HW 50- School Theorists

In the first text by John Taylor Gatto, he tries to argue his position that schools are factories, in which nothing truly exceptional is created. I would compare Gatto's theory to the idea that if you build a Toyota assembly line, you will get thousands of Toyota's but not a single Ferrari. Using a generic curriculum gives everyone the same education, but doesn't provide the environment for genuine intelligence to thrive.

Gatto also raises interesting points in his acceptance speech, talking about the loss of confidence in the ability of the system to properly equip people to thrive in the real world. School is seen generally for what it is, a place which teaches obediance, and ignores real world application. The fact that people realize this is a big problem for the school system, but instead of changing the system, we make cosmetic adjustments to the system while leaving the actual system the same.

The next theorist I looked at was Paulo Freire. Freire views the school system as an uneffective method for educating American children. The problem he saw was that students were being taught to like a computer is typed into. The person doing the work is inputting their knowledge into someone else. The problem with this is that if the person you are sharing the information with doesn't see how it applies to them, than it is worthless.

Freire seemed to be of the opinion that in order to properly teach children, you need to make sure they learn, not memorize. Arguably memorization is a part of the learning process, but it is not the learning process entirely. To better the system, Freire would try to construct a more collaborative system in which the teachers acted more like coaches and mentors than instructors and teachers. Learning with a person is much more intellectually stimulating than being instructed to figure out an answer or solve a problem.

The educator Lisa Delpit offers unique perspective into the topic of education specified towards certain ethnicities. The concept is that African- Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Caucasians all have different cultures, meaning they have different manifestations of intellectual pursuits, and in America, the school system ignores all but the learning habits of caucasians. Delpit's focus is on the African-American community. She raises an interesting point in her book where she talks about how some A.M's are very well versed and trained in poetry (rap lyrics, both writing and performing). While the American school system doesn't generally recognize this as a way to demonstrate literacy or skill in writing, it is just that nonetheless.

Delpit has some very interesting and unique ideas that I strongly agree with, but others which she speaks about border on preaching the importance of African-American's assimilating into the dominant Caucasian-American system. This, I think is wrong. While it is important for students to receive an education unique to their culture, it is also important to integrate cultures, not just further divide them. For this reason I am a little unsure of the positions which Delpit takes in her writing and theory.