Created By

Cheshir

Rate this Story

Embed

Have you ever noticed how little people seem to actually get out of a public education? In the essay "Against Schools," John Taylor Gatto asserts just such a claim. Gatto states that the public school system is "designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens" (691). Now I don't know about incomplete citizens, but it definitely produces incompetent citizens. Case and point, when a young man in my senior English class was asked what his major in college was going to be he answered: football. Now I would like to believe that most people know the difference between an athletic and academic pursuit, but the more I talk to people the more likely it seems they don't. I can't count the number of times I talked to some one and they would argue with me that a cop had the right to illegally search their car. It baffled me that not only did these people not seem to know their basic constitutional rights taught to them in any Government or history class, but they were willing to defend the idea. So I must disagree with Gatto; public schools aren't breading incomplete citizens: their breeding cattle. And if you give cattle food and the illusion of freedom they stay happy.

Yet James Bovard writes in, "Public Schools: Turning Children and parents into Peons," Than "Public education is the most expensive "gift" that most Americans will ever receive. While politicians speak grandly of the supposed benefits of public education, government courts have ensured that parents and children have no legal rights to a decent education." According to Bovard "Public high schools graduate an estimated 700,000 functionally illiterate teenagers each year." Yet according to Judge O'Neill of the Ohio Court of Appeals "The primary duty of education lies with the parent to vigilantly pursue the education of his or her children. The duty of the State is to provide the means of education. Thus, a child who attends school for 12 years and receives no education must look not to the State but rather to his or her parents for their failure to perform a duty imposed by nature and by law." So there you have it, public school fails because parents aren't doing someone else's job. Yet you always here people say that what their learning is boring. But according to Gatto, "The Obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish," (689). Yet according to Joseph Epstein, in "The Perpetual Adolescent," states "The ideal almost every where is to seem young for as long as possible," (398), so is it not possible that today's students are inadvertently making them selves bored in an attempt to not grow up by not learning the materials needed to be a responsible adult.

However according to Bovard, "Parents pay thousands of dollars a year in taxes solely for a chair in a classroom," yet you always hear the reasons for poor schooling for students is lack of funds, large class sizes, and inadequate materials. But according to Gatto it's because the teachers "feel bored and blame the kids," (688). So who's to blame for the lack of education the unreliable system, the unenthusiastic teachers, or the incompetent students? I say all the above! The system has failed in placing rules where they shouldn't be and not enforcing the rules that should be in place. For instance now days you can't where a hat in a class room because it will distract other students, yet a kid can bust out raping or singing in my math class and the teacher can't remove him from the class because parents will complain. Both of these are failures of the teachers. My hat because the teacher is apparently so bad at teaching that a simple nonchalant object is more captivating the they are, and the wana- be rapper because of the teachers lack of back bone. But then again the teacher only has to meat the laxed standers of the curriculum and prepare the student for what ever assessment test that their school gives, not take an interest in their students academic future. Yet not all of the blame can be placed on the teachers, it is in fact the students fault if they don't pursue some sort of intellectual experience. If a person doesn't feel prepared for the future by what schooling they've received they pursue the required experience outside of school. Yet parents are also at fault, you always see parents who are more concerned with whether or not god should be in schools than whether their child can even spell god. And even the school system in place is falling apart. Now a days a school is known for how far its football team has gone in a championship than how many people can pass a basic math test. How can literacy be less important than athletics: literacy encompassing your entire school and athletics encompassing only a few? So I guess at the end of the day you can shuffle blame and find problems with public schools (there are a lot), but if you want to be an intellectually competent individual you have to take a hold of your life and work for it.

Sources

            Gatto, John Taylor. "Against Schools." The Writers Presence.

Ed. Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan. 5th Edition.

New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2006. 688- 695.

            Epstein, Joseph. "The Perpetual Adolescent." The Writers Presence.

Ed. Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan. 5th Edition.

New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2006. 396- 405.

            Bovard, James. (1997, July). "Public Schools: Turning Children and Parents into Peons." Freedom Daily. Retrieved November 19, 2006, from http://www.fff.org