John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School” paints a very morbid picture of the American school system. Gatto’s description of the school system sounds more like the description of a prison or a sweat shop than a school. He claims that schools are not places for children to learn, develop, and flourish. Rather, he argues that schools are designed to suppress children; to dehumanize them and restrict them from growing up and becoming adults. Some of Gatto’s criticism is fair. He believes that one of the main problems with the school system is boredom, both on the parts of the students and the teachers. He writes from personal experience that schoolteachers are not even interested in being there at all, let alone the material they are teaching, and that this disinterest trickles down to the students.   Gatto argues, I believe correctly, that this phenomenon causes the students to become more robot like and dehumanized, as opposed to learning and growing. I would also agree with him that in today’s society, success is tied to closely to level of education. It has become sort of taboo for someone to not graduate from high school or even college, and people are often measured on such factors as where they went to school or how high their level of education went. However, while some of Gatto’s criticism is fair and correct, I think that he distorts reality quite a bit, in that he only focuses on the negative aspects of the schooling system, and he tends to over exaggerate those deficiencies. Gatto does not discuss some of the good that schools do provide. While he talks about the negative impact that a bad teacher can have on a child, he does not mention the tremendous impact that a good one can have on a child’s life. He also doesn’t mention that schools can be a way for people to make something of themselves and create opportunities for themselves. So while Gatto does offer some reasonable criticism of the American school system, he also displays some bias against it, and doesn’t necessarily paint the entire picture for the reader.