Gatto Against School Analysis

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Every morning, American youths are waking up and going to work. What job do a sixteen-year-old and a six-year-old have in common? School. Primary education is necessary for a majority of developed countries and secondary education is highly encouraged as well. Societies support this mandate on the belief that school provides an “education”. How does one become truly educated though? True education can be developed in schools, but many gain one outside of that institution, through informal schooling or work experience. Being truly educated stems from being knowledgeable. How is being knowledgeable about a subject determined though? Through mastery of the skill, meaning the ability to apply what one has learned to a relevant situation. A student who memorizes the quadratic formula but is not able to use it in a word problem does not have mastery of the formula. When a child learns the alphabet and subsequently uses these skills to spell out their own name, they have mastered the alphabet. Gatto addresses this disparity as “taking an education” versus “receiving a schooling” in his essay “Against School” (272). Students who merely “take an education” input the knowledge with …show more content…

Brick walls, white classrooms, brown desks. While there are many flaws within the institutionalized American school system, there are benefits in the foundational ideas that can create a true educational environment for young children. Children’s brains are hardwired to digest information. They are coming to terms with the world around them all at once and tend to do so with cheerful exuberance. These are the “best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight” (Gatto 272). Children are capable of so much but to become truly educated, they need to learn to enjoy the process of learning. School has the potential to provide this through many ways, the first being social

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