Against School John Taylor Gatto Analysis

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Fixing Public Education in the United States Former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto’s article “Against School” published in the Harper’s Magazine forum “School on a Hill” September 2001. Gatto states that public schools were designed to 1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best. (qtd. in Gatto) Gatto supports that public education has been outlined in Alexander Inglis book “Principles of Secondary Education”. Inglis stated that the public education system is based upon six functions: adjusted or adaptive function, integrated function, diagnostic or directive function, differentiating function, selective function and the propaedeutic function.…show more content…
The integrating function makes children as parallel as possible. The diagnostic and directive functions determines every “student’s proper social role” with a cumulative record or permanent record. The differentiating function is how children are trained in their area of intelligence that was determined by the diagnostic and directed function but they are in no means provided with the training and knowledge to be anything more than conventional. The selective function follows the ideas of Darwin’s theory closely as it supports the idea of natural selection. It is for the purpose of labeling peers and deciphering which children are inferior, it is the social aspect of schooling. Lastly, the propaedeutic function teaches a minimal amount of children to manage the population to that the government can continue without being challenged. Initially I was taken aback while reading Gatto’s article, particularly in regards to Inglis six functions but upon further review and digging deep into my own personal experiences with the public education system, predominantly looking at my years spent in high school I would say there are some sad realities behind theses six…show more content…
However it seems educators would rather play it “safe” avoiding adult themes in school-assigned literature and sticking to what they have deemed as age-appropriate for students. The term “age-appropriate” has been widely used as a proxy for beliefs & values conveyed on children & how much control they have over them. If you take a look on what was considered age-appropriate even 50 years ago and fast forward to our present day society it clear that we are not living in the same world. What was once the traditional family structure; two parents, one that often stayed home to care for their children has deteriorated and children are receiving less and less time supervised by an adult at home making a child’s time is school even more
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