Moira Kaluzienski

AP Lang PD. 5
11/3/17

School Conformity

Schools claim that their goals are to “help each student gain personal fulfillment” and

“help create good citizens” but how can that be accomplished when schools force students to

confine to their own standards and rules? This is highlighted in sources A, B, E, and G. While

schools think they are bettering their students for the long run, schools are not allowing for

students to have their own individuality or think their own thoughts because of the “jail” like

systems they force upon their students.

Students should not have to be taught someone else’s thinking but have the freedom to

have their own opinions. In source A, John Taylor Gatto states, “Someone taught them (George

Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln), to be sure, but they

were not products of a school system, and not one of them ever “graduated” from a secondary

school [...].” These people had great impacts on our government and society but they did not go

through the harsh schools systems kids do nowadays. They had the freedom to think and say

what they really thought because they were not being filtered through the education systems

that exist today. This allowed them to grow into their own person and have the impacts they did.

In addition to conforming students opinions, school schedules can be thought to

resemble that of a jail system because students are forced to go a certain place at a certain time

and follow all of the harsh consequences of not arriving on time. In source B, the high school

bell schedule allots the students only 4 minutes in between classes and there isn’t even a time

slot for lunch. Kids are being forced to hurry to their next classes, 8 times in a row throughout

the whole day and who knows if they even have time to eat. Students are conformed to this

routine and not being exposed to real life scenarios of time management because they

participate in this everyday schedule that is forced upon them.

 In a lot of settings, students will not speak up about what they believe in because they

are scared of what other people might think of them. From personal experience, I know of cases

where my own friends will not say their real opinion about a topic because they don’t want to get

a bad grade or have their teacher hate them. In source E, John Holt says, “And so, in this dull

and ugly place, where nobody ever says anything very truthful, where everybody is playing a

kind of role, as in a charade [...].” Kids in schools can’t even say what they really want to say

because they might be shot down or judged by other people, which no one should ever feel,

especially at that young age. Acting fake in school or saying things you do not really believe is

teaching kids to conform to what others want to hear from you instead of saying what you

actually believe in. By conforming to what others want to hear, there is no room to grow

individually and become your own person.

It is normal to have rules in a classroom but not ones that resemble federal laws.

Students should be aware of the laws of society and their consequences but should not be held

strictly to those laws. In source G, there are many school expectations listed and the very last

one under “respect the rights of others to learn” it says, “obey the laws of society, including

prohibition against assault, theft, vandalism, possession of illegal substances and possession of

weapons.” By making and enforcing these rules in a school setting, schools are made to seem

even more like a jail, from strict bell schedules to being held to the standard of federal laws.

Schools have goals of helping students grow and bettering them but it is hard to do that

when there is so much conformity going on around the students. In most schools, there is no

room to grow individually and have your own opinions because of the people around you.

Students are not exposed to anything other than what the schools wants you to know. A lot of

the characteristics of a school resemble a jail, resulting in students just saying and doing what

others want them to with no room for personal growth.