In Against Schools, Gatto asserts that the United States public-school system has systematically, “encouraged students not to think at all” (Gatto, 37). As the product of twelve years of public schooling, I can partially attest to this. The meritocracy of public schools is structured such that the “smart,” “successful,” “most-likely-to-succeed” students are the ones with the highest GPAs. Unfortunately for society, a high GPA is more a measure of conformity than intellect. Those individuals who strive for high GPAs often must take specific classes, learn material to prepare for test rather than to understand, and learn to memorize instead of thoughtfully analyze. It is no wonder that these “successful” individuals lose the capacity to think for themselves.
However, there are those individuals who preserve the, “curiosity, adventure, resilience, and capacity for surprising insights” (Gatto, 34). They are the individuals who love learning for learning’s sake, who explore what they love outside of the classroom, and who would never sacrifice their intellectual enrichment for the sake of a grade. So, while I agree with Gatto that our schools are not set up in a way to encourage students to think for themselves, such students do exist in the current system.
Gatto also falters when discussing the complicity of our teachers in this meritocracy. Every school will have some teachers who have little interest in their subjects, but what Gatto fails to mention are those teachers – the heroes of our system – who possess a passion for both their subject and their students. Those teachers who inspire a love of learning and help them combat the classroom’s endemic boredom are the reason that, despite some glaring flaws, I have great hope in our educational system’s ability to produce the next generation of thoughtful, curious, and resilient leaders.
I really agree with what you’re saying here. There are many students who learn for the sake of learning, but are still marginalized and put down in a system based on hierarchal grading. My question to this then would be if they are able to maintain this love for learning when the system is mostly against them? And in the case of teachers, Gatto uses examples of teachers who stray from set curriculums to create more educational and enjoyable classes who are eventually weeded out of the schooling system or bullied into sticking to the gray area teaching style. Is there maybe a way to combat this systematic put down of the creative and different style of schooling so that more than a handful of students and educators break the mold?
I agree with you completely. The question that arises from this post is one that nobody truly knows the answer to: how do we allow for these students that are truly passionate about learning to flourish in our current school system? How do school systems go about hiring teachers whose passion for learning makes them an “unsung hero” to the students whom they teach? Lastly, I agree with your thoughts regarding GPA. Higher GPAs often reflect a student’s ability to memorize and regurgitate material, thus defeating the purpose of truly learning and understanding given material. Ultimately, a more qualitative approach may be a necessary alternative to GPA, but how to go about this seems quite challenging.