John Gatto Against School Summary

In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto satirically poses several questions concerning the purpose, structure, function, and need of the current educational system in the United States. Utilizing anecdotes from his thirty years of teaching experience and extensive research on the historical origins of many modern school customs to justify his tantalizing arguments, Gatto rhetorically inquires about the true motives and rationale behind an outdated institution system which continually steals more than a dozen years of precious life from millions of Americans in the pursuit of furthering a prejudicial class-separation bound together by conformity.

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

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.

The American Dream has had people working and fighting to achieve the guidelines of “success” that society has created. The ideals in which equal opportunity and freedom are for everybody and success is possible to obtain if one works hard for it. American writer and historian, James Truslow Adams, stated, “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement.” (Clark, par 1). Is it possible to achieve or are we just holding on to an illusion and simply wanting economic stability? Equal opportunity to reach success is claimed to be for everybody, but how true can it be when social economic status has an advantage or disadvantage depending on

It became clear that in order to form a sound, functional democracy, education was most essential. Every citizen, although at the time only males could be citizens, needed to have some form of education. What was it that the citizen was to learn while in school? It became clear that education itself consisted of literacy, knowledge, research and the understanding of the Bill of Rights; those are what would make democracy succeed (Barber 416). Education as it was understood not only consisted of the basics, but also consisted of the government and rights. The importance of knowledge of government was not underestimated. He described the tuning point in education as the industrial revolution. Barber says “We have watch this commercialization and privatization, a distortion of the education mission and its content, going to the heart of our schools themselves.” (417). He is arguing that devices and television programs have become diluted with advertisements and that, with programs like Channel One, they have begun to affect education in schools. Tannen, on the other hand, argues that education and its present forms gained traction with the Greeks and continued through the middle ages. She tells how young men left home to attend institutions of higher learning. Through their experiences she says, “students at these institutions were trained not to discover the truth but to argue either side of

Education has been the subject of some of the most heated discussions in American history. It is a key point in political platforms. It has been subject to countless attempts at reform, most recently No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Ardent supporters of institutional schools say that schools provide access to quality education that will allow the youth of our country to gain necessary skills to succeed in life. Critics take a far more cynical view. The book Rereading America poses the question, “Does education empower us? Or does it stifle personal growth by squeezing us into prefabricated cultural molds?” The authors of this question miss a key distinction between education and schooling that leaves the answer far from clear-cut. While education empowers, the one-size-fits-all compulsory delivery system is stifling personal growth by squeezing us into prefabricated cultural molds.

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

In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto criticizes America’s system of schooling children, arguing that the whole system is bad and unfixable. In the majority of the essay Gatto relies on personal anecdotes, historical examples that do not correspond with modern day society, and bold unsubstantiated claims. Due to this, instead of convincing parents to take their children out of school and rethink our societies schooling structure, he just leaves the reader confused over what the problems he’s criticizing truly are.

In the essay, Against School, John Taylor Gatto, expresses his strong belief in middle diction of how students in the typical public schooling system are conformed to low-standard education in order to benefit the society much more than the student themselves; causing schooling to be unnecessary as opposed to education . He believes that children and teachers are caught in extreme boredom as a result of repeated material. This boredom also causes a lack of maturity and independence in the students. Gatto wrote this essay in 2003 which appeared in Harper’s magazine. He gathered these observations during his 30 years of teaching in the best and worst schools of New York City. In 1991, he was named the

The essay ‘Against the school’ by John Taylor Gatto draws our attention on to all the cons of attending twelve years of high-school. Gatto has experience in teaching profession for twenty-six years in schools of Manhattan, he shares from his experience that he majored in boredom and could see that everywhere around him. He also points out the initial reason why schools came into existence and what the purpose it fulfils now. He also educates us on the fact that all the great discoverers never attended school and were self-educated.The main idea Gatto addresses in his article are that public schooling is doing the youth an injustice.He implies that the purpose of schooling, now is to turn children into good employes and someone who follows orders.

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.

Joao Coutinho,“There is no neutral education. Education is either for domestication or for freedom.” Therefore I question one to think about the category in which the american school system falls into, are we creating freedom thinkers or robots of government or are our students trap inside this conventional compulsory schooling? School is suppose to be a place where students are to be motivated and taught that all the things in which they dream will become reality. However as time has progressed teachers have been forced to teach certain content and in particular ways, while students are required to learn through the styles implemented by their teacher. What many may not know is that the requirements that teachers and students must follow

Gatto is concern to society that the contemporary schooling system is trying to get rid of students’ personality by turning them into obedient students that are easy to have power over (control). Therefore, the system will produce uneducated voters that are easy to be misled by higher powers. In addition, students are not given the freedom of choosing what they want. He is saying that public schools are not the only way to success; also, unschooled people don’t mean that they are uneducated. Moreover, Gatto encourages home-school system than public school as option because home-school system has more independence but it’s not a solution for the US. I disagree to his solution because he is supporting examples from old generation such as Edison and Ben Franklin; however, our generation is different than before. It needs school environment like sharing our ideas in class and helping each other to solve problems. Therefore, homeschool is not the solution to success. It is a combination of the students’ skills, intelligence, and effort that makes up their success.

Education is an important structure in society that shapes the most important years of your life, and therefore many theorists have ideas about what is wrong with education, what is right, and what needs to change or develop. Education is confined a lot by social control and social reproduction. Social control is a concept that refers to how social systems control the way we feel, think, behave, and even how we should present ourselves. These can appear openly, shown as rules and laws, or they could be not openly acknowledged and just appear as the “common” thing to do. Social reproduction is the reproduction of inequalities throughout generation-to-generation, one way education does this is how it supplies “wealthy” schools more and “poor” schools less. Michael Apple and Maxine Greene both define Social reproductions and Social Control. Throughout this text, I will explain the theories of Greene and Apple, as well as comparing and contrasting them against one another while applying some of my own experiences of education.