John Taylor Gatto tells of how public school is ruining children through an essay. "Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals,...inventors,...captains of industry,...writers,...and even scholars,...In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. " (Against School) He says how school is ruining maturity of kids, and their responsibility level. Somehow kids aren't growing all the way up. "School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident." (Against School) He basically claims that school turns kids into servants of society. "Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can." (Against School) Children who are public-schooled must have someone with them at all time, they lack the ability to be alone.
This can be compared to Fahrenheit 451 because Mildred, along with several other adults of this town, require the constant attention from the "parlor." Mildred sits all day in the parlor, with the special converter that replaces a blank audience's name with her own, and talks to the three panel TV. "'Will you turn the parlor off?' he asked. 'That's my family.' 'Will you turn it down for a sick man?' 'I'll turn it down.'" (Fahrenheit 451, page 48) Mildred can't even get herself away from the parlor. She is so attached to an inanimate object, she can't be without it. Just as the children who need the constant companionship who go to public school. Ray Bradbury tells of how society is discriminating against those who are intelligent, or those who surpass everyone else by using dialog. "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy; for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against." (Fahrenheit 451, page 58) Beatte tells Montag about how books are bad because they cause problems. In this futuristic society it is believed if you don't read books, you are happy because you don't think about a made-up world that someone wrote that will contradict your thoughts. People can not be offended, and that's why the fireman burn books.
I am not persuded by John Taylor Gatto to think as he does because there are always the few exceptions to public school. For example Jay Leno went to Emerson College to get a degree when his high school counciler told him to drop out of High School. He is famous, and he still went to school, he is not a servant to society. I am sort of persuaded by Ray Bradbury because his futuristic view of the world is kind of true in a way that people gasp when you mutter the wrong thing.Sources:
- http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
- http://www.collegecrunch.org/fun-stuff/famous-people-the-schools-they-went-to/
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
No comments:
Post a Comment