Today’s public education system in America stymies the mental growth and true education of children, preventing them from reaching their highest potentials.
One of the biggest fallacies that average Americans subscribe to today is that the public school system is teaching children the things they need to know in order to follow a path to success. Veteran school teacher John Taylor Gatto writes that the way public schools are organized today, “with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers” that schools are “virtual factories of childishness” rather than places preparing children for the realities of the real, adult world they face upon graduation (2003). Gatto is not using simple metaphor when he refers to schools as factories. The 1922 book Public School Administration explicitly states, "Our schools are . . . factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned . . . And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down" (Gatto 2003). This factory-like school system is an archaic throwback to the Industrial Revolution, a time when factory-work could be a lifetime career for many Americans; it is not appropriate for this current age of light-speed technology and Globalization. Factories are by nature places of conformity. Parts come in, are assembled by the workers, and the factory is considered productive and successful if each resulting product is the same. Public schools today run the same way; kids come in, teachers give lectures and dole out homework, and the school is considered productive and successful if all the children attain the minimum requirements on state tests. The trouble with this type of thinking is that children are not just “parts” to be brought in and “assembled” to a conforming standard. They are individuals with different talents, skills, and needs; however, an inflexible factory-style system will not encourage them to discover anything about their individuality or talents that the real, adult world requires for success. According to Dr. John Henrik Clarke, “Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it” (Gartnett 2010). The average American today is not a powerful person, and their children are at a severe disadvantage by continually following the paths of the past several generations who are products of public schools. Until America alters the factory-like nature of its public school system, these schools will continue to thwart the capacity of our current and future generations, as well as the nation as a whole.
Works Cited
Gartnett, Henry Highland. “They School Don’t Educate Us.” Michigan Citizen 32.34 (4-10 July 2010): A6. Web.
Gatto, John Taylor. “Against School.” Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 2003. Web. http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
