RR #1

Sara Estrada
English 2
Reader Response

Against schools

By John Taylor Gatto 

      John Gatto expresses his belief as to why schools are boring and mandatory schooling is unnecessary. He uses all of Aristotles appeals in this passage very effectively. He uses ethos to provide his credibility as a teacher for more than 20years, pathos by relating public schooling to almost every American citizen and logos by providing evidence of many well known Americans that did not attend mandatory schooling. He along with Inglis devised six unstated purposes of public schooling; the adjustive or adaptive function, the integrating function, the diagnostic and directive function, the differentiating function, the selective function and the propaedeutic function. 

       The adjustive or adaptive function; states "schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority" which leads to critical judgement while destroying the ideas that useful or interesting ideas should be taught due to the lack of 'reflexive obedience' testing. The integrating function; has the intention to make all the children alike because people who conform are predictable. The diagnostic and directive function; decides a students "proper social role" by test scores.The differentiating function; after the students social role is determined they are grouped with other students classified in the same social role in order to teach them only as far as the social machine allows.The selective function; relates to Darwins theory of "favored races" in order to improve the breeding stock, schools label the unfit with bad grades or remedial placement clearly enough so their peers will accept them as inferior and bar them from "reproductive sweepstakes". The propaedeutic function; the societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers, in which a small portion of the students will be taught how to manage this system, watch over and control a dumbed down population so the government might continue unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor. 

              My prior educational experience very much supports Gattos six unstated purposes of public schooling. I attended public school from kindergarten until my freshman year in high school, the I transferred to a private school. From kindergarten up until 9th grade I can always remember being bored in class and taught to obey all authority, even if they were out right wrong. We never studied anything remotely exciting or useful and I was judged for not performing well on tests because I didn't find the subject interesting. We all had to dress alike, not in uniforms but we had a strict dress code. Every semester we had standardized test scores that determined what placement and class we would be in and we never learned anything except what we already knew. I also recall throughout elementary school and middle school students placed in remedial classes or continuously received poor grades, almost all of the other students classified them as dumb and did not want to associate with the "dumb kids", let alone date them. There was always a small group of students that got special privileges  from the teachers because they got the best grades which included many outings with the teachers where they taught leadership skills to the students. 

               After I transferred to a private school my freshman year, all of these six functions disappeared, school became fun and exciting which included field trips and relatable topics, such as going to UCSC on April 20th, we had a very diverse student population, the students as well as teachers helped other students with assignments and tests to improve their scores and the students that received the low score wasn't judged any differently. the class sizes were small but filled with students of the same grade, students found other students attractive based on appearance and personality as opposed to grades in school, we were all treated equally as individuals and as a group fitting each individuals needs as well as maintaining the whole group, teachers and students needs.