Against School By John Taylor Gatto

The American education system is often lauded to be one of the best in the world, as it emphasizes creativity, critical thinking, and innovation. Still, despite these strengths, there are definite pitfalls that scourge the system and ultimately hinder student success. America is stereotyped as an amazing country, but that’s delusional. Taking a deeper look into exactly why the American education system is on a continuous decline, it’s not surprising to many that the public education system is broken. Essays “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto, “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, “The Essentials of a Good Education” by Diane Ravitch, and lastly “Don’t Send Your Kids To The Ivy League” by William Deresiewicz all discuss different pitfalls of the

Through the work of John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School”, Gatto criticizes the modern public education system in the United States of America. He believes that the modern system is made to produce obedient workers instead of independent thinkers. Gatto states that “we could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight - simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests”. The majority of children aren’t able to focus on the topics that adults want them to learn, because they have zero interest in it. Being flexible is extremely important, especially when it comes to teachers, because every student will not be interested in the class, not every student will learn well in the way a curriculum is set up. An emphasis on adapting and learning to how students learn and do well is sorely lacking in modern curriculum, leading to bored, uninterested students. Author Diane Ravitch writes of the important standards necessary to provide quality education in her essay, “Anyone who truly cares about children must be repelled by the insistence on ranking them, rating them, and labeling them. Whatever the test measure is not the sum and substance of any child” (Ravitch 112). She specifies that standardization in the school curriculum is detrimental to

Whether that be from teachers, districts, or even the government’s part in education. “Learning to Read'' is an autobiographical essay by Malcolm X in which he recounts his journey of self-education while serving his prison sentence. His experience in the American education system is a clear representation of what’s wrong with it. Malcolm attended school but was severely neglected through his lessons, which led to adult illiteracy. As an African American student in an era still normalized with racism and discrimination, the majority of lessons he was taught were filled more with cover-up historical stories focusing on white men and positive history. He dropped out of school, shortly after starting the eighth grade. His experience might not be the most common, but it represents the neglect of education that students have to endure. There is no reason why a curriculum should include falsified or covered-up information, especially when it pertains to the student’s own country of origin. A lack of perspective gets forced onto students when they are not taught topics correctly. This can lead to a lack of determination or inspiration to attend school. Motivation starts to drop when students aren’t taught correctly because it’s easy for them to skip classes, or drop out of high school. Many students don't grow up to their full potential because they don’t know they have that potential. They might not have had classes they were