Well, it's that time again -- when I stare in astonishment at the last page of a paper I have written, wondering how on earth it received such a high grade. This one is about the Myth that Education (even public school education) Will Definitely Provide Success (read Money).
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Of the first five essays in the “Learning Power” chapter of Rereading America, John Taylor Gatto’s essay “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” is the closest to truth as I experienced it in America’s school system during the late twentieth century.
Horace Mann’s “Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1848” certainly bears many resemblances to today’s schools. After all, his “common schools” were the template for our school system. He had good ideas concerning the education of the masses. Unfortunately, he also had unrealistically high ideals. In the one hundred fifty-eight years since his report was written, human nature has definitely, defiantly reasserted itself.
Chronologically, we come next to Jean Anyon’s essay, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” In some ways, for example in her desire for schooling of equal quality in all public schools, she is just as idealistic as Mann, though she does not tie her vision to Christianity as he does. Anyon is quite correct when she demonstrates that schools in different economic brackets provide different types of education to their students. However, my experience as a student does not support her divisions. For instance, my college prep parochial grade school used a blending of techniques from her Working Class and Middle Class schools. It was not so pessimistic as the Working Class schools concerning our future; we were expected to go on to college in due time. However, there were great similarities in the dictatorial authority figures. Her Middle Class schools were also familiar in several points. A number of my teachers were also consistently verbally, sometimes physically, abusive by today’s standards. Until I was in fifth grade, there were four teachers, including the principal, who still paddled students, which was unheard of by my friends who attended public schools. Until he retired, after my graduation, the principal would typically pick one or two unfavorites from each class, and pursue opportunities to smack them in the head with his theoretically uncontrollable “twitch.” The teaching methods and resources provided, or lacking, were also in concordance.
Mike Rose and Michael Moore both have a few points in common with my experience. However, Rose’s very personal story is so specific that nearly anyone’s high school career would differ significantly. Moore, on the other hand, tends to make sweeping, dramatic observations. His essay is certainly the most humorous and politically scathing. He seems to think that almost any problem in our schools can be solved by throwing government money at it – but only government money, no involvement by the business world if you please. If moremoney will really solve all of the system’s problems, why should schools reject any legal and legitimate source of funding? In addition, in his pursuit of humor, Moore actually gives students many ideas and suggestions for ways to disrupt and further diminish their educations, a very disappointing turn in an interesting piece of writing.
John Taylor Gatto’s essay was both the most disturbing and the most familiar to me. It is probably inevitable that this is so, as “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher” was first published the same year I graduated from high school. Six of his seven lessons were taught in my schools, by nearly every teacher; the only one I do not vividly recall is confusion. Class position is so ingrained in me that it appeared in an immediate knee-jerk reaction when I returned to college, fourteen years after my last class. Indifference, emotional and intellectual dependence, provisional self-esteem, and the feeling that “one can’t hide” are such staples of my identity that it is surprising to find this possible cause of them. Surely they have been there since birth. So many of Gatto’s comments seem to be talking about me specifically. “…no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything?”1 “Successful students do the thinking I assign them…” I was surely a successful student, graduating first in my class from both eighth and twelfth grades. Perhaps the reason I do not recall lessons in confusion is because I was so “successful” that I never looked for meanings and connections beyond the subjects that were explicitly taught. Of course, I would prefer to believe that I was able to find those links for myself because I was more intelligent that most other students. Unfortunately, my assimilation of Lesson Six, Provisional Self-Esteem, makes such belief difficult. “Self evaluation … is never considered a factor” after all.
Clearly there are problems with America’s school system today. For one thing, the “common school” education envisioned by Mann and sporadically carried out today is no longer sufficient for many jobs and careers in the new global economy. The quality of schooling available for different economic classes is certainly unfair. There are so many problems that it seems the easiest course would be to scrap the whole system and import one that already works, from Japan, or Germany, or any of the other myriad countries that consistently beat us scholastically.
1 All quotes from “The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher” by John Taylor Gatto, as reprinted in Rereading America, Colombo, © 2004
(moved from old blog)
Comments:
Estelina: Well done, Beccaie!
Bonnie: Of course you got a high grade... it's great!
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