John Gatto’s “Against School,” is about how Gatto has spent his last 30 years teaching and realizing that most students and teachers in America’s educational system is bound by boredom. He compares schools to prisons and students to mindless drones who only work for the grades or who fail the system. Gatto explains that teachers become bored because they were once those students and they are also part of the problem. John Gatto questions why we even have schooling, “Is this deadly routine really necessary?” If Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Carnegie, and Rockefeller didn’t need an education to become successful, then what’s the point. Gatto’s brief history lesson on how our educational system is a model of 19th century Prussian system is quite interesting.
They want a change in the education system so that children can prosper and be able to boost our declining economy. Children have always dreaded going to school because of boring classes and monotone teachers, but children are not only noticing this but so are influential adults. Robinson describes the school system as a factory forming students into what we want and banishing out the ones that do not reform into the model student. Moore agrees that the school system is suppressive when he says, “As soon as I entered high school-the public school system…I was walking the halls of a two-thousand-plus –inmate holding pen” (134). Moore felt trapped and earlier revealed that he dropped out of school sophomore year because he disliked school from first grade.
In your own words, give two reasons for his anger. He is angry due to schools only a mile apart have made different dissisions weather to open or close, as well as being angry at the fact teachers are still being paid to do their job when the schools are closed. 3. How has Jane F responded to Mike D’s points? She has responded to Mike’s points by informing him she is a Secondary School Teacher and that sometimes it can’t be helped that schools need to close due to weather.
Society is failing students by placing extremely low expectations on students and their achievement in academics as well as in life. Students are failing themselves. They are failing themselves by allowing parents, teachers, school systems, society dictate whether or not they will pay attention in class and receive an ideal education. Many people in society will attempt to place the blame of the problems in education on a specific group of people. No specific group of people can be blamed for the problems in education.
Alexie and Wiesel both in their essay hint that they write to changing minds of the readers and help them realize what life is about. In Alexie’s essay he uses emotions that he felt when his peers at school use to fear him because he was smarter than them and loved by teachers. He expresses his feelings to the readers by writing “A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted me to stay quiet when the non-indians teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help” (65).
Rose’s example is further supported with the suggestion that certain children are being selected according to social class to achieve, by author John Taylor Gatto’s essay, “Against School.” Gatto was a teacher for thirty years in Manhattan; he suggests the general purpose of education is to control the population, a more cynical theory for the reasons our modern day schools exist. Further, teachers need to consider the curriculum in the schools our children attend; some curriculums can lead to boredom. Gatto provides arguments that teachers and children are uninterested and therefore unable to succeed in school. Similarly, author Jean Anyon provides a study describing how resources correlate with a school’s socioeconomic class in her essay, ”From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Schools don’t actually perform the function mainstream America expects them to. Every child learns
In fact, most students bring home an average of three or more hours of homework that has to be completed for the next day. Even parents would agree that the work pupils are assigned in the 21st Century is highly overwhelming and . It is extremely inappropriate to overload students with homework after a full day of school, because this leads children to stress and depression, it is a burden on parents and it leads to family conflict. When the classes are coming to an end and teachers announce the homework requirements, they believe that this work stuck behind more books and writing after school is over, will further their education. Piling on the homework will not help the students advance in school.
Now of course, when I do not take my academics seriously, there are consequences. Telling my parents was one of the hardest things to do because I knew that there was a two hour lecture coming, telling me how disappointed they are and how I wasn’t working to my potential. This was completely understandable though, what parent would want to hear that their sons grades are in the toilet and he has to repeat two classes? My parents did deal a good amount of these consequences, but some of which are coming in my future. Having to work harder to get my GPA up, feeling stupid and embarrassed about my grades, not able to hang out with friends as often, not being able to do TEC (I have always wanted to do TEC), and last but certainly not least, summer school are all going to be heading my way in good time and I am
Should standardized tests have such a vital role in the schooling systems today? Testing should not hold such importance because it causes stress, low self esteem, causes students to give up, and does not truly show the intelligence of students. Self esteem is already a problem that most students face especially during teenage years and above. Self esteem can be causes by trying to live up to unrealistic standards and creating an immense amount of pressure on oneself to do well (Self Esteem 1). When students feel the pressure to be perfect from parents, teachers, or peers it causes them to somewhat shut down and not perform well.
In the second paragraph, first, the living and learning should be distinguished, there are no connections between the two. Second, if the children go to school to learn, it will let him rely on someone help them to solve the problem, not to solve the problem by themselves. These are the thoughts of the author. In the third part of the passage, the opinion of the author is that the action of the children are limited, so it causes that the children is afraid to ask teacher question, so they are ashamed of it. And the school just want the right answer, and after learn many other things, they will be wrong , uncertain, confused.