While I am rereading “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto I will take a break from reading every time my mind wanders. I will take a break from reading after every page. If I haven’t lost interest after reading a page I will continue reading until I do lose interest. During my first reading I started to lose interest by page 3 and regained my focus on page 5. I will pay closer attention to pages 3 to 4.
I learned a lot from rereading “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto. I even gained more interest in what was written and agreed with the article the second time around. The first time that I read the article I was tired after a long day of classes. I didn’t really want to read all of the historical evidence given throughout the article. I couldn’t process all of the information at the time. Now after reading it again I noticed that all of the historical information being thrown at me was supporting Gatto’s claim and shows the many ways the school system was either rigged or is not working how it was intended. For example, in the article Gatto states the intended reasons for mass schooling which are “1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best” (2). These reasons are not working as intended according to Gatto who also states that “…it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don’t conform” (4). I believe that he is saying that although the US wants to make each person his or her personal best, the educational system is not a personal experience at all. Some people learn differently that others, but everyone is still taught the same. This effects grades and knowledge which leads to the separation of people into either less or more successful categories. The school system wants everyone to succeed yet when they fail they are given up on. Our experience in the same classes as different people lead to different and unequal opportunities in some cases.
