Education
...s cabin were I was re-building a balcony with my family. My father, his brother and their cousin led this, while my cousin, my brother, and I stood like a bunch of monkeys with hammers. Our elders had to tell us how to do every thing and eventually gave us only the simplest jobs. The second instance over the summer was when I blew a tire while driving to a friend’s home. I pulled to the side of the road and got out my spare tire and tools to fix it but found my self unable to. I had to call an AAA mechanic to change my tire for me. These two tasks I should have been able to do as easily as I can tell you what one plus one are. Instead students today are taught about what happens when sodium and potassium are mixed and heated at 63 degrees. Though science is interesting it has no purpose in most professions and therefore does not need to be taught in every grade level. But is there a different reason that students must take pointless classes for most of there academic years, besides “preparation”? John Gratto’s The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher discusses the hidden lessons in most classes. The common theme in his lesson tends to be in the areas of discipline and control. The reasons for the schools in which these lessons are taught came in the 1800’s and early 1900’s when “powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor, and result of the revulsion with the old-line waves of Celtics, Slavic, and Latin immigration.” So the reason that Americans have school today is to ensure that we don’t revolt; so we conform. Gratto suggest that children should be taught at home or in small de-institutionalized school. The problem with this is the same as normal schools, which is that students can not learn every thing that they need for the work place and life, the exception is that they are able to find there own “special genius”. In Jonathan Kozol’s book Savage Inequalities he writes about the public education system and how it decimates many schools. In one of the chapters Kozol tells us about the schools in the south side of Chicago. It is estimated that 60 percent of the students drop out of school; 10 percent before high school. Over 80 percent of the children, who attended Woodsen or McKinley Elementary in Chicago, drop out of high school. These kids are learning things that are not useful to their lives so they would have no reason to stay in school. Especially with schools like these the students should be taught skills for jobs, because if so many students drop out they will only be able to get jobs that require little skill. Yes it may seem that this would stop any of the chil...