When I read “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, I was ultimately not very interested. I was drawn in by the first sentence, where Gatto says that he taught “in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best…”.(1) He then goes on about boredom, a feeling that just about every single one of us can relate to. I feel like a lot of people felt the same way in the beginning of this article, because everyone can relate to having a teacher who seems just as bored as the rest of the class. John Gatto does make a strong point regarding the way the school system is set up, though. “…how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down…in order that government might proceed unchallenged.”(4) What I got from this quote is that “mandatory” public education simply gives the general population the lowest possible level of info that they could get away with, so that the government technically isn’t doing anything illegal. Ethically speaking, that wouldn’t be the case. Even though there were several strong points made by John Gatto, the delivery to me felt very inorganic, like a bunch of big words and facts were just constantly being spewed. He goes into several other topics within his ‘Main’ topic, such as Karl Marx and WW2 and gas-bombs, as well as the study of marketing. There was so much information bring thrown at me, that I really did not know what to do with all of it. In all, even though this is an article that “tackles” a topic as big as the Public Education system in modern America, Gatto goes off into several tangents that keep it hard for the reader to keep their head wrapped around the main topic at hand.
Author: michael pagan
Your First Job (Tuesday hw)
In Learning (Your First Job), Robert Leamnson makes a very valid point regarding the difference between information, and knowledge. On the bottom of page 9, under the header “Access and high technology”, we learn the “fundamental difference” between info and knowledge. “Knowledge is what has the potential for improving the individual and society.” Leamnson then goes on to say, “…websites are completely devoid of knowledge, all they have is information”. What this quote means is that information is literally everywhere around us, we tend to “drown” in information, but knowledge is what each of us personally gets from this information. This is why knowledge usually differs from person to person. I whole-heartedly agree with this quote because even though this is something that may seem obvious at first glance, when you ponder on it you see that a lot of us often overlook this simple fact. You can apply this fact to just about everything we use our brains for. In the case of taking notes, we see that if someone simply writes down everything that is said or heard (information), without making it “personal” or using phrases that would help them to grasp the topic; most likely it will not be remembered, and ultimately used, the way he/she intended it to.
