Education At Its Lowest
The public school education system in the United States conditions students to be gullible, and produces mindless consumers. Many students these days go to school just to waste time, and at the end of the day, they don’t learn anything. As John Taylor Gatto the author of the article called Against School also states that public education cripples our students. The K-12 schooling in the united states is nonsense and need to be changed. Therefore, public school education system in our country shapes our students to be credulous.
During my K-12 schooling years I experienced that the way school systems are constructed, it’s more about passing the exams than learning in school. In addition, most cases the classes are boring and we sit in class for hours just to wait for the bell to ring and leave. For example, during my middle school, each of my classes I attended we didn’t learn anything during the class sessions, instead we just played around with my classmates, and the teacher gave up in teaching us. In the article Against School, Gatto states that “One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. (1)” The author also says when he was in school he was bored just as most kids during school. This also shows why most kids during school don’t want to learn and instead don’t listen to the teacher and do whatever they want in class because they are bored or not interested in class.
The modern schooling needs to be modified, because in my experience I became aware of that most of us when we go to school we sit there for hours and hours and we have to do whatever the teachers wants us to believe, moreover because it is mandatory. The school system makes some of us the opposite to learn because of how the school system is constructed. If schools would be fun and entertaining more kids would want to learn and enjoy school. In our society passing exams and tests became the priority instead of learning and knowledge.”We have, for example, the great H.L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence…”(2) Thus, Gatto states that the education system doesn’t fill our young generations with knowledge as an alternative, they give us pressure with passing common core, regents, or other exams.
A lot of students drop out of school because they are failing too many classes and they didn’t learn anything useful, therefore that results in students to failing exams. Our young generation at public schools believe whatever the teachers are telling them without the broad knowledge and truth behind the words. In the Gatto article it says “First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. (5)” John Taylor Gatto trying to tell us in his article that schools does not make us learn or make us more knowledgeable, but instead we are like laboratory experiments, whatever we do it is to make us gullible, and mindless consumers.
The reason why our education is at its lowest because our society doesn’t have a broad knowledge of the world. For example, in the article it says, “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”(4) In our society our students don’t have a broad knowledge that prepares them to deal with complexity , diversity, and change. If we would have liberal education it would make the students more knowledgeable to prepare them for the society.
At Last, the modern K-12 education system is useless and trash because the education system does not make the students into real independent individuals. Many of the students waste time at school for the whole day just to be bored in class and uninterested. The school system makes exams more of a priority than knowledge itself. Most students drop out because of the consequences of going to school just to fool around there. The education that supposed to teach us something in school does not exist because the system is made in a way to make us as feel like we are servants to the school and whatever they tell us we have to obey. The way the system is constructed is not to make us critical thinkers but exam passers. Therefore, the public school education system in the Unites States conditions students to be gullible, and produces mindless consumers.
Works Cited;
John Taylor Gatto** Against School*
