HallSpring19_1101

In the article,”Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, he argues that the American public school system conditions children to be gullible, mindless consumers. After my experience with K-12 schooling, I agree with him. I especially noticed this during my four years of high school. Maybe it was the high school that I attended in particular, but it made me realize how flawed our educational system is.

One of the biggest problems with public schools today is that academic performance is declining, particularly in urban areas and among disadvantaged populations. My high school is an example of this. My school actually had three other schools in the same building and the one I was attending just so happened to be the worse one. Why? I believe there are so many factors that contributed to this school underachieving. One of those factors was actually mentioned in this article; boredom.

As Gatto himself put it,”boredom and childishness were the natural affairs in the classroom.”(1) Boredom comes as a lack of engagement and causes students to become inattentive. How can you learn something new if you aren’t engaged in the process? Then the problem is that many times teachers can’t see past the behaviors that indicate boredom. Instead of examining the environment and the activities, they begin to assign negatives to the students. This only causes more stress and doesn’t eliminate the problem at all. This leads to cheating and skipping class which were both very popular in my school. We are conditioned to believe that boredom in a classroom is normal. But is it really? Well, what can be done to change that? The answer is in this article. “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight – simply by being more flexible about time,texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.”(1)

Another factor has to be the teachers that we had in that school. We had teachers who simply didn’t care, lacked knowledge in what’s supposed to be their area of “expertise”, or just simply couldn’t conduct a class. This was one of the major problems in this school. Especially when you had teachers sleeping in class, playing inappropriate videos in class, using derogatory words towards students, etc. With this happening, why would students behave if the adults couldn’t either?  

Gatto points out numerous times that there is a difference between “education” and “schooling.” “Schooling” is something that is mandatory and requires a deadly routine of six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. “Education” has more room for autonomy. Gatto raises the question of  “Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system?”(2) The American school system that in Gatto’s opinion, conditions kids to be mediocre intellects, to have no leadership skills, to obey reflexively. Where I don’t completely agree with Gatto is where he states, “We have been taught in this country to think of ‘success’ as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon ‘schooling’ but historically that isn’t true in either an intellectual or a financial sense.”(2)  I do believe thought that our education system as boring and redundant as it may be, it is necessary to give our children an education that will hopefully improve their lives. That’s why it is important to provide some change. Gatto gives the examples of Carnegie, Twain and Farragut among others as successful people who did not finish high school. While similar examples could be pulled from today’s society such as Bill Gates and Steve jobs who did not complete college, these are rare cases that are not relevant to everyone. We live in a more complex world that requires greater and broader knowledge to succeed. It is no longer possible to be successful like Edison by just inviting a light bulb and not all who drops out of high school or doesn’t go to college will get lucky like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Nevertheless, I believe that the major concern here is why there hasn’t been anything done to reform the school system. There should be no reason for graduates to feel as if they have wasted the last fifteen years of their life with pointless busy work.

In conclusion, the point is that we have to recognize the flaws in our educational system so that our future children don’t fall victims to this problem. One thing that I know for sure is that I don’t want my kids to feel how I felt when I started college. I felt like I was cheated. We can say with certainty that parents, families, and communities are as much a part of the educational process as are children, teachers, and staff.

               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”.

Hi everyone– the assignment for Unit One is posted under “Unit One” in the header above. It is exactly what I handed out in class, but I have explained a few things and made it look a bit better. Please take a look.

just a reminder that rough drafts of Unit One are due on Tuesday. You will need to write at least 600 words. These can be THE ABSOLUTE WORST TRASH YOU HAVE EVER WRITTEN  and you will get full credit. Likewise, if you do not come to class with a rough draft, you will get no credit at all. Simply finishing the rough draft on time is worth 20% of your grade for this unit, even if your rough draft is terrible. 

To be clear: your assignment for Tuesday is to write a 600 word rough draft for Unit One (the assignment I handed out in class, which is also posted under “Unit One” on the website.) Please post to OpenLab (category “Gatto”) and ALSO BRING A PAPER COPY TO CLASS– IMPORTANT. 

Also read the handout I gave out in class “So What? Who Cares?” I suggest you read that after writing your rough draft!

One last thing: if you are having trouble with the OpenLab, you need to resolve this ASAP. There are people in this class who have not submitted any homework yet! There’s time to turn this around, but I can guarantee you that if you don’t start doing your homework now, you’re not going to pass. 

My plans to reread the article is to read for 10 minutes then take a break from reading then go bake to reading. The break will give me time to get a snack and to check my phone. when also reading will try not to touch my phone so i will put it on the other side of the room. also when reading i will take more notes

When reading the article for a second time, i may sure to pay attention to details of the article. To admit for the first time i just read the article just to read it not actually reading for details or information. while reading for the second time i learned the educational system originated form Prussian origin. When states , ” Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern. The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it.” (3) He also states , ” But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life,…”(3) When reading the article the first time i skipped over the paragraph when he talks about the history although that was a lot for me to read with out falling asleep. But when reading he makes some good points. Also learned that some big people had a part in the educational system like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and some other people. i didn’t know that they a had a part in the educational system. So safe to say it was a good thing to read for a second time. Maybe the first time you don’t get all the information but giving it a second chance will help you see what you missed.

while I was reading Gatto I had to take mini breaks while reading because I started to get side track. When I didn’t understand something, I would have reread it slowly. When I found words that I didn’t understand, I would simply use the internet to define them so it would give me a better understanding of the sentence. I found myself initially getting lazy by reading the same repeated ideas Gatto was saying over and over. After a while of me taking breaks and going back to reading I slowly started to comprehend the topic without getting side track because I wanted to read the article and get it over with.

Steps I decided to take when reading included: 1) If I needed a break, I would take one 2) If I didn’t understand something, I would have reread it slowly. 3) If I found words that I didn’t understand, I would simply use the internet to define them.  4) If Gatto was repeating the same idea but just phrasing it differently, that I could take note of the differences between each of them. 5) Finally, I would listen to music as I worked.

So the first time I read Gatto’s “Against School” I found myself initially getting lazily by through the read, although finding it to be a pretty interesting one in the end. I found myself lost and not really invested in the read however, especially at the sight of vocabulary words in sentences. Because of this I made myself a list of steps that I would take to approach the reading to help better my understanding of the text overall. Those list of steps lead me to realize and learn a lot of things after I approached the reading again. This time I found the read to be a pretty easy one to grasp. The ideas were clear and fairly simple to comprehend this time around. The vocabulary words found themselves to have been defined on sight  considering I had the power of a dictionary and the internet on my side. Focus wasn’t as big an issue in the beginning as it was the first time around when I first read the text, since I already had background on what the overarching point that Gatto was trying to get across I just had to figure out how he was going about it in that specific paragraph. Overall listening to music of course made this that little bit easier since I had something keeping me aware and active enough to keep reading. To be frank, I wish I had already known to take these steps prior to even having made them in the first place. Now for what I learned? I learned that Gatto is a man who is a veteran of 30 years in the education system, who once pondered why it was that schools were the way they were (students were bored, as for teachers) that because they’re designed to keep impudence, unity, and riots out of the nature of civilians. That they were to subtly train everyone to be subconsciously servile and submissive. He also spoke of ways that we could possibly get around the system although never explicitly stating whether we could actually “beat” it or not.

The first time that I read “Against School”, by John Taylor Gatto, I found myself very bored, due to the amount of tangents and extra information thrown into the article.  But, I came up with a plan that would help me to maintain focus and therefore abstain from boredom when re-reading this article. One of the things that I will do is to make a mental analysis of the main idea of every few paragraphs. The purpose of this is to ensure that I am being constantly reminded of the main idea of Gatto’s words, instead of getting lost in the text. The next step that I will take, that will ultimately help me with getting a better grasp of the article, is making sure that I am not tired when re-reading. If I am awake and alert when reading, it is only natural that I will better understand what I am reading. This is opposed to rushing through the article, simply to get it over with.

One of the new things that I learned when re-reading this article, and applying the methods listed above; is the point Gatto makes about kids and boredom. “Well-schooled kids have a threshold for boredom…dread being alone…seek constant companionship through th TV, Computer…”(5). This quote speaks volumes for me due to the reason that it is something just about everyone can relate to. Gatto goes on to talk about a method that could be considered controversial. Gatto stresses that kids should be “challenged with solitude”, so as to learn to “enjoy their own company”(5). What this means to me is that if a kid, or a student learns to naturally function while being by themselves, they are way less likely to get bored. This method, if proven true could change the lives of countless of people, unaware that the simple solution to preventing boredom was right under our noses.

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.

The first time I read “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, I kept getting distracted from the article because it wasn’t grabbing my attention. I understand all of John Gatto main points for writing “Against School”, but he kept losing me with the old history facts. So, I had to change and find a new way to read the article by Gatto. When I chose another path for re-reading I found myself more interested and locked in with the article by doing so, I found a whole new way of reading.

The new and improved path I choose for re-reading the article was putting my phone on silent, made sure I ate a filling meal, and made sure I was full of energy to comprehend. When I first read the article I was feeling boredom but I annotated the facts and made them more appealing with a positive mindset. If you have a positive mindset going into reading you would finish in no time but if you start reading with things you rather do on your mind you would never finish. When we read passages we see the negatives in it like how long it is and what’s it about. Rather than  getting lost in what we are reading and letting it flow on its own. The next time I read a article or passage I would improve my reading skills by avoiding the challenges of boredom. Having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset would show a major difference in our readings.