John Gatto Against School Summary

The author of “Against School” John Taylor Gatto believes that during his long career in public schools he didn’t realise that schools are playing any major role in modification of “raw” children except making them childish adults. And the key problem behind the outcome is boredom, it occurs because scholars feel confined in 12 years of “imprisonment”. Gatto thinks that schools can increase the chances of success for their students if they let them make own decisions and take risks when necessary. Gatto raises an important question “do we really need school?” and he reveales that answer is no. To support his view he differentiates between being uneducated and being unschooled that a person who hasn’t been in school cannot be identified as
Gatto mentioned six functions of schooling identified by Inglis: the first one is adaptive function which destroys children’s ability to argue with authority; then integrating function which make them similar; after that they are enrolled in diagnostic and differentiating function which identify their social role and sort them by that role; fifth function of selection identify the favored races and then propaedeutic function teach favored once the method to taking authority over other races. By mentioning these functions author gives us a portrait of system which is made to make more labour force and brainless consumers. However, Gatto agrees that schooling system is good for the economy because it is making a greedy breed of necessities which is means more production, more business and more profits. Gatto claims that schools are combining two major target markets for businesses – addicts and children and making them childish. Gatto also reveals that school does the business of shaping the children according to the specifications laid down to them and those specifications are for the expected future