Some of what john gatto is saying comes off a little scary. Particularly the quote he used from H. L. Mencken that stated "the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else." The idea that were are all being bread down to a safe controllable level of uncreative inward thinking peoples is very scary. I have run into this "conspiracy theory" on this topic before in a totally unrelated essay and its reoccurrence lends it some, even if you view it as minuet, credibility. He also talks about the teachers saying "Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers" which I never really took into consideration before. I mean sure bored students are an everyday occurrence I myself have been one a time or two but I never thought of how the teachers may feel. They teach the same curriculum every year, we are only hearing once and for the first time they are hearing it for the (insert giant ass number here) time and probably have lost interest in the topic all together. This shows another side of how hard it is to be a teacher but does not excuse a lazy teacher. If you are bored with what you’re teaching it is your job to spice it up and take interest again not the administration or the student body. Being bored isn’t a reason to teach sloppy it’s a reason to explore new teaching methods.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteLike you, I have heard of the "Conspiracy" to dumb down the American public. Although a bit unrealistic, the facts Gatto uses to support his argument due present an interesting dilemma. Great job!
Yes, it's true about teachers teaching the same curriculum year after "giant ass number" year. At the college level, we're fortunate to be able to change our curriculum, either incrementally or even abruptly, based on our continued work in our disciplines (research, reading scholarly journals, attending conferences, writing for those journals or speaking at those conferences, etc.) Re: the conspiracy theory, there is a grain of truth here, in that public schools grew out of the charity schools (schools for the children of paupers, beggars, etc.) in England in the 18th century to "prevent vice" amongst the lower classes. And in America, too, public schools were charged with preparing children for their appropriate stations in life, many of them, of course, requiring subservience, obedience, etc. I think that most people who go into teaching today go in because they really do want to help children succeed, but with the standardized curriculum and the way the school days are segmented into blocks of time, it's difficult to get beyond the sort of teaching that prepares kids to be obedient, subservient, etc.
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