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Effect of lack of education
Factors affecting the system of education
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What is Your Thoughts on Schooling? Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. Teachers now days teach kids to all think alike, where is the personal experiences the individuality. Most times this may be why children experience boredom so easily they just are not into their education no more. It’s no longer inviting or fun it’s almost repetitive and robotic. Teachers as well are feeling the boredom, they teach kids the same thing over and over how to all think alike. Do we all feel the need to go to school for 13 years. Is it really helping us? Or is it only teaching us to be another zombie in society how to think, live our lives, and to be all alike, a prototype. John Taylor Gatto and Neil Postman two esteemed educators grapple …show more content…
Gatto states “[b]oredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, and dispirited attitude…” (Gatto 1). Often time’s students just are not interested in their schooling, because the work is not “fun” it just doesn’t grasp their interest. Boredom is often used as an excuse in the classroom today, not only for students but for the teachers as well. Teachers if you are bored of your job you shouldn’t be teaching our children! They are not getting the most out of their education. Students if you are bored shouldn’t you merely do your work so you are not bored. The teacher’s claim the students are rude disrespectful and only interested in their …show more content…
Postman talks about how little can be taught in the classroom if there is attitude present. Where attitude is learned from the years prior to schooling “preschool education”. Postman believes that students should be made ready for their schooling career prior to coming to school in their home life. While Gatto believes schooling is only needed until the eighth grade. The students are not picking up anything from the mass schooling happening besides to all think exactly alike. Gatto says “could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?” (Gatto 2). They both have clear points here, preschool education is a major factory in these children’s lives. Without that prior schooling these kids are entering classrooms not ready. Not knowing basic skills like their ABCs and 123s, not knowing how to write their first name or even recognize it. Is mass schooling the best? Or is it only teaching our brains to all think alike. All do the work the same way no individuality in the
Gatto’s underlying message in his writing is that we are setting ourselves up for mediocrity. Gatto conveys his ideas and messages by implementing facts into his argument. Gatto also conveys his message by relaying emotions on both sides of the spectrum as a student and educator which further displays his emotional voice. Gatto introduces his voice immediately by saying,
Gatto begins his argument with a personal account from when he was going through school as a student. He began falling into the “routine thinking” of school, where he was bored and felt unsatisfied with what he was learning. His Grandfather stated, that if [he] was bored, it was [his] fault and no one else 's. The obligation to amuse and instruct [himself] was entirely on [his] own” (Gatto, 115). Gatto reflects on his
To conclude his article, Gatto gives his foresight for the future of schooling. Although Gatto has a well thought out argument for his opinion on schooling, he focuses
Gatto claims that a person can succeed in life without being attached to an educational system. Centuries ago, mothers used to role as a teacher for their children. In effect, the mother used to care and build the future of her children by teaching them how to be successful in society. Therefore, there was none meaning in sending their children to school. For instance, the American icons, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did not attend to an educational establishment and succeeded in life. As Gatto narrates, “Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school.” (34). However, those decades are long gone, and society has moved on. Children need education to become good citizens of a society, but without being submerged into a corrupted educational system. To the contrary, the educational system should be reformed to be energetic and amusing making students hungry for knowledge and teachers motivated to give not only educational topics but live values as
Education is horrible, because people can't have interests. They just listen, not learn. 1.b. To be able to use the. I do not think I'd like to live in this society because it does not allow free thinking, or anything else that makes humans the way they are. There was nothing to differentiate people, nothing to like or dislike about each other.
Once this becomes the norm for teachers they tend to become uninteresting, and students are the ones reaping the consequences. Rose acknowledged this cycle of learning apathy, writing, “But mostly the teachers had no idea of how to engage the imaginations of us kids who were scuttling along at the bottom of the pond”(1989, p.2).
John Taylor Gatto, who was a teacher at the public school for twenty-six years, and the writer of the essay “Against School” that first appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2001, censures and blames the American public school’s educational system in his argumentative essay with various convincible supporting ideas. Gatto argues that the demands of public education system’s schooling are essential problems in “Against School”. Gatto shows some positive examples of the educating without forced schooling and shows models of the ‘success without forced modern schooling’. Indeed, the writer insists that historically forced schooling is not related to intellectual and financial success in American history. James Bryant Conant, who was the twenty-third
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 ...
Teachers need to be allowed to teach the students how they want so the lesson plan is more fun and exciting. Boredom is just an emotion and teachers shouldn’t have to feel that because of them, they are affecting the state of mind of students.. Teachers should able to engage the students with their own thought process. Teachers need freedom and should not have to worry about how fast they teach a subject because the government wants it done in a specific way at a specific time. Teachers understand that students all learn differently and many teachers want to help all of their students, but they are stuck in a school system that tells them how they must teach.
In his essay “Against School,” John Taylor Gatto illustrates his view point that the American population would be better off by managing their own education. He compares the school system to the concept of boredom; that students as well as teachers are victims of the long ago adopted Prussian educational system: “We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simply and glorious. Let them manage themselves.” In other words, Gatto believes that the main reason for the existence of schooling consists in that it trains our children to be obedient citizens who can’t think on their own. His point is that as a society we cut off the intelligence and creativity
Gatto, John Taylor. "Against School." In Rereading America. 8th ed. Edited by Gary Columbo, Robert
... 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.
Neil Postman says “To put it simply, there us no surer way to bring an end to education, than for education to have no end”(Postman,4). This is the main idea that Postman bases his whole book on. To actually ever stop learning, is the only way to actually end the process of education. Postman thinks that our youth, the parents, and the teachers all must have a “god” or several “gods” to work for. A “god “ or a purpose is something that we should take very seriously, and should use it to reach our goals. Postman belive that there are these gods for whom we work for, but that in our culture today most of our gods fail. These failed gods or “false gods” are what direct us to the end, according to Postman.
Education is a very important aspect of the lives of all people all over the world. What we learn, not just in the classroom, shapes who we are. We take our education everywhere we go. We use it when talking to our buddies about sports or music, we use it while solving a math problem, we use our education while debating with our family whether or not we should watch TV or go to the movies. Our education is the foundation of who we are, since every decision we make and every thought we think is dependent on what we know. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone craved learning to such a degree that at lunch tables all over the world the topic of conversation isn't who likes who, or how drunk someone got over the weekend, but it would be what books were read over the weekend, and what new ideas were thought of. This crave for learning would be an ideal but still suggests need for improvement with the current educational system. It seems that the problem with education is that somewhere along the lines the human race forgot (assuming they, at one point, understood how valuable information is) that learning is not just a mandatory process, but also an opportunity to transcend and open the gateway to a better understanding.
At the beginning of one’s journey of gaining more knowledge, most children don’t mind school, for it is a change of environment for them. The majority of elementary school adolescents even enjoy school to some degree. As time wears on, we usually, and sadly, begin to see a change of heart. Children become fatigued from school and therefore don’t take pleasure in going anymore. Maybe their teachers didn’t teach them in the way that they learn most efficiently, or maybe students just become bored with the whole “school scene” itself. Whatever the case, it is apparent that by the time they reach high school, their interest for learning alone has died out.