Unit One

               In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto argues that the American public school system conditions children to be gullible mindless consumers. Elementary school  and Middle school was a easier time but when high school started it was a whole different ball game it was equal behavior between students and teachers but as the days, months, and years progressed things became to change. I went to Richmond Hill High School in Queens which had many mixed reviews, more bad rather than good. My experience there wasn’t actually bad like they were perceived to be. But there is always that one teacher that gave up and doesn’t care about teaching anymore and takes it out on the students. Many teachers don’t enjoy their jobs because students are focused  on passing the class and not caring about learning but you can’t blame us we are afraid to fail so we have to turn to cheating to succeed. It seems that Richmond Hill High School was perceived to be a horribly bad school and that all the students that went or go there is mischievous and looking for trouble rather than getting to know who they really are. Many teachers get the wrong perception of students of how they look and dress because it tells them more than they really know. Students usually get treated and judged upon by who they surround themselves rather than knowing them.

            In his article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto point of view shows how the American schooling system seems childish. John Taylor Gatto thinks he can bring out the best qualities in students by giving them a reason to make decisions and take risks from time to time rather than teaching them the basic information they already know. According to John Gatto, the key problem of schooling is boredom which raises a question, “Do we really need schooling?” Gatto informs the readers that students would be interested in learning if they were given an “education” and not“schooling”. The American schooling system seems more like a daily routine which doesn’t help kids develop and grow, to some they feel forced to go to school rather doing what they want. John Gatto believes the American schooling system is made for profits for the economy. The main reason schooling was made to train to make everyone the same. The schooling system manipulates us by determining our social roles. Kids are being fed with necessary and unnecessary information and they are not thinking on their own.

          John Taylor  Gatto makes a distinction between “education” and “schooling.” The difference is that “schooling”is something that kids have to do for twelve years, and five days a week for nine months and “education” is only if a kid really wants to (2). Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would “leave no child behind” (2), students want to be motivated to be encouraged to have the qualities to succeed in life they don’t want to feel like they are force to learn material that society thinks they have to. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women (5), which shows the solution that we should be able to manage our life ourselves rather than depending on anyone. We could encourage the best qualities of the youthfulness- curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight by being more flexible about time, texts, and testing (1), these methods would be more meaningful to students learning life span.

             They need experiences to keep succeeding in life, and the only way to gain this knowledge is to learn about life, to see and experience how to manage them in life. In conclusion I agree with Gatto’s argument because I believe that most students relate to what he is talking about in the story “Against Schools”.