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Against School By John Taylor Gatto

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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If you were to change something about the education system in the U.S, what would you change? How would you critique the quality of education? Education historian Diane Ravitch answers these questions in her excerpt that was published in 2014, “The Essentials of a Good Education.” In her text Ravitch argues that the education system is flawed and that the vision of a good education is unfair and unequal. Ravitch supports her claim by providing examples of the negative effects of the educational system and using historical context.

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In “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X, writes about how he was enlightened by the text and novels that he read in prison and discusses how he self educated himself. Malcolm X was more empowered due to his passion in the history of black people in America because he wanted to make a change in the world. The teaching curriculum in America lacks relatable topics that engage young minds. Public schools in America usually lack the opinion of the students. Students would have more of a desire to learn if school wasn’t only about passing.

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Furthering his argument that school isn't needed for success , Gatto states “ George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were not products of a school system, and none of these men graduated from a secondary school.” Gatto wants the readers to understand that these are well known Americans who are still highly talked about till this day but have succeeded without a 12 year schooling method that we use in this modern day. Gatto brings up an eye opener with these six functions of modern schooling stating “The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

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Malcolm X was a prominent African American civil rights leader and activist during the late 1900s. Prior to his role as a civil rights trailblazer, Malcolm X was an inarticulate hustler who was sentenced to ten years in prison on burglary charges. It was in prison that Malcolm X had acquired a taste for education and he could not stop yearning for more; as a result, he began to study tirelessly. Throughout “a Homemade Education”, Malcolm X appeals to one’s sense of ethics, logic, and emotion by utilizing his own personal experiences to stress that everyone should educate themselves and thus gather an understanding about the world. When in prison Malcolm X had attempted to emulate a man named Bimbi, a fellow prison mate whom he had looked up

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In “A Homemade Education,” Malcolm X expresses that reading and increasing your knowledge is extremely important and that it has helped him understand black history and slavery. Malcolm X was very frustrated with himself because he could not convey what he wanted to say when it came to writing simple English. Many people, who have heard Malcolm X on television or read something he wrote, would have thought that he had obtained an education “beyond the eight grade” (1). Malcolm X claims that this impression of him is a result of him studying during his prison sentence. It began when he met a man named Bimbi in the Charlestown Prison, where he felt as if he was far less knowledgeable than him.

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Against Schools by John Gatto is a teacher's observation of the public education system, its faults, and the true reason behind the mass education of the American people. Using his experience as a teacher, Gatto analysis why education is failing and what they don’t want us to know about it. When talking to both students and teachers, the main complaints from the students were that the material was boring, it made no sense or they already knew it, and that the teachers didn’t care about the subject and did not want to learn more. The teachers also complained that the material was boring and that it was all to student's fault. The boredom that they feel is not just one person's fault though, it is everyone's fault.

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Many writers have included accounts of experiences at school or in the classroom in their memoirs or works of fiction. The narratives of writers like Sandra Cisneros and Malcolm X seem to suggest that education is a social process with profound intellectual, emotional, and ideological effects on individuals. Of course, the definition of education will vary depending on who is supplying it. For some, education does not occur chiefly in a

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In Malcolm X’s “Learning To Read”, self-education is the main theme in which Malcolm emphasis as his main motivational inspiration for success. Consequently, Malcolm's self-empowerment did not come from school or prison, but from his strong desire for self-expression and motivational encouragement inspired by his inmate friends that he tried to emulate. This evidence is presented in certain passages of the story co-authored by Alex Haley and likewise supports the theory that adult self-learning is a powerful method of education. That in turn initiates a primary root of internal motivation that inspired him like he mentions in the story, “ability to read awoke inside me”(Para. 41)

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In “Learning to Read,” by Malcolm X, I think while Malcolm taught himself to read he also teach himself about history “With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history” (Malcolm X 275). It is these interesting history that makes Malcolm keep wanting to read more and the more he read the more vocabularies he knows and sharpening his reading skills. According to Malcolm, “In my own case, once I heard of the “glorious history of the black man,” I took special pains to hunt in the library for books that would inform me on details about black history,” (Malcolm X 276-277). We can see the eagerness in Malcolm of wanting to learn and know more about history, especially if it’s related to black people, and he won’t stop looking for an answer until he finds one. What Malcolm gave and taught himself is not only learned how to read, but passion and knowledge that will put his ignorance

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Has School Failed Society? Have you ever wondered why you go to school? Why you are told repeatedly that you must graduate from an outstanding college? To elaborate more,american schools have failed society, and does not educate society’s youth. By defining why american schools does nothing for children and is pointless, by refuting counter arguments of those who claim America schools provide a well rounded and adequate education and by presenting expert opinion and documented research, one will know that american schools do not properly educate children.

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Students begin to be treated, awarded or disciplined, as a grade, not by applying what they learn to everyday life. Funding should improve the school, not to blame budget cuts for deterring students of resources to help brainstorm for themselves and apply themselves to different forms of learning through the arts and other classes that are not graded. Furthermore, the standardized testing’s main purpose is for the funding, but why have funds if the students are not growing? In her essay, “The Essentials of a Good Education,” educational historian and policy analyst Diane Ravitch utilizes logos and criticism to develop a claim that breaking away from solely preparing for standardized testing, which has become synonymous with intelligence tests, is the only way for a school to be truly beneficial is by not letting budget cuts discriminate from the arts, listening to affluent parents and comparing it to the schools today, and determining what education should truly be applying to enhance the community. Moreover, standardized tests are determining basic intelligence; therefore, schools should focus on a variety of interests, but these tests eliminate the possibility for this to

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In “Learning to Read”, Malcolm X uses rhetorical analysis to argue how African Americans continued to struggle in gaining education due to racism. He informs people that through our history books, there have been modifications that restrain the truth about the struggles black people faced. Malcolm X encouraged his audience to strive to get the rights that they deserved. He demonstrates that knowledge is very important because the truth empowers us. In his interview he persuades his audience with diction, tone, pathos, ethos, and appeal to emotion to make his point.

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Analysis for Learning to Read by Malcolm X Malcolm X, who used X to signify his lost African tribal name, was an American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. He stated in his excerpt “Learning to Read” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, “[People] will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade” (Learning to read, X,3). Malcolm X was kicked out of the school after 8th grade, and went to the prison. He learned how to read in the prison. Ever since then, he started to read books and think about the fate of black people’s.

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A Proper Education Despite how important an American education is, it is not as helpful as it used to be. While other countries systems are succeeding, America’s system is failing. The American education system has an 80% graduation rate, however, more students are dropping out every year. While 80% of students are receiving diplomas, less than half of those students claim they are unable to read proficiently, and even solve mathematic problems.

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Summary of "Learning to Read" by Malcolm X In his essay "Learning to Read" from the chapter "Saved" in Malcolm's Autobiography published in New York (Grove Press, 1965). Malcolm was born in Omaha, Nebraska and his father was a political activist on behalf of Marcus Garvey. After he and his family moved to East Lansing, Michigan, where his father was killed and his mother placed in a mental institution. he became an orphan and ended up on the streets of Detroit where he was known as "Detroit Red".

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