Against School

Gatto seems to have a concern with education in this country. He compares it to the Prussia way of schooling which has been documented as the worst in the world. Gatto solidifies his comments with renowned educators within the American system, who ratify his position of a bored students. Gatto also has thrity years of experience in the school system as a teacher and another twelve years as a student. He claimes that the purpose of schooling is to make the majority of people conform to the ideas that are presented by and elite few. This brainwashing takes place in the schools by repaticion and boring texts. Gatto maintains the points by reiterating the six keys to education presented by Alexaner Inglis. The six principles contain adjustment, integration, diagnostic, differentiating, selecting, and propaedutic. Each of these functions has the end goal to get the students to obey blindly and to be sorted to the education and eventually careers that they will have in the future.

I can not agree with Gatto completely. I will agree that most teachers are just there to help with this process of getting students to pass the acedemics and not challenging the learning of the individual. Teaching in my opinion has become very subjective to the teacher and every student who is striving to excell knows that they must appeal to this subjective intent in order to receive the grade that they feel they deserve. With this being explained, is it not the students job to retreive the education that they will need in the future to succeed? No teacher is willing to hold a students hand until the student is safely in a career. Students of today need to raise the bar themselves and challenge the learning sytem to learn. Gatto expalins that several genious's of our time have not gone to school which left them open more creativity and eventually many great discoveries. These discoveries were great, just how much more could be accomplished with learning from the past so that the laws and principles that have been learned will not have to be relearned.

Gatto does redeem himself by forcing the idea of parents to help their children succeed. Parents should be aware of their childs education and what his/her needs are. Parents can teach children to excell and not make the same mistakes or to make the right choices as they did. Gatto also suggests that students should not be afraid to be alone to examine the inner thinking of themselves. The greatest inventors had to sacrifice their ties to the communities in order to make the great discoveries of our time. Students should not be concerned with having time to think about problems and situations. The ability to do this may bring about the next greatest discoveries in the world.