School Is Bad For Children Analysis

Education in the United States is at the center of many, if not all children’s lives growing up. However the physical act of going to school is very different on a person to person level. That is why I believe that it’s important to look at and compare the writing of Lynda Barry titled The Sanctuary of School, and the writing of John Holt titled School Is Bad For Children. In her article Barry describes to her audience a very personal story of her childhood growing up in a family that didn’t really notice her and the only way for her to feel noticed was to attend school. And in his article, Holt chose to talk about how he feels that schools in general are causing more harm than good for how kids learn and think in an educational environment.
In his article, Holt mentions that “He comes to feel that is a passive process, something that someone else does to you, instead of something you do for yourself.”(Holt 80) In saying this Holt is narrowing his views to one specific idea that children actually don't need schools to be educated. Instead what he is saying is that even without schools, children could still learn to do things just from observing others around them. Holt also argues that if this truly is the case in most public schools students are being taught to repress their own individual curiosity about life. However in her story Barry provides evidence that does not support Holt in his claim that schools repress a student's individuality. Barry describes her childhood as a childhood that did not always provide her with the best building blocks for success. That is why to her school was like a home away from home, a place where she could have fun and do things that she enjoyed. She found a place where her individuality was not suppressed but, it was encouraged. So when it came to her education growing up, she had this to say, “ I was lucky. I had Mrs. Lesane. I had Mr. Grunderson. I had an abundance of art supplies. And I had a particular brand of neglect in my home that allowed me to slip away and get to them.”(Barry 77). But if it wasn’t for the school or the teachers that Barry had grown up with she wouldn't of
In his article, Holt mentions ideas that he believes could change the current education system. He believes that his ideas would make school better and more engaging to students. But the one idea that he talked about that directly correlated with an idea Barry had was on the idea that, we need to make school a place where students and teachers alike want to be and enjoy being there. In his article, Holt mentions “Schools wouldn’t stay the way they are, they’d get better, because we would have to start making them what they ought to be right now-places where children would want to be.”(Holt 81) And in saying this what Holt is ultimately doing is he is backing up his whole idea that if people want schools to get better the school system as a whole is going to have to change. Now Holt and Barry might now agree on many topics relating to their respective articles, but something they do have in common is the idea that the school system does in fact need to change. In her article Barry says this “ We all know that a good education system saves lives, but the people of this country are still told that cutting the budget for public schools is necessary, that poor salaries for teachers are all we can manage and that art, music and all creative activities must be the first to go when times are