Richard Jordan Gatling was born in January 1818 in Winton North Carolina, and died at the age of 85 in 1903. Gatling's career as an inventor began when he assisted his father in the construction of machines for sowing cottonseeds, and also for thinning cotton plants. He spent a lot of time in the fields with his father who helped him build some of his inventions. Richard Jordan Gatling was a medical doctor with numerous patents for his farm equipment inventions.…
John Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, share a theme of dehumanization. Dehumanization is portrayed through two opposite social classes, the wealthy and the working class, and the ways in which women are treated by men. Of Mice and Men is a novel about George and Lennie, two migrant farmers, who have been hired to work at a farm after being chased out of their last job. The Great Gatsby is concerned with its protagonist, Jay Gatsby, and his devotion to rising into the upper class to impress Daisy Buchanan who left him because he was poor. In the end, characters from both novels are either dehumanized due to their class…
John Gatto’s “Against School” is a persuasive essay arguing both the ineffectiveness and negative outcomes of today’s public school system. Not only does Gatto provide credibility with his experience as a teacher, but he also presents historical evidence that suggests that the public school system is an outdated structure, originally meant to dumb down students as well as program them to be obedient pawns in society. Fact and authority alone do not supplement his argument. Gatto also uses emotional appeals, such as fear and doubt, to tear down the reader’s trust in the schooling system. Although it may seem to be so, Gatto’s argument is not one sided. He also offers suggestions to make the educational system more efficient at the hands of positive reinforcement and the employment of more motivated teachers. Through the effective application of ethos, logos, and pathos, John Gatto provides a well-rounded argument against the public school system that would cause any reader to question the goals of modern schooling.…
In Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school and university, millions of students are herded through the same education system independent of their differing levels of intelligence and skills. The limited funds put into the education system are spent on providing a generalized education, which is geared towards moving everyone through the system that inevitably hurts both the academically and non-academically oriented. Some argue that America’s education system is based far too much on standardized testing, allowing others to determine their academic strengths and weaknesses. But the issue is that every year students go through standardized testing, are told their results and then the system simply continues with business as usual. A system where students are placed in separate schools based on their interests, intelligence, and abilities is highly discouraged in most of the country because everyone wants to believe that they are above average.…
John Taylor Gatto in his essay “Against School” begins explaining of how boring school is to students. He also explains the damage that the system makes to the teacher and the student by not making the material interesting in class. Furthermore, he explains how the students used to look at him as an incompetent teacher who lacks of knowledge. In addition, he shows the dark side of a school system that intends to brainwash and destroy the ideas from kids. He addresses the main goal of the educational system to convert juveniles into the next docile and manageable generation. Also, he proposes how an educational system should be structured. In addition, he demonstrates how a person can become successful without going to a school…
John Gatto is a New York City seventh grade teacher with remarkable accolades. Because of his impressive accolades as a teacher and citizen, his words are not taken lightly. As a result of his spotlight, he has come up with a list of seven lessons that no syllabus will ever include, but Gatto insists that they form the core of our educational curriculum today. While he does not agree with the lessons himself, they are being taught nationwide and he insists “that schools have traded their educational function for one of social coordination”(Gatto 1).…
Standardized testing, every student should be familiar with it, but is it nonsense? Does it actually help schools and their students advance in academic competence, or does it hinder their ability by adding more anxiety and stress to students? Jacequeline Howard, a twenty year old student helps us disclose on these examinations by giving us a student’s perspective on how standardized testing is not only changing the way government looks at funding, but also discouraging students and changing the way people look at students. Through Howards ethos, pathos, logos, and style in her essay, we can really see her passion for other students and her reason to promote a change.…
Members of this burgeoning anti-test movement fail to grasp testing’s valuable role in motivating and guiding students and teachers. Preparing young Americans for success in the global economy will require our schools to improve, not abolish, academic standards.…
The pressure of succeeding in school is always bearing in a student's mind. Schools today utilize standardized testing to determine whether a student is promoted. For instance, ACT and SAT are examples of how educators view a student’s ability. With that being said, the majority of a student's diligent work is dedicated to one evaluation on a test. In some classes, a majority of classroom instruction is centered around testing. A standardized test score should not hinder a student from furthering their education. Use of standardized testing is not an effective measure of a student’s ability.…
“Where is the standardized testing that can accurately measure passion for learning, respect for others, and human empathy?” These are the words of Tom McKenna, a disgruntled high school teacher from Portland, Oregon. Just alike the other educators and students across the nation, Tom is tired of the system. The educational system today is made up of many standardized tests. Standardized tests are tools designed to allow measure of student performance relative to all others taking the same test. Standardized tests are bad for many reasons. They cause teachers to limit their curriculum, put low-level income and minority students at a disadvantage, cause school districts to focus too heavily on raising test scores, and extract the passion for learning from students. It used to be a part of life, but now it’s causing kids not to go to college, and it’s causing kids to have a level of stress that shouldn’t even be allowed. People all over are stating that they give a false overview of who the student actually is, and in the end, these tests won’t get you anywhere in life. It’s important to many people including students who are taking the tests, teachers who are preparing the students for these tests and of course the parents who have to deal with all the complaints from their child about these tests. This is a pretty important issue today, because so much is riding on these tests. If you do poorly you won’t get accepted to the university you want, or your teacher could get fired because of your performance. Although some people think standardized testing is just a part of life and it teaches students that it’s not okay to fail, these tests give a false interpretation of who the student actually is. One score does not tell you if that person is an outstanding individual or not. A student could guess on every question and still perform well. This will give their teacher the idea that they know the material based off their test score but in reality they do…
Evidence: According to Tim Walker, writer for NeaToday in his article, “Our schools, once vigorous and dynamic centers for learning, have been reduced to mere test prep factories, where teachers and students act out a script written by someone who has never visited their classroom and where ‘achievement’ means nothing more than scoring well on a bubble test”(3).…
Every year thousands upon thousands of children, ages seven and upwards sit down to take their scheduled standardized tests. This generation has been classified as the most tested in history. "Its progress through childhood and adolescence" has been "punctuated by targets, key stages, attainment levels, and qualifications" ("Stalin in School" 8). Each year the government devises a new standard and then finds a way to test how each student measures up to this standard. They have come to the conclusion that the easiest way to chart the success of school reform is to follow the results of standardized testing. But rating education strictly by the numbers is the wrong way to measure a process as complex as learning, and teaching kids how to memorize facts and remember dates is an altogether different achievement from teaching them how to make sense out of new ideas and experiences.…
The purpose of any teacher is to ensure the best education her students could get. Student learning should based on cognitive thinking skills and learning, not just declarative knowledge and basic skills. In the United States, however, high-stakes testing has complicated these efforts, and are used to process a student’s knowledge and the effective ways of teaching. These high-stakes tests are being used to compare students, schools, and school boards across the nation for each district. Teachers and school administrators are often blamed for poor test results of students, that are then reported to the media.…
Assessments are a test for knowledge of content standards. The objective is to monitor progress of students and hold schools accountable. A desire to increase performance standards and accountability have led to the widespread of standardized testing. The implementation of high stakes tests has impacted curriculum, pedagogy, and school culture. Studies have shown that high stakes tests may compromise student understanding (Amrein & Berliner, 2002; Berliner, 2011). High stakes test can dictate the practice of the teacher, because it is critical for their students to pass in order to have job security, promotion, or tenure.…
There is a prevailing notion that the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically. The people doing the actual educating are under incredible adversity to perform well. Many feel more beaten down this year than last. Some are walking into their classrooms unsure if this is still the job for them. They have built up invisible wounds from years of trying to educate the constantly changing American child effectively enough that his international test scores will rival those of children flourishing in wealthy, socially-advanced nations. The American child has changed, and not necessarily for the better. Many harsh voices argue that teachers must change by “simply” working harder. The favored switch for achieving this prescribed augmentation of the American schoolteacher’s work ethic is fear, driven by a progressively more precarious employment situation. Teachers by and large are not afraid at all, they are just tired of the constant unrealistic demands put upon them. This is what the American public school appears to look like in 2012, driven by compulsive adherence to standardized testing. The fate of children, their schools, and their teachers are based on these school test scores. The idea of education has always been to give a extensive base of learning to students. Schools are required to give young minds exposure to reading, writing, and arithmetic. As students get older, the information taught should build on this base to expand learning to history, advanced math, science, and other academic pursuits. What has historically separated a vocational education from a college prep course of study is the inclusion of the many small details that would never appear as a question on a standardized test. While on the surface, it might appear teaching for a test is designed to cover the material necessary for a good education could be a good thing. However, the reality is that there are several flaws to this logic when…