Conforming American Students
In the article “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, the author argues students and teachers in schools are bored. And that schooling systems are used to create servants, or the ultimate consumers out of children. He also argues that children in schools are categorized into social categories. Though his standpoints on education and educators and educational systems are true, his reasonings are mislaid. The key problem of public education in America is the constraints teachers are given with how they teach, and therefore the students are bored with the way they are being taught. Here in American schools today, walking into a classroom, the atmosphere is almost always lacking excitable energy. The students are falling …show more content…
Gatto says “Schools make children into servants, mindless drones. Not managing themselves but being treated as incapable.” He also writes in his article: “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. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants.” Gatto seems to truly believe that schools are some type of mold used to form children of America. I can see how this would be true — seeing as how restricted we students are and how often even seniors in high school are treated like five-year olds. If we are always treated like children, do you really think we will find a way to grow up while in school? Of course this is not the same for everyone, but John Gatto is saying that this is how the schooling systems work. They do not allow their students to grow up or mature. Chris Hedges, in his article “Our Public Schools Are Churning Out Drones for the Corporate State” writes: “A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.” What can be taken from this is that standardized schools really just take students, shake out everything they can get, creativity, imagination and all. Then mold the students into something worthy of society.