Against School

I enjoyed reading John Taylor Gatto's "Against School". I hated my first 12 years of school. I mean, I liked my friends, and lunch, and the clubs and activities, but I hated school. My parents expected me to get at least B's in every class and that's what my goal was. Grades were what mattered, not learning the material. I probably devoted 10% of my thinking capacity to school and that was enough to do well. Based on my experiences I agree with Gatto on several points.

I agree that school tries to make us all the same. There isn't much room for a particularly bright kid to progress faster than an average learner. Classes move at the same speed and cover the same material for everyone. In my experience this means that hardly anyone learns anything useful in the first 12 years of school. Oh we do learn some things as Gatto points out. We learn how to blindly follow our teachers and leaders, we learn how to force ourselves to do boring, useless, mundane work well. We learn not to question anything, whether it's the system, the teachers, or the material.

I didn't go to college after high school. My grades were good enough, I had a 3.3 GPA in high school even though I hardly put any effort into my studies. I didn't go to college because I did not like school. When I was 17 I graduated high school and joined the military to get as far away from school as possible. It was a great experience that, surprisingly, actually taught me to think for myself, to question systems, information, and norms. Now I'm in college after 9 years of no school. I have been pleasantly surprised so far. The vast majority of my classes have encouraged actual thinking! Amazing! I am taking the time to learn about subjects that are interesting to me and I am enjoying myself. I think the key difference though is my experiences between High School and College. I take personal responsibility for my education now. I don't just wait for someone to get me interested or get my attention. I grab my own attention and foster my own interest in subjects and learning.

Overall I think the big problem with our educational system is personal responsibility. Parents need to be involved in their children's life and education. Kids, under the guidance of their parents, need to motivate and entertain themselves. I agree with Gatto that the system is set up to control, limit and cow American students. But the blame does not fall on some mysterious "education system". We are all taxpayers and voters. If we "really" wanted to change the education system we could. What we can do is learn to work within the system, and that is the responsibility of the parents and the individual students.