In an example from his childhood, Gatto remembers talking with his grandfather and he “complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else’s. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn’t know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible”. Through this lesson Gatto shared the same message his grandfather gave him, trying to show that boredom was your own fault. Another tool Gatto uses to prove
Doodle's brother was cruel. When he wanted Doodle to do something, he tricked him into doing it. There were many occurrences in Doodle's life where his brother used this method. For instance, he made Doodle touch his own baby casket. "One day I took him up to the barn loft and showed him his casket,.....before I'll help you down from the loft, you're going to have to touch it…” When he said that he would not touch it, Doodle’s brother said “Then I'll leave you here by yourself,” I threatened and made as if I was going down.” (346) When he did this, he put Doodle in a position so that he had
Jim's father expect to much from his son without even noticing what could be the major problem. Of course many college students love to hang out with friends but that doesn't mean that it can affect there grades unless they are not focus on there work. When Jim's father stated that when he was in school he flew through without any problems. His parents are angry because his grades aren't getting any better. I felt like it could have been a better approach like finding out the real reason what is causing the problem.
The effects of NCLB affected everyone, whether you were at the top of your class or toward the bottom. To those of us who experienced the affects if NCLB first hand, it seemed like the students who put in the least amount of effort got rewarded the same things that the students putting in hours of work got. I asked my good friend Casey Collins, who attends University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, if she felt that NCLB was affective she said, “In all seriousness it was passed to help those who were behind get back on their feet, but it never took into account why all of these students were doing poorly in the first place. It's not effective in the fact that these kids are now moving forward but still don’t have the knowledge to do so. It also holds back the kids who work hard to succeed.” Many of the people I asked agreed in some way with Casey.
Over the years he has set his life to a particular pattern by ignoring everyone and not putting time into them, over the years this has stacked up and has turned into an everyday exercise, ignoring and judging people in a negative way became a natural reaction to him. When Marley’s ghost confronted him, he was a bit uncertain of what to expect and thought that it might be a hoax, so when the first ghost came he was shocked but try to show no emotion as this because this is what he normally does, but when he was taken though his childhood memories and seeing all of his school friends, unconsciously Scrooge could not contain himself, and as the spirit of Christmas past asked him questions like “Do you remember where we are?” or “Do you know who this is?” Scrooge could not hold back and went on about all the adventures he used to go on. This started to warm his frozen heart and let some
When Gatto talked about “teaching in some of the worst schools,” he includes teachers not knowing most of the time what their subject really meant. Gatto referred back to a memory with his grandfather. Every time Gatto claimed he was bored his grandfather told him that it was Gatto’s own fault for feeling that way. Gatto explained that his grandfather taught him that it’s your own responsibility to entertain yourself while the teacher provides you with an education. If others didn’t agree
In certain situations some traditions can be broken I think without a doubt under circumstances such as this one. No tradition should promote the decline of the ability to learn and achieve brilliant things. And as he acknowledges his father in his childhood, he lets you know that his father too was an oddity who collected books from many different genres. So I guess you can conclude that this helped him make his decision to want to learn and not to accept the failure like the other children and/or Spokane Native American’s. Being under a roof with so many opportunities to step outside the tradition of “not learning” I would say definitely impacted his motivation on his quest to learn.
This quote caught my attention because as a child who grew up with an absent father, I felt this essay really got to the heart of the problem that many children faces now a day. I was lucky in knowing my father's decision not to have anything to do with me growing up was because he resented paying support. I wish I could believe parents left for altruistic reasons, but I think those are just excuses. If they really feared screwing up their kids they could take classes, they could learn to be parents, take anger management classes. Simply, they cannot be arsed to bother.
Saad Niazi 1130-1245pm Alexander 12 March 2013 Educational Suicide In “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto, a former schoolteacher from New York critiques the American education system, and unveils the foundationary flaws plaguing students and their origins. Gatto describes a system designed to breed complacent and unquestioning consumers for an almost fascist regime with by supporting his allegations with popular education ideas of the early nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. While Gatto does an effective job in identifying “how public education cripples our kids and why”, his allegations are extreme however his article has a slight air of truth that is highly propagandistic in style and written by a disgruntled
Those encouragements from the family made him study hard, because he didn’t want to bring shame to his family. He was the only one that attends high school; he’s their only hope to succeed. “They all wore mixed expressions of reproach and criticism, along with a touch of encouragement and even hope; the whole spectrum. I loved my family,”(“China’s Son” 131), the quote show even in Chen Da’s darkest time in his education, his family didn’t blame him for anything and still believe in him. After this, the attitude he had was changed, and he wanted to pay his family back with good grades.