The Game of School: Why We All Play It, How It Hurts Kids, and What It Will Take to Change It by Robert L. Fried is a great tool for identifying challenges in school systems and planning school reform. This book explains in great depth the problems faced by students and educators in schools today and ends with a call to action for solving these problems. Some major concepts that arise frequently throughout the book are time being wasted, students feeling powerless and the prioritization of test scores over authentic learning. Time is wasted by everyone in school and is wasted in various ways, for example students are given busy work and teachers rush through a curriculum while students learn nothing. Students, while they are the most important stakeholders, feel as though they have no control over their education.
Mike Rose details the faults of the education system in a piece concerning his own personal experiences. His high school education was radically changed when his school swapped his test scores with the scores of a student with the same last name. The system depended upon test scores to determine the path of classes that individual students must take, and due to the weak performance reflected in Mike Rose’s alleged scores, he was placed on the vocational path. Unfortunately, the vocational path was implied to be the lowest tier of classes in the school - so despite Rose’s natural intelligence, he was placed within remedial classes due to the IQ within his file.
While I did not grow up in a “tough” neighborhood, I did grow up in a rural part of southern Louisiana, where dialects and accents were thick, speaking well and reading books would make you stand out. My grades were exceptional in early school years, but faltered during my teens, when social life, sports, and proving oneself physically became more important. The author mentions,“ I grew up torn, then, between the need to prove I was smart and the fear of a beating if I proved it too well”. Graff then attempts to convey a broader concept that while navigating the complexities within social groups, it is also expected that students work hard to learn the subjects and material placed in front of them, with sometimes no thought given to the individual interests of the students. Students are punished for not being engaged, struggle to learn how to be intellectual, and ultimately are not accepted by the academic
The topic of schools not being able to hack into the minds of young students and bring out their hidden intellect is a problem in modern culture. Gerald Graff writes about this subject in his article “Hidden Intellectualism.” He is professor at the University of Illinois and the former president of the Modern Language Association. He talks about how schools fail to gain students attention by making them write essays on the classics, like Shakespeare, instead of starting out with topics the students would enjoy, such as sports, video games, and fashion. He makes valid arguments about how the schools fail to tap into that hidden intellectualism of the students, and he uses pathos, logos, and ethos; and so therefore his essay is mostly successful.
School. It’s the place we go to learn, to meet new people to get and education. We spend a minimum of 12 years at school, not including the years some people spend in college. If we’ve been in school for such a long period of time, getting an education, it must have made some sort of impact in life, right? The Other Wes Moore proves this point by giving insight of two different people with the same name and completely different life outcomes.
In Carl Singleton’s article, “What Our Education System Needs is More F’s,” he argues that students aren’t receiving the failing grades they deserve. School systems are to blame for the lack of quality in America’s education. No other recommendation for improvement will succeed. The only way to fix the American education system is to fail more students. According to Singleton, the real root of the issue is with the parents.
Many people think that most American schools are satisfactory. That is far from what is actually happening. The harsh reality is that schools that are unsatisfactory do exist. In Jonathan Kozol’s “Fremont High School”, he points out the flaws of a high school located somewhere in Los Angeles. This helps shine light on differences in the quality of education in various areas of the country.
In the “Against Schools” article, author John Gatto describes the modern day schooling system and its flaws. He uses several rhetorical strategies in trying to prove his point. He successfully uses all three types of rhetoric in writing this article, which includes ethos, pathos, and logos. He establishes these strategies very early, and often throughout the article. He believes one issues with today’s schooling system is boredom, and that there is a distinct difference between what it means to be educated and schooled.
Richard Rodriguez wrote “Scholarship Boy” to explain the range of conflicting emotions he felt over receiving an education while growing up at home with his immigrant parents. He enjoyed school and learned quickly, but soon he knew more than his parents could comprehend. He was ashamed of his parents for not knowing as much as he did and this drove him away from them and more towards his instructors and his books. Though his parents were proud of him, he struggled to feel anything but embarrassed of them and this affected how he viewed himself and the education he was blessed to have. When Gerald Gaff was young, he did not feel that books related to his life and that they, therefore, were not worth reading.
How Princeton High School is the Same and Different from Devon School in A Separate Peace by John Knowles Imagine living in a school where all you can look forward to is being drafted into a war. The attitude of that school may be different to the school that students are obtaining their education in today. The Devon school in A Separate Peace by John Knowles shows exactly what a school during a war is like. During the second world war, the Devon school’s attitude was much different to what a school is seen as today.
The main argument is that perceived throughout the reading is that the schools itself is failing students. They see a student who may not have the greatest test scores or the best grades, and degrade them from the idea of being intellectual. Graff states, “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic” (Graff 244). Schools need to channel the minds of street smart students and turn their work into something academic.
In both of these entertainment devices, the schools appear to be a richer, higher education sort that is made for kids preparing for to become a doctor or lawyer. In Dead Poets Society, the principal speaks of how seventy-five percent of the graduated classes go on to Ivy League schools where they can pursue their higher education. In A Separate Peace, most of the kids who graduated went into the war. However it was halfway through WWII, and the kids had been told that their country needed them, but the school prepared them with a higher education. Both of these schools prepared their students very
What is school really trying to do with our lives? The article “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto is an article that talks about the problem of schools and how the goals are not what they say they are. First. the author talks about how the school system creates boredom and what could be done to fix it. He then talks about how school is not needed in its required class times, what the schools say the goals are for the students, and where our school system originated from.
While school may teach lessons, they are certainly not valuable life lessons. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird repeatedly shows the ineffectiveness of the education system in a child’s morals. To Kill A Mockingbird takes place in the Great Depression era in Alabama, where education was not the best. Teachers would only seek to teach their classes average, everyday lessons rather than valuable life teachings.
School is a huge learning process where students learn and are challenged academically and socially. Ultimately, the stress, work, and dampened self-esteems are all key factors in preparing a student for the real world and helping them work towards being a better
