[HW #50]

[John Gatto]: Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech

“Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.” Gatto’s point is that schooling and education are not the same. The whole point of schools, according to Gatto is that they convert humans into obedient robots that will follow the system, and the path that the system sets out for us. “The truth is that school don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.” By going to school, we learn that we’re in a position where there are rankings, and that we are to be subordinate to those who are “higher” than us (e.g. teachers). This arrangement gives us the mentality that we are all followers, hardly ever the ones to lead. And to be a leader would a goal we all try to meet. Gatto also makes the point that school is reinforcing homogeneity. Schools conforms us, being that we are all fed the same thing. When we finally attain that conformity and the obedience, we truly become robots.

One very interesting thing, to me at least, is that we think schools are for our education and us. And to some extent it is as we believe because the fact is that we are learning something, regardless of how efficiently we do it or how arbitrary the materials. But I think that being fed those tiny bits, we have a reasoning to stay in school and to let the school do as they wish, which according to Gatto is transform us into these “formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.” But it’s not that we just follow along, but we passively follow along. The most we do is complain about tiny aspects of the school (e.g. “I hate homework”), but that’s as far as we go in terms of “fighting” the system.” And meanwhile, we are just these tiny sheep that are being herded “from cell to cell at the sound of a gong,” until we just become autonomous sheep, who habitually do what we are told, and follow the same motion that we followed for a good majority of our lives.

[Lisa Delpit]: Power and Pedagogy

Two terms that Delpit emphasized on were “codes” and “culture of power.” Codes are fairly simple. They are the formulas that you need to follow in order to “participate fully in the mainstream of American life.” However in order to do that, you must know the arbitrary rules of the American life, and Delpit argues that school doesn’t help students learn those rules, rather they are forcing students to “attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized subskills.” She argues that the material in school is not pertinent to their outside lives, and therefore that should be changed. And for “culture of power,” Delpit just means the dominant families occupying America- the lifestyle of middle class, white Americans. Delpit also gives a list of the four aspects of power:

1. Issues of power (Power of one person/group of people over another)
2. Culture of power (Codes- presentation of oneself)
3. “Institutions…is predicated upon acquisition of the culture of those who are in power.” (Distribution of power to those who are already in power)
4. Explicitly being told that one culture is the way of success- at least that way of life is the easier way to achieve power.

It’s clear that Delpit is in favor of the students; in fact she is suggesting that we mold the classes, and not the students. Schools should adjust to the students, and not the other way around. One thing that I also found interesting was when she wrote, “Create situations in which students ultimately find themselves held accountable for knowing a set of rules about which no one has ever directly informed them… Explicitness is not provided to students.” Now I think that it’s important to know the rules and the type of we are playing, but what Delpit is suggesting seems to be a bit like spoon-feeding. Lastly, Delpit finished off with/this excerpt was cut off “Those who are less powerful in any situation are most likely to recognize the power variable most acutely.” This statement kind of explains why, even though our school system doesn’t appeal to the students, our schools are still the way they are. Those with power aren’t likely to notice the power differences (though it is arguable that they do), and therefore wouldn’t want to change anything, since they’re in a position of power and any alteration might that from them. And meanwhile, those without power notice the power differences, but aren’t able to change anything because they are “those without power.”

[Paulo Freire]: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

As Freire says, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hoping inquiry, human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” However, he argues that schools aren’t like that at all. There is no “invention and re-invention,” just a lot of depositing. It’s just the teachers filling up students with the stuff that they learned as a student. There is a clear hierarchy within school, where teachers are superior over the students. The teachers are the ones that are seen as more knowledgeable, the ones who talk, decide, “think,” enforces, and dictates. Meanwhile, the students are expected to just sit there, act obedient, and receive whatever is being deposited into them. Similar to the point that Gatto made, students are becoming these unconscious robots that are the perfect tools for society.

I think that it is true people are becoming more and more unconscious. Going back to Gatto’s speech, between the television and schools, students do nothing but receive. Information is just being poured into their system, without much of their input. “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as the transformers of that world.” Rarely do we, in school, have the opportunity to invent and re-invent anything. We hardly have inputs in our lives, and everything is this one straight path, arranged by some stranger. So when the comes, if ever, we wouldn’t know how to approach a situation filled with the freedom to cause whatever change, and therefore we don’t do anything to change anything. “Indeed, the interests of the oppressor lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.” Like I said in the previous response to Delpit’s article, people with power are unwilling to change the situation that they are in, because it might lose their power. So instead, our school system is set up the way they are. Since the age of 3, people go to school and slowly learn to become subordinate. Not only does it give us the mentality that we are less, but also that there is a right answer, but someone else has it. And so we are to listen to those other people.