Gatto divides the concept of being schooled and receiving an education. Schooling teaches us "bad habits" where we are taught obedience and where we never reach the intellectual potential we could have if we had not been schooled. He refers to school as prison cells, where both teachers and students are drenched in boredom because of the rigid structures we are forced to work with. He believes that schooling is there to suppress children so that they can never fully grow up. They are taught to be blind consumers and mediocre laborers. He mentions Inglis who proposes 6 of school's "basic functions" that counteracts the three the government tries to get us to believe (which were making good people, citizens, and helping each be their personal best). To sum it up, students are trained to respond obediently in front of authority. They are trained to conform for better manageability. They are sorted out for social roles, and then are taught the skills for their social roles (but only to a minimum). They make sure that it is made obvious that the "dumb" kids are seen an inferior, so as to improve future natural selection. And last but not least, they train a small portion of these kids to become the ones who look after the 6 functions and make sure they continue.
The system is manipulated in which there is a set limit to how much they teach and how much students can actually learn. This limit is what allows them to have a better control over the masses, because limits prevent students from achieving extreme individualistic views, which in turn keeps them in their place/social role. By keeping students from growing out of their prison cells, these students turn out like one another, each destined to become future workers.
Home-schooling, Gatto proposes, is a way of avoiding the institution. Home-schoolers tend to develop a larger sense of self identity, whereas school students are trained to conform and meet the norms they see in the classroom. Their environment allows them to express their thoughts and address their curiosity more frequently than school children, who sit in their desks as a stranger pours ideas into their minds (the banking approach). But because only the rich are able to afford home schooling, it is hard for the poor to break through the system. Therefore, through homeschooling, the rich acquires more leadership skills which helps them find power while the poor stays in the working class.
Freire explains the concept of the banking approach where teachers are merely there to deposit facts into the students minds, described as the containers. The more deposits these students accept into their bins, the less likely they are to critically think about them. In school these students gradually adapt to their passive roles and soon enough they come to accept the idea that they are merely spectators, not "re-creators." They are not taught leadership skills, just enough that will allow them to work FOR the world and the path the creators are leading.
The solution here is to transform the system. We have to understand that the banking concept doesn't help the students achieve a personal connection at all with the material they are given. We should abandon this concept and somehow have the teachers and students form a relationship where both groups are learning and teaching at the same time. The banking concept looks at its students as objects it can brainwash and exploit. But if teachers become more willing to communicate with their students, the class would have a better sense of reality, one where they can recognize themselves as individuals and as leaders, rather than tools. By sharing ideas, students can finally think critically and be humanized from their forms of containers. Humanization helps students achieve a better understanding of their own individual desires as opposed to the ones they are told to have. It makes them conscience of their personal goals in life. It flips the students' perspective from passivity to a more active view of the world, where they are motivated to go for their dreams, no matter how unusual they seem to the world.
This type of transformation is seen in the Coalition of Essential Schools found by Ted Sizer. The types of schools in the coalition are seen as student centered as much as it is teacher centered. It pays attention to the goals of the students to make sure that along with what the teacher wants to teach, the students preferences are also taken into account. Sizer created this hoping to give students more freedom to think, while the teachers serve as guidance. He says, “Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.” Inspiration doesn't come out of banking concept, rather it is suppressed in it. Sizer's philosophy encourages creativity and thinking out side of the box. This solution provides students with an opportunity to discover their own individuality, thus giving them an edge with other clones.
The teacher in the movie Dead Poet's Society is a great example of such a coach. At the beginning of the movie, the students read off a textbook that told them the strict procedure of measuring poetry. To that, Mr. Keating says is b.s. He tells them that poetry should be made up of raw emotions and truth. He intrigues the students about the subject, yet gives them no specific instructions on how their poems should be written. He gives them plenty of room to write and express themselves. This works so well that one of his students start rebelling his parents. He abandons their expectations for him and pursues his own desire of being an actor. Unfortunately at the end, he was still unable to escape the chains of authority and kills himself. The education Mr. Keating gave them got them to see the world outside of their prison cells. It gave them all an opportunity to figure out who they are as individuals.
The students in Dead Poets Society before their transformation, all pretty much acted the same. The poses they put on are typical and are necessary for achieving success. It might not seem so but there are certain codes, cultural codes that schools and those in power go by (Delpit). These codes include "linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self; that is, ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting." These boys in the movie are taught to act politely in public, to talk a certain way since childhood. These codes have probably been passed on for generations because their families all come from a line of rich and powerful people. So unless your family teaches you the "right" cultural rules, it's hard to succeed in school because their methods of teaching are usually tailored for kids that come from the Culture of Power. Culture of Power is determined by the upper and middle class. So lower class members usually suffer academically because the strategies these schools are teaching with are not as adaptable for them. This is the system's way of making sure that the "right people win" and the "right people lose".
Again, we need to transform the system. The only way we can change this is to change the school system and change the ways they approach teaching. This reminds me of a song we heard in class that talked about how schools should be teaching how to stay of jail, how to avoid gang violence, and how to keep away from drugs instead of the "useless" stuff they're teaching now. Every culture has to be approached differently otherwise they wouldn't find their education appealing enough. If they're not willing to learn, they're not going to learn, and they're not going to see it as an education. We need to determine the different cultures and the different needs of each, then everyone can have an equal education. It's unfair that the higher classes always remain in the higher position while the poor stay poor, especially when every child has the same potential. It all depends on how they are being taught and how well they are responding to that education. This ensures that the cultures that aren't part of the Culture of Power can have a chance at an authentic education, and not pushed to the back (Gatto's function 5 - "wash the dirt down the drain.")
Schooling is the institution's way of training us to be brainwashed working fools by stuffing our brains with excess facts and convincing us that by memorizing these facts, we will be awarded with future success. We, as students are sorted, labeled, categorized, and basically have our lives secretly planned for us by the government. We are convinced that success means to excel at school, a concept we aren't fully aware of. Freire's banking concept is what students strive to excel at, while people like Ted Sizer try to encourage students to do more free thinking. The institutions primary goal is to suppress individuality and produce clones. Clones are predictable. They're easy to manage, whereas if you have too many critical thinkers, the government would feel challenged. Some of the proposed solutions provided here are home-schooling, humanization of both students and teachers, adapting the Coalition of Essential School's philosophy, and transforming teaching methods to suit different cultures. Only by understanding the institutions can we know how to escape or how to transform these systems in such a way where every child coming into an institution won't come out looking like each other.
The students in Dead Poets Society before their transformation, all pretty much acted the same. The poses they put on are typical and are necessary for achieving success. It might not seem so but there are certain codes, cultural codes that schools and those in power go by (Delpit). These codes include "linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self; that is, ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting." These boys in the movie are taught to act politely in public, to talk a certain way since childhood. These codes have probably been passed on for generations because their families all come from a line of rich and powerful people. So unless your family teaches you the "right" cultural rules, it's hard to succeed in school because their methods of teaching are usually tailored for kids that come from the Culture of Power. Culture of Power is determined by the upper and middle class. So lower class members usually suffer academically because the strategies these schools are teaching with are not as adaptable for them. This is the system's way of making sure that the "right people win" and the "right people lose".
Again, we need to transform the system. The only way we can change this is to change the school system and change the ways they approach teaching. This reminds me of a song we heard in class that talked about how schools should be teaching how to stay of jail, how to avoid gang violence, and how to keep away from drugs instead of the "useless" stuff they're teaching now. Every culture has to be approached differently otherwise they wouldn't find their education appealing enough. If they're not willing to learn, they're not going to learn, and they're not going to see it as an education. We need to determine the different cultures and the different needs of each, then everyone can have an equal education. It's unfair that the higher classes always remain in the higher position while the poor stay poor, especially when every child has the same potential. It all depends on how they are being taught and how well they are responding to that education. This ensures that the cultures that aren't part of the Culture of Power can have a chance at an authentic education, and not pushed to the back (Gatto's function 5 - "wash the dirt down the drain.")
Schooling is the institution's way of training us to be brainwashed working fools by stuffing our brains with excess facts and convincing us that by memorizing these facts, we will be awarded with future success. We, as students are sorted, labeled, categorized, and basically have our lives secretly planned for us by the government. We are convinced that success means to excel at school, a concept we aren't fully aware of. Freire's banking concept is what students strive to excel at, while people like Ted Sizer try to encourage students to do more free thinking. The institutions primary goal is to suppress individuality and produce clones. Clones are predictable. They're easy to manage, whereas if you have too many critical thinkers, the government would feel challenged. Some of the proposed solutions provided here are home-schooling, humanization of both students and teachers, adapting the Coalition of Essential School's philosophy, and transforming teaching methods to suit different cultures. Only by understanding the institutions can we know how to escape or how to transform these systems in such a way where every child coming into an institution won't come out looking like each other.
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