John Taylor Gatto’s article, “Against School,” explains the faults of the American schooling system. Gatto first introduced himself as a teacher who has worked in diverse school settings. On behalf of both teachers and students, Gatto expressed his experiences in the classroom as dull and boring. Gatto disagreed with the ordinary, boring classroom setting, and he made efforts to overcome the dull, classroom atmosphere. However, although Gatto’s actions may have stimulated his students’ learning, Gatto received harsh punishment for his teaching methods; Gatto lost both his job and his teaching license. Gatto then questioned the validity of the schooling system’s mission and necessity. Because successful people in the past had not received much schooling, Gatto stated that people truly did not need school. He then displayed others’ opinions to support that the schooling system did not intend to honestly better students, but to lead the youth into a controlled society. Gatto concluded his article by advising that the youth avoid the traps of the schooling system and to persist to have more meaning in life.

Gatto passionately expressed his view of overcoming boredom. By declaring that both students and teachers were often too bored, Gatto strongly disagreed with the ordinary school environment. Gatto expressed most of his views on school as childish and boring.  By taking action to suppress the boredom and childishness within school, he sought to truly inspire the youth’s minds. Gatto said, “I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap” (149). By performing beyond ordinary standards, Gatto passionately attempts to motivate his students.
 
      After Gatto expressed his view of the classroom, he then expanded his disconent view of the entire schooling system. Gatto invalidated the necessity to complete school, and he stated that successful people in the past strived through life without receiving a proper amount of schooling: “ …A considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever “graduated” from a secondary school” (149-50). The success of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomsas Jefferson, and Abraham Linconln upholds Gatto's view of unnecessary schooling.

      Furthermore, Gatto stated that the primary purpose of school was to better individuals. However, Gatto found several contradictions to the school system’s mission of improving individuals. In his article, Gatto used a quote from H.L. Mencken’s article in The American Mercury to invalidate the school system’s mission. Mencken’s article stated that the aim of public education was not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken there intelligence….Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim… is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States… and that is its aim everywhere else” (151).Moreover, Gatto again repudiated the school system’s intentions. Gatto stated that the school system was framed around similar values of the military state of Prussia: “But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens—all in order to render the populace ‘manageable’” (152). Both Mencken and Gatto express that schools aim to frame students not into productive education but rather into a general, regulated society.

      Gatto’s views of the schooling system may unfortunately be true. As I personally reflect back to all of the schooling that I have completed, and all of the experiences that I’ve had in school, I can relate to several of Gatto’s arguments.  School does not only play a part in faulty education, but also into a faulty society. After I read “Against School,” I feel that there are much better ways to become successful other than the standard route of school. School seems to only provide limited focus on subjects; If I entirely dedicate myself to a subject outside of school, than I may recieve much more successful results than going thorugh the standard system.