teacher of the Year wrote an article called "Against School." Gatto criticizes the school system for their inability to meet the students’ expectations and for putting limits on their ability to learn. The children feel neglected, and the teachers feel helpless because they have to work with students who are not interested in the materials they are given. Gatto mentions how US high schools have become affected by adapting to the Prussian education system. According to Gatto, the purpose of high school is to manipulate the student 's mind
Kids are the future of the world, and education is what allows us teach them the things they need to be successful. However, there has been debate if this is what education really does. Does education empower us? Or does it stifle personal growth? Question like this should be asked in order to figure out if the education kids are receiving are allowing them to reach their maximum potential, or holding them back.
... people are more advantaged than others and will receive a top notch education, while others will receive a mediocre education that will prepare them less for college and more for a working class job. There most likely is a connection between social class and the educational opportunities presented to students, but it is also possible that other social forces are at play which determines the quality of a student’s education. In Gatto’s essay it was argued that are educational system is designed to perpetuate faults in order to create a manageable society. He supports his argument with various strong statements which makes his logic convincing, but he falls short when backing the credibility of his claims. The strengths of his essay prove to also be its weakness, which results in a piece of literature that only succeeds in arousing emotional reactions from readers.
Another issue I felt as if it is it is important is hidden curriculum. After reading these two articles one can say that labeling schools can harm a students learning. Not only because this is teaching students to have different mindsets on how they learn but they start seeing how other students learn and compare themselves too them. Making it seem they are at a different learning level than the others. When reading “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, she says that these are more of “hidden curriculum” for students. She observes several different elementary schools that have many students with different kinds of backgrounds. From their economic class, to their social class, to race, to their learning levels on basic
The education system has been a controversial issue among educators. Requirements of school do not let student choose what they want to study for their future. It’s a big issue to force student study specific curriculums, which don’t help them improve, and what they like to create something. Educators choose a general system for education to all students which based on general knowledge. Intelligent or genius students have to be in that system of education, which doesn’t let them improve their creativity. Educators attempt to change that system to make it better, but their changing was not that great to be an example for the world. Also, did that change qualify education system to compete other systems or not? In some examples and reasons have been made me agree with some of points from Gatto’s and Edmunson’s and disagree them.
The author studied five schools of different social classes. Its object of study is to verify that there are differences in the curriculum explicit and hidden in standard primary schools social stratification of knowledge. Furthermore, he studies the hidden curriculum Anyon reached the following conclusions: In the working-class schools, life inside is marked by the resistance that students opposed to the demands of school. In the middle class, it is anxiety before school and social promotion opportunities. At school for wealthy families, life inside the brand narcissism. And at school for the elite, it is the idea of excellence that sets the tone. The ways these curricula favor a certain relation to the world of work are explained in different methods and techniques. Thus, in working-class schools noted that the tasks taking place inside preparing for a mechanical and routine work by rote learning. In middle school class, the finding of more conceptual and less emphasis on skills, along with increased content, led him to think that this is how Anyon prepare them for administrative work.
These animals that are depicted in the picture above are just a mere representation of students in the school system today. Society believes that standardized testing is a fair judgment of child intelligence but it’s not. Each student has their own strengths and weaknesses that make them uniquely great and it isn’t fair to rate them on the same standards. School should be a place where a student can discover and develop his/her own unique gifts, talents, abilities, and passions (Bull, 2017). Not to be conformed by what people perceive as an equal right way of testing. At the same time, parents and teachers want their child
Hidden curriculum is one of the most important concepts which build our society. Trends underlying this concept influence and modify children’s thoughts and behavior. Most people even do not understand how strong and controversial the basis they get from schools and universities is. In addition, people generally do not notice the significance of difference between what is said and what is considered, as well as between what is genuinely right and what is right according to the rules. What is hidden curriculum? A lot of aspects of this concept are hidden and unspeakable. Generally, hidden curriculum can be described as values and beliefs, and even lessons which are unofficial, unwritten or unintentional which children get at educational institutions