Essay #2 -For Assessment

1. Using the templates in They Say / I say, develop an essay that takes a nuanced position about some aspect of contemporary schooling. You should draw on either Freire or Gatto or both, as well as your own experiences and thinking to support your ideas.

* I made revisions and adjustments to this essay but failed to save as multiple drafts....doh!



John Taylor Gatto’s essay, “Against School” argues that the public school system in the United States exists only to dumb down and socially stratify the populace and turn us into “not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers.” I find this statement to be offensive and untrue. While Gatto has much to say about the system and its dirty, hidden agenda, he alludes only briefly to a questionable period in his life where his teaching license had been revoked. This I feel is a bit suspect and furthers the idea that he has a giant conspiracy theory against the public education system which is unfortunate because in his essay a major point that is overshadowed by this is parental responsibility in their children’s education. Yes, our public education system is flawed and there is room for improvement in any public system. But the argument posed is too simplistic. My public education experiences prove that his idea of the "system" is more complex than he may think.

I grew up in a smallish town in a friendly neighborhood in Southern Indiana. All the kids in my neighborhood went to the same school. I remember that in Kindergarten, the school districts changed, causing my mother and other kids mother's to flip out. The school we were being funneled to, decided by this larger than life entity, the School Board, was supposedly less than ideal (poor and in a sketchy neighborhood). I was nearly 6 years old and really didn't care, as long as my friends were going to be there as well. Turns out, that was my favorite public schooling period in my life.

During this period, I had caring, thoughtful, and sincere teachers and librarians that did everything they could to enrich my little 6-year-old life (continuing on through 8th grade) with wonderful art projects, media and science fairs, and book clubs. Music classes were offered by the 3rd grade and I was learning to play an instrument when I was 9. Anything that encouraged creativity and critical thinking, even at that young age, they had. Keep in mind that this was the poor school, the school with an outdated infrastructure and really gnarly food. I distinctly remember how involved mine and the other parents were. They were the “Homeroom Moms and Dads.” They were PTA members. They were leaders of the Girl Scouts and Brownies. Now this was a different time, think 1983ish and times have certainly changed, but my point is, both the school system and the parents were involved in stimulating our minds, teaching and guiding us to become honest, intelligent, hardworking students. Sure, there were rules we followed and curriculum guidelines for the teachers, but just because there are rules within an educational institution doesn’t imply a giant government conspiracy to “dumb down” the masses. Gatto’s essay further implies the conspiratorial view against the United States public school system, aligning it with the Prussian model that is "an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens-all in order to render the populace manageable.” I do think that such a broad generalization not only unfair but also inaccurate, as I can attest from personal experience to having educators that were not trying to and did not mold me into a mindless consumer.


High School was a bit different. In his essay, Gatto included excerpts from Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, "Principles of Secondary Education," to support his argument. Inglis broke down the "purpose of modem schooling into six basic functions." The second function tiled "The Integrating function" argues: "...Its [modem schooling] intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who confirm are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force." Looking back now, I can see this "function" attempted clearly throughout my high school career. Perhaps it was because we were a very large high school, with over 2,300 students, and this was a good way to "manage the population." Perhaps my high schooling could partially validate some of Gatto's argument. Let's explore this further. Conformity was enforced so greatly that I was once sent home for having multi-colored hair. I was a "distraction" and distractions were not tolerated. “Conform! Conform! Conform!” should have been the school fight song. Conformity leads to boredom. Boredom is not good. Boredom reminds me of the English proverb, “Idle hands are the Devil’s tools”. After a quick search on the Internet, I found an even better rendition corresponding to the above adage from the Portuguese: Cabeça vazia é oficina do diabo (An empty head is the devil's workshop). The Portuguese proverb rings true and I feel that Gatto’s grandfather had heard it before. In the third paragraph of Gatto’s essay, he recalls a time when his grandfather smacked him over the head for complaining of boredom. He was told that boredom is no one’s fault but one’s own. This statement/story is contradictory to Gatto’s main argument in that by placing all the responsibility onto the school system for educating, un-educating, dumbing down and what not, what he learned from his grandfather is that the responsibility is entirely his if he’s bored in the classroom, that “the obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people that didn’t know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible.”

Fortunately for me I had a high school teacher that went against the grain. He was less into the idea of conformity than I was. He taught Advanced Government. It was apparent he loved what he did, because he was pretty darn old and easily could have retired. Now when getting schooled in a small Southern Indiana town, one doesn't normally encounter fiery government teachers who open the floor in a very Friere-esque way, allowing debate amongst the students and also with himself. I presume his age and years of teaching in the school system had something to do with the freedom he had in his classroom. He encouraged critical thinking. He advised we question authority. He demanded that we take it upon ourselves to seek out information that we weren't going to find in the school library. This was before the internet too, so magazines and articles were the medium that opened my 17-year-old eyes to worldly conflicts, events, atrocities that were not shown on my local ABC News, such as the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the devastating U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. My point is, that even though throughout most of my high school career, I was urged to conform, to be a "sheeple”, I had parents that instilled a strong work/study ethic and teachers that inspired an insatiable interest within to never stop learning. This reminds me of another proverb, from Nigeria: "It takes a village to raise a child," which is taken to mean, that responsibility not only lies with the parents but with the community too.

John Taylor Gatto has research to sustain his claim that the United States school system is flawed, no doubt. But the idea that this system is in place to render us “mindless consumers,” “obedient” and “manageable” under the guise of an educational entity is suspect and unsupported. Gatto’s credibility as a teacher is questionable largely because he failed to include the entire story surrounding the revocation of his teaching license. He only touches on the parental responsibility aspect, which is unfortunate, because the school system does not exist only to raise the general population’s children. Had he explored this idea further, his essay would sound less conspiratorial and radical. Though my high school administration really tried to validate Gatto's argument, one particular teacher I had managed to quell their attempts through his passion for educating. Through my personal experiences as a product within the public education system, I feel I disprove Gatto's theory. I did not turn out a “sheeple” and I’ve been told more than once that I am actually far from “manageable.”