Gatto Against School

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Some people believe education enslaves us and other people believe education liberates us. The education that students’ receive is boring and incorrect; the definition of education is a process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university. I strongly believe education enslaves us. Schools don’t educate, they only teach people to follow orders. Sherman Alexie tackles his own process of education, one that includes a voracious hunger for the written word. His experience with education was one of autonomy, and his relationship to learning led him to future success. On the other hand, John Taylor Gatto also preaches for a more unrestricted learning experience, a complete opposite from the regimented factory-like …show more content…
Gatto states, "Do we really need school?" which is a question if school is really as necessary as we make it out to be. Gatto also claims in his essay that students and teachers are both bored because students are being taught the material that they already know and teachers are bored because they feel that the students have bad attitudes and don't want to learn but just want good grades. He also disagrees in the boring old five day a week and long hours of class time system that we have. The author believes that this is happening because of the product of the school system that America has to provide education. The difference that he explains the readers is that “schooling” is something that kids have to do for twelve years, and five days a week for nine months. “Education” is only if a kid really wants to, for example, school. That is only if a student really wants to get educated and move on to college to succeed in life which is a choice and not enslaving. In Sherman Alexie essay titled “Superman and Me” has the same issue with boredom. While Alexie visits the schools as often as possible to teach a large amount of Indian kids but close to the end he elaborates, “They stare out the window.” which could probably be an indication of being bored. In my math 206 class, I sit in the back of the class and every time I stare to the right side to look out the window I am …show more content…
He says "We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women”. This means that as a society we shut down our intelligence and creativity body of people because our system doesn't run correctly as it should. Gatto informs the readers that students would be interested in learning if they were given an “education” and not “schooling”. Students want to be motivated, to be encouraged, and to have the tools to succeed in life. They don’t want to feel like they are force to learn material that society thinks they have to. Gatto’s story states that students should be able to manage themselves in life. I believe that students need more than just a school system, where the teacher tells them what to teach. There have been times when students probably thought that their teachers were boring, that their classes were boring and did not mean anything because probably we all thought that we were never going to use this again in real life. But we also know that there is a reason why we are forced to take all of these boring
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