John Taylor Gatti

“Against School” - John Taylor Gatto 152-161

In this article John Taylor Gatto explains to the readers that schools are pretty much suppressing the young human minds. He asks why twelve years is the magical number for a child to receive education. He also explains that children are bored and not getting the full potential of education out of school. He believes that children don’t need school, yes they need education but not in the contained walls. Gatto says “Throughout most of the American history, kids generally didn’t go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead”. I on the other hand half disagree with him. I believe we do need some sort of routine. Obviously these men did not go through a 20th century high school education but they were taught by someone. It is like that nowadays; our population has grown much more so not every child can be home schooled because not every parent knows what they are doing. Children in this day and age have to many distractions at home now as well with constant media such as music, face book, and cell phones. Plus there are children in school now who don’t care about school, so what makes you think they would do anything on their own? I believe a lot of the issue is that we need better teachers! There are to many teachers that don’t know what they are talking about or what they are doing. They are only making themselves unhappy and screwing the kids over. These teachers don’t need to be teachers; we need teachers with passion and love for their students! We need school to keep kids safe, it’s an escaping place for a lot of kids. Some parents are not highly educated enough to teach their own children and school is really successful to them in their life; school is a necessary evil!