Patrick Kelley

4/5/10

Prof Riemen

The American Mold

I can picture it now. I’m sitting in class going back and forth between listening to the

teacher, thinking to myself in my own world, and occasionally checking the clock to see what

time it is and how much longer till I get out of that current class. This description of my normal

class period is clearly similar to what John Gatto depicts as a regular day in class in his essay

“Against School”. Though I had long noticed this every day routine and the mold that is

associated with it, it wasn’t until reading this essay that I actually thought of its effect on us as

people or some of the reasons as to why it is being done. John Gatto’s concept of the boring

environment, the growth-hindering effects, and the reasons behind this mold in our modern

school system has opened my mind to new perspectives.

John Gatto fittingly starts off his essay with the idea of boredom in the class room. The

reason I find this to be so fitting to start out with is simply that it’s the most obvious. Anyone

who is in school or has been through it would tell you the same thing. Other than a small

handful of great teachers and interesting courses, school was boring and mostly a waste of

time. For nine weeks we are forced to go to the same classes, in the same order, at the same

times, five days a week. Student find themselves just counting down the minutes of a class, the

number of days till the weekend, and the number of weeks till the semesters over. This

boredom I believe comes through not only the routine but the process of teaching itself. In

every class there are broad standards of information that must be taught in a certain amount of
time, and then to be tested on. This broad standard of information leaves little to no room for

deep and intellectual thought on a topic, but rather the memorization of pointless facts. The

boredom that this creates goes on to form feelings of apathy towards learning and the pursuit

of knowledge. Rather than learning to gain knowledge, we learn to pass a test, which just

further hinders our development as people.

As I mentioned earlier, I have long realized this shockingly dumb standard of

information and learning procedures that we are forced into. But it wasn’t until I read John

Gatto’s essay that I really noticed the effects our schooling system has on our development.

Because of the apathy and negativity that is produced in school towards knowledge, we as

people become less likely to look deeper into a topic. We take as little time as possible to learn

what we have to just so that we can get through. The environment of school itself does this as

well. One is locked up in a room, just sitting and being forced to listen. There is little to no hands

on or interactive activities. The combination of the schooling standard and the school

environment itself diminishes ones thirst for knowledge and the abilities to look beyond that

“what’s” and “whos”, and to find out the “hows” and “whys”. John Gatto says it best in

describing this system as producing children. Children are easily controlled, manipulated, and

gullible. Gatto states a Dr.Inglis’s idea, “….If children could be cloistered with other children,

stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing

emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow

up”(38). All at once I could see the gradual process of what happens to us. As we go through

school our emphasis on learning goes down and our judgmental and material views go up. One

starts to compare what they have or don’t have, what they see or don’t see, or what they’re
told or not told, rather than the amount and depth of intelligence one has. This separates us

even more deeply into groups such as race, social class, income, similar beliefs and so on.

These two effects, the apathy created and the materialistic views, are by- products of

our system of schooling, and not by accident. I have always known that we were forced through

this mold that was specifically created by our higher powers, but never had I realized exactly

what was being done or why. John Gatto in short states that this has been done for two major

reasons. One is to build a consumer. Created out of imperialism, consumerism is a part of the

foundation of America itself. The materialistic views that are created by school keep Americans

buying and coming back for more. We pay more to have a certain brand, we pay for things we

don’t need rather than saving for what we do need, and we buy many times off impulse.

Second is to create a standard, dumbed down, and separated group of citizens. This is done so

that we can be controlled. Creating a standard group of people that have been molded to think

and act in a similar way makes them easy to predict. Molding us into a dumbed down and

apathetic citizen makes us gullible and unable to see what is really going on around us or to us.

This makes us less likely to act in retaliation. Last is separating us. This makes it even more

unlikely for us to retaliate because we are unable to come together as one united front. Instead

we argue amongst ourselves on problems or controversial topic as we let the powers that be do

as they please.

These points and ideas bring about the question, what could possibly be done to change

this ongoing cycle of the manufacturing of citizens? John Gatto answers this question with the

very last sentence of his essay, “The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage
themselves”(38). Gatto goes into no further detail as to what this specifically means or how to

go about doing it. So with Gatto’s ideas and ideas of my own I have come up with a simple

description of what this could mean and how it could be done. For starters I must state my

belief that teachers are some of the most important people in our society, for they pass on

knowledge. Because of this, I think they should not only be more qualified but also be rewarded

more. It is a sad fact that teachers are some of the lowest paid people in our country. Next is to

get rid of the specific broad information that must be memorized for some standardized test.

Instead there should be required specific topics and the teacher should be free to teach the

way they want and to teach what they want on the required topics. With this, the teacher

should be able to grade and test as they see fit. In the big picture what should be done is to get

rid of such a structured system. This will make each class room more unique and more

interesting.(33-38)

“The aim of public education is not to fill 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”(35). This quote was stated by H.L. Mencken in 1924 and sums up

what is being done to us and what is being discussed. The effects of our “schooling” are only

increased by today’s world. In today’s world technology and culture further lower our level of

development and in turn maturity. The culture and system of marriage/divorce have diminished

the effort to work on a relationship; material views along with credit have eliminated the

concept of spending on needs as a priority and created impulse buyers; internet, video games,

and other gadgets have removed the need and ability to entertain one’s self and see the
importance of alone time. Also in todays technologically advance world where the answer to a

question or problem can be solved as easily as typing it in Google, our drive to find an answer is

gone. All these things are easily apparent today as we American sit at home just complaining

about the problems with our country rather than creating ideas to fix it or standing up for what

you believe in and actually acting on it. This cycle will never end unless we wake up, get up, and

do something about it. (33-38)

Self Assessment

I found writing this paper to be much more entertaining and intuitive than i thought it

would. The concept behind my paper is to describe what happens in school, how those things

affect us, why this is being done to us, and a brief idea of what could be done to at least start a

change. I do this using direct ideas and concepts from Gatto as well as my own. I am aware that

I didn’t implement Gatto’s list into this paper. I left this out because I felt that even though it

was useful and I could have written a lot about it, it would become more of a side tangent due

to the organization of my paper. Also, though the information and topic of this paper brushes

the surface of the idea of being schooled vs being educated, I feel that I could have gone

deeper into that.