My High School Experience

"we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants"

The entire topic of education is some what hard for me to speak on, because I feel everyone has a semi valid point. I love this quote of Gatto because that is exactly what school is. On the other side of the fence though, school is amazing in so many ways. Regardless of if I am for it or against it, I can definitely speak on my k-12 experience.

in many ways it was similar to Gatto's description. My schooling was filled with forced authority and reward for conformity. For my first three years of school I was placed in the "assist" program for kids that needed assistance. and while I think intentions were decent, reality was failure. This program did nothing but teach kids that they need different help than others and separated them from "normal" learners. it only put them, and me, further behind. Until I finally broke free of that system by begging my parents to take me out saying "I'm not a stupid learner" and was placed into standard fourth grade. At this point I was at least a year behind and worked extremely hard to be middle level intelligence in my class. I never successfully learned my multiplication facts although they are just memorization. as behind as I was I continued to barely make it through each grade until I got to middle school and had an array of classes to pass. I did well, but noticed weird rules that were made to follow like "no standing in the lunch room". Why in the world not?! I cant stand? protesting only resulted in lunch detention. I was forced to take shop classes and computer classes. Sewing and babysitting classes. it made no sense to me why these things were required. but I didn't do a lot of questioning, because it was fun. I feel, aside from the boring schoolwork, that it was a completely social experience. and it was. I went to school each day and hung out with ,y friends. I made friends. I lost friends. I made new friends.

high school was the same thing. I was able to break off and take classes of my choice in a sense such as extra sciences and a language of my choice. but only because this is what the kids that wanted to succeed did. I passed AP classes with A's and B's and still feel myself no better or smarter than the average student. no better off either. school was pushing us all in the direction we are "meant" to go. its grueling actually. but like anything else its a learning experience. and as much as its about mass education at one time, I believe its social. maybe not even social enough.

I graduated. so I am happy. I was able to move on to college, obviously, and I know the importance of learning. I think school is a good thing although it has many bad traits. like anything else though.