Gatto is literally saying that the American schooling system is fundamentally flawed in letting our children properly learn by failure, experience and hands-on activities. The reason for saying this is because of his personal experience being a teacher and seeing the "boredom" of his fellow teachers and students. How Gatto gets his point across is by using anecdotal evidence and textual evidence from renowned authors. He strategically uses anecdotes and textual evidence to conveniently make his point more powerful. Gatto uses asyndeton for dramatic effect and anastrophe to intensify objects he is describing by rearranging nouns and adjectives from normal English word order. Gatto is using all three of Aristotle's appeals, ethos, pathos, and logos to appease the one reading the passage.
This passage makes me want to actually do something about today's current school system. Teachers and faculty should be actually encouraging subjects which inspire creativity. I now have a vendetta against schools systems.
You touch on boredom, and a few other things that Gatto discussed in the reading but do you see boredom as a rudimentary problem with both students and teachers? Think about it, if the teachers are bored whats to stop the children who spend countless hours each day with them from being bored as well. I completely agree that his use of anecdotal evidence he makes his point more powerful and touching to anyone who has pushed through the compulsory school system. You don't make any mention of his examples like Carnegie and Rockefeller or Franklin. These types of examples are so powerful to back up your fundamental argument that children in todays society aren't learning the correct way and are not being pushed like the examples above. I also agree with your point of view in the final paragraph. Gatto writes this piece to inform yet while reading it, i couldn't help but feel called to action by his motivating words. Your view on creativity is also easily relatable to me because i myself wish i could learn in a more creative way than i already have.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your analysis of "Against School" if you get a chance you should read mine.
-Brendan Young