How Public Education Cripples Our Kids: A Response Paper

John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School: How Public Education cripples our kids, and why” article claims that public education and not education in entirety but forced schooling consisting of six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year for twelve years make children boring because public education does not help to children to become adventurers or to be molded leaders who can think critically and independently. As such, Gatto argues that well-schooled children have a low threshold for boredom because, unlike public schooled children, well-schooled students attain knowledge extensively and have a more meaningful life and relationships. Gatto uses the introduction to capture the reader and provide a general conclusion and argument because by stating that while teaching in some of the worst and best school in Manhattan “boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked any kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers” (Gatto, 1). As such, the first paragraph is attention-getting and relevant for the topic and, most importantly, focus getting. Usually, an identifiable thesis statement appears in the first paragraph of an article, which helps the reader to understand the scope purpose and direction of the paper. Gatto’s thesis appears in the fourth paragraph of the material but placing it in the first paragraph would have made the argument more relevant to the reader

Gatto’s justification for the topic is easily identifiable and consistent. For instance, the author uses a rhetorical question as topic sentences to get the reader to react and think and also to persuade or influence the audience. In the seventh paragraph, for example, the author asks whether people really need school and then provide a warrant that even leaders including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson did not go through a public school system or investors and scholars such as Rockefeller and Twain respectively did not use the school system to be successful. The second warrant which follows a systematic process is how the authordemonstrates that the United States school system is Prussian in origin. Thus public schools fulfill the functions of awakening knowledge and intelligence but to breed and train a standardized citizenry and to kill creativity and dissent. The author not only adds significance to the topic by using tangible reasons but also uses evidence from other writers. For example, Gattoadds significance through evidence by adding other writers who were against the Prussian education system, such as ChristopherLasch’s discourse “the True and Only Heaven” that affirms that public education creates docile and incomplete citizens to make populations manageable. While the paper aims to generally assert that public schools eradicate any form of originality and creativity, the author decides the key points to ensure innovation in every aspect given..

One of the essential values that the author attempts to show is that due to factories (public schools), children (raw materials) have been shaped not to grow. The author indicates that traditional education was meant to make good people, to make goods citizens, and most importantly, to make each person attain their personal best. However, this counterargument is incorrect as Alexander Inglis proclaimed in “principles of secondary education,” that public schools have six main functions that harness people from learning incessantly. No wonder maturity does not exist, resulting in numerous divorce cases because, in life as in school, children are made according to the specification laid down.The purpose of using Inglis’s work is to argue that the three functions of public schooling are moot, and hence the author augments the quality of the paper.

Overall, Gattomixes the paper between first, second, and third person, but in context, all pronouns attempt to emphasize the meaning of the article and persuade the reader. The writer has been eloquent in language has some word usage problems such as “virtual factories of childishness,” which would be improved by limiting word ambiguity, especially for general audiences. More than usual, the author also used too many ellipses to intentionally omit as opposed to rephrasing so that the reader can understand more from the outside sources.

The most significant strength of this article is the author’s ability to use persuasive techniques to make a legitimate claim that the public schools’ system makes dull children who turn out as uncreative and conformist adults. The author uses his own experiences and extensive research relating to the topic, such as how the public school system in the United States is based on the Utopia 1920’s Prussia. Notably, the use of extensive resources helps make an evidence-based paper by providing resources that are peer-reviewed or scholarly based. As such, the author makes a case for integrating alternative schooling techniques and not public schools through practical means. Mostimportantly, the author uses accurate MLAreferencing when citing sources, for example, by how he introduces an external source, for instance, H.K. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924.

Work Cited

Gatto, J. T. “Against School: How public education cripples our kids, and why [Article from Harper’s].” (2003).