Sheeple

            This week we talked about education and empowerment. I read the essay “Against School” by Gatto. In this essay he talks about how schools are training children to be mindless drones, just following rules and obeying orders without question. He thinks schools would be good if teachers cared about their work and students, but until then, school is just a place to learn how to mindlessly obey authority.

            I am not sure how I feel about this. Being homeschooled from Kindergarten to graduation, I never once steeped into a public school class. From what I could tell, school was a place of socialization instead of learning. Students would talk about seeing friends and talking to people at school instead of what they learned. This seemed ridiculous to me because I was always taught to put academics before everything else. In homeschool, you are never caught up in drama or seeing your friends in class. Instead, homeschool is about getting work done and putting friends off until your studies had been completed.

            I somewhat agree with Gatto in the way that some teachers have become complacent in their work, but can we blame them if the students are degrading their teachers 5 days a week? I believe that students are often to blame. Some students do not try to excel in classes, some just want to pass and teachers can tell if they only want to do the bare minimum. This is frustrating to teachers to try to teach complacent students, and it often makes the teacher become complacent as well.