Myah Clark Professor Collier English112.SMRT 2 21 November 2014 Essay #2 Public Schooling: Draining Students of their Freedom and Creativity In John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School”, he explains how he thinks public education cripples our kids and why. He starts his article out by making a point that both the students and teachers are suffering from boredom. The students also pointed out the fact that the teachers didn’t seem to know much more about what was being taught then the students themselves. On the other side of the spectrum the teachers are just as bored because they feel the students are rude and only interested in the grades. He then continues on to say that we shouldn’t blame the teachers or the students; in this case, we should blame ourselves.
Students do not realize that plagiarizing someone else’s work is actually stealing. The educational system does not teach this to students. The educational system should teach that you have to cite an author even if you just take their idea and do not use their exact words. The online companies that generate essays for students should be outlawed. This is making it where students that have a lot of money can easily get by with actually learning how to write correctly.
Instead of learning some actual useful information, teachers fret over the test rather than about how much that student is actually absorbing into their head. It has become a practice to ‘teach the test’ in today’s teaching world. Tests like SAT, ACT and AP have you pay quite a bit and don’t even show you what you did wrong, blocking out the possibility of even trying to learn from your mistakes. It is believed to be a clever tactic used to gain more profit, students keep coming back to prove they are worth more with those silly numbers. They stress day and night over these overrated tests, like previously stated channeling out the imagination, curiosity and good will.
Payne states that impoverished students face inequality at school, insinuating that the school should be responsible for helping to provide for these students so that they can have a better education. Gorski sees that responsibility lies most likely with us, who can aid teachers in offering a hand, as they are underpaid and are not able to do much on their own. The two authors have clashing ideas as to why students are in poverty: Payne believes that the impoverished students are lazy and have their own set of
The teachers blamed the students but they were trapped in the same strict structures of the compulsory school program as the students. He then suggests that maybe that there is not a "problem" with the schools. That they were right when they designed the school to do just what they are doing. Designed not to teach us but to keep us from ever really “growing up.” With that thought the author asks, "Do we need school?" Gatto gives us examples of well-known people who have accomplished great things in their lifetime and were not educated through the school system.
On the website isbe.net it reveals a chart that clearly shows that on the ACT we are performing below average on Math, English, Science, and Reading. Morton offers tutoring for kids during supervision so it’s not like they’re not trying to boost it up its just the way they are isn’t working. Kids don’t want to go learn when they have free period? Also they take tests to see what students need extra help on but if you actually look closely to a student taking the test they’re just marking random letters so they can be done and go home. Morton needs a new system for the students but one can’t confront the system without obstacles.
Mark Edmundson’s “on the uses of a liberal education” displays how corrupt the current education system is. He raises problems of consumerism in colleges and also indicates that college’s students lack intellectual curiosity. The multiple choices student have today in college have made the college a facile learning environment, resulting in complacent students. He ridicules the fact that students can withdraw from classes with a one month left in semester. In the beginning of the text, Edmundson depicts a classroom he particularly doesn’t enjoy on evaluation day.
Jose Anthony Escamilla Escamilla1 Sanders English 1301 March 27th,2013 Self Expression/Self Control In the article “Just Be Nice”, author Stephen L. Carter has written an argument based on civility in society today. He has written about the lack of education on manners, morals, and the etiquette of Democracy “Carter” (671). He begins with a brief example of school in his days and how they took the time to study manners. Not only the magic words “please” and “thank you” but more complicated etiquette questions, like how to answer the telephone “Carter” (671) Carter then gives an example of how things are today, to what extreme changes have taken place in our school system, to such extreme that when today, instructions on manners and proper etiquette are attempted to be taught to our children, it makes the news. “Carter” (671).
In the essay “School Is Bad for Children,” the author John Holt argues that traditional schooling prevents children from using their curiosity and stunts their interests in learning. He believes that in the school system, children do not have a chance to learn what they like; they learn what the teachers tell them they must learn causing them to become passive learners. The children don’t have a chance to learn from mistakes or through other children because they are scolded for talking and having wrong answers. John Holt believes that because of all this children learn to hate school and he proposes ideas to reform the school system and make it a more efficient place for children to learn. Holt was persuasive and I found myself agreeing
Freire believes that through teachers, students turn important education into pure memorization, and therefore cannot utilize the full potential of the knowledge given to them. In his essay, “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” he writes that in order for students to avoid being turned into receptacles of useless knowledge, they must “meekly…permit themselves to be filled by the teacher” (244). One can easily allow themselves to be “banked” on, therefore oppressing their education, or they can prevent their mind from being fed useless information, and turn the information they are learning into useful knowledge. Writer Richard Rodriguez talks about how he was always striving for more and more education in his essay, “The Achievement of Desire.” He explains he was always, “too eager, [and] too anxious,” (598) to learn more in school, and was never satisfied with the knowledge at hand. Rodriguez exemplifies that he strove to be the best he could be, and was successful based off his own hard work.