Difficulty paper #2

John Taylor Gatto’s article from Harper’s magazine titled, Against School: How public education cripples our kids, and why, does exactly that. It shows his view as to why he thinks the current public education system is not the best for children. To be honest I agree with him and have for as long as I can remember.

However, the difficulty I had from reading this article, aside from the random typos, name drops, and occasional words I had to look up, was not found until the second to last paragraph. In that, Gatto states, “Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored.” Come on now, I think every child/student gets bored with the generic assignments that you get while in those first twelve years of your public education. Or, at least if they’re not bored, then they just are easily distracted and rather be doing something else. And what exactly does “well-schooled” even mean? Is that kids that do well in school? Or what exactly?

I do agree with Gatto when he says, “Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid.” However, I think that those subjects are “grown-up” for a reason (perhaps with an exception to music and art), because when you are a child/adolescent, some of those topics can be a little dense. But if the kid is ready for it or expresses an interest, then by all means, let them dive in as soon as they can.

This next statement he makes is what really grinded my gears, he suggests that you, “Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. 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.” Although I am a believer of having “me” time, I do use my laptop and my phone often. Does this mean I am one of these “well-schooled” people? Because I don’t think I seek constant companionship through these things. In fact, if I could have it my way, I would choose to get rid of these things and just have my skateboard, my sketchbook, and a good novel and I’d be completely content. My only question for Gatto would then be, can I at least have my iPod?