John Gatto Against School Summary

The main focus of the article “Against School”, by John Taylor Gatto is the problem of modern schooling. Throughout the paper, Gatto examines the background of schooling and explains the purpose of the modern school system. The article captures its audience by surprising them with all the different facts and ideas of modern schooling. It starts by telling the author’s own story about how boring secondary school teaching is, which can make readers think that being tired of teaching at a secondary school is what makes the author want to be completely against school. Gatto then writes that this problem is fixable. In his essay “Against School”, John Gatto makes everyone understand that he does not believe schooling is necessary. He gives examples

of famous, intelligent people, such as George Washington, who have accomplished significant things without getting their education in school. However, Gatto is not saying that children do not need to be educated at all. John Taylor Gattos point in the article is to prove to people why schools are not the most productive way to educate children and that schools do more bad than good.
Gatto brings up what he believes are the six main reasons for schools. These reasons are to help children learn how to properly and politely respond to authority, to teach them how to conform, determine one’s social role or status, to only be trained for the amount necessary based on the given social role, to make it clear who is unfit based on the role, and to teach only a select number of students how to run the system. The government wants a system that makes people learn the same things and act the same way so that they can maintain control over society. Gatto believes that “we suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women.” (Gatto 155)