The True Purpose of Compulsory Education in American Schools
Connie Nollner
University of Alaska Anchorage
Presented to Victoria Sansome
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For ENGL A111
Abstract
John Gatto, a school teacher in the Manhattan area, taught for thirty years at a variety of different schools. During these years, he realized that children were frequently bored with classroom activities as a result of how they were being taught. Students were not being challenged and often already knew the concepts behind the materials taught. Jean Anyon further supports and agrees with Gatto’s statements about the public school system. In her article, she specifies that schools in wealthy
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In other words, compulsory education is designed to keep the majority of the population in the lower class by making children “manageable.” Students are separated out according to intellectual abilities, social class, and even by the Darwinian theory of “the favorite race.” The children are then further sorted based on subject, grades, ranking on tests, or by other means, allowing schools to control who will advance or stay behind. Compulsory education is intended to prevent children from ever truly growing up or seeking their potential in life. The outcome of this is that they are not advancing to become complete adults in our society. As Dr. Inglis said “if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up.” (Inglis, A., 1918)
The first of the six purposes, the adjustive or adaptive function, is used to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. Gatto feels this is directly connected to why children are frequently bored in school. He claims that this prevents critical thinking altogether and does away with the idea that useful and interesting subjects should be taught because as he states, “you can’t test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and
Gatto’s ethos is rather strong, considering that he worked in the school system “for thirty years.” He has won many awards, as teacher of the year, both in New York City, in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and the entire state of New York, in 1991. He has many published works that were published in the years 1992, 2000, 2001, and 2008. His essay entitled Against School, was actually published in Harper’s magazine in the year 2003. During Gatto’s thirty years, he had taught in some of the “worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the
Throughout his essay, Gatto is able to create a strong emotional appeal that draws the audience into the issue with the public school system. A huge element he uses in terms of emotional appeal is his ability to raise questions regarding the school system. Using his experience of over two decades in the New York public school system, Gatto does a superb job of creating
In “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto states that, “Boredom is a common condition for teachers and students.” The text questions if we really need forced schooling as a necessary part of our society. The text reads that schools are confining, restricted and do not promote a real education. A problem I have observed in the public schools, is the fact that all children do not learn in the same manner or at the same pace. There is no cookie cutter mold concerning education that all individuals can incorporate into. Standardized tests and curriculum in a one size fits all method is not an effective way for children to learn.
Gatto opens his piece by establishing his ethos. He talks about how he has taught for years, and has taught at many places. He talks about his one-on-one experience with asking students about their boredom in school, and his own boredom. Specifically, Gatto very purposefully uses what he says in paragraph 3 - “Often I had to deny custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap,” to show us very that he is invested in his students, and personally understands them. We feel that he is credible, trustworthy, after hearing how he has interacted and connected with students all over Manhattan, and he really must know what he’s talking about.
While Gatto’s credibility leads the readers to subconsciously agree with all he writes, he over generalizes. While writing to students, he introduces bias by using words and phrases such as “wringer” or “deadly routine.” He generalizes by applying one thing to a whole subject matter. Gatto has only taught in Manhattan, but not everywhere in the United States. While many people may experience boredom, not everyone is diagnosed with it. Not all homeschoolers may be “happy,” as he states. The historical figures he mentions were not educated in the same way students are educated now; they were born of the selected type, genius or simply just lucky. He
As a matter of fact, our school education system was inherited by the Prussian culture.Gatto says it was “designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens.” The school was a “revolution” throughout the era and how it was “factories of childishness in order to make sure children do not really grow up”. He explains how it “Divided children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on the test, and by many other subtle means,...”. This is important because students are being separated and label to be imprisoned with others around them. This method encourages students not to think and it “left them sitting ducks”. This is significant as he demonstrates how our school is “turning our children into children”. In modern society, he symbolizes how our world is full of “children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults”. For example, we are buying things we don’t really need, like how “We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television”. Overall, students are becoming like “servants” and will grow up to be lost adults. Schools are “
Amidst his essay, “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto conceptualizes that our academic facilities are designed as laboratories with sole purpose of producing uniformed consumers and stationary victims through compulsory schooling. A way of cyphering through the breeding grounds of our population and plucking the most desirable of species whom are pre-selected for specific positions. Moreover, insuring that our industrialization is grown through our children’s forced intellect. Ultimately, connecting Gatto to the concept that we should determine our education within ourselves, and not the one that was institutionalized upon us.
Let’s do away with the school system. In “Against school, John Taylor Gatto says, “They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said that they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around” (Gatto 608). Gatto uses his article “Against School” to talk about how the school system is not necessary. He uses certain rhetorical strategies and personal experiences to do so. In “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto uses his personal experience in his thirty years of working in the school system and some rhetorical strategies to convince people who have children in the public-school system that kids do not need to be put in the system to have an education.
John Gatto’s “Against School” is a persuasive essay arguing both the ineffectiveness and negative outcomes of today’s public school system. Not only does Gatto provide credibility with his experience as a teacher, but he also presents historical evidence that suggests that the public school system is an outdated structure, originally meant to dumb down students as well as program them to be obedient pawns in society. Fact and authority alone do not supplement his argument. Gatto also uses emotional appeals, such as fear and doubt, to tear down the reader’s trust in the schooling system. Although it may seem to be so, Gatto’s argument is not one sided. He also offers suggestions to make the educational system more efficient at the hands of
To begin with, Gatto utilizes historical information to question the need for getting an education using the American public school system. Past occurrences show that people do not need an education
With this essay Gatto intends to get the proverbial wheels by changing the reader 's mind by presenting them his own view of the educational world.He argues that the public school system crippled children ,he writes on how schooling has made some non-useful changes in the past generation following the others. He touches base with what was the purpose of schooling and what effects it has on students and how they may benefit from schooling and also how it harms them in some way. He shares a great deal about his own experience of teaching and his student’s response; he also refers to some articles written on schooling by great authors.
In the attempt to persuade his readers in “Against School: How public education cripples our kids, and why”, John Gatto relied on his passion for education to express his thoughts. Having a bad experience as a teacher in our current school system, he believes that our system isn’t what it should be. He believes that our kids aren’t being educated. With the use of frequent rhetorical questions, personal experiences, and an appeal to ethos using other respectable men’s work, Gatto clarified his points about our schools in the America.
"We are shaped by society 's structures," is the primary concept of the idea developed by C. Wright Mills (Henslin). In this paper, I will demonstrate how my social class affected my family life and education.
Social class has a major influence over the success and experience of young people in education; evidence suggests social class affects educational achievement, treatment by teachers and whether a young person is accepted into higher education. “34.6 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) achieved five or more A*-C grades at GCSE or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs, compared to 62.0 per cent of all other pupils” (Attew, 2012). Pupils eligible for FSM are those whose families earn less than £16,000 a year (Shepherd, J. Sedghi, A. and Evans, L. 2012). Thus working-class young people are less likely to obtain good GCSE grades than middle-class and upper-class young people.
Social class has been always been in our society since its establishment. Back then, white,