3. My own experiences in high school affirm Gatto's argument that schools function to "habituate" students to authority.

My own experiences in high school affirm Gatto's argument that schools function to "habituate" students to authority. I attended a private high school, and although they did a fair job in teaching us to determine what was right and wrong for ourselves, they tried to do it in a way that we would come to the same conclusions as they did. Of course there were some teachers that stood out in really seeming to want us to make our own decisions, as I'm sure there are in every high school, but it was very clear that those teachers were not the schools favorites. Gatto nails it when he begins his argument by saying students were bored, cause we were bored! Every class was the same structure wise, it just discussed different subjects. And of course in high school all of the kids are more concerned with what we were going to do that night then what was actually going on in class, so rarely did anyone ever willingly participate in the discussions. We only voiced our opinions when we had too, and that goes with his theory that we are only being taught to obey authority in the classroom. With all of the materials available to us now days, i.e. cliff notes, pinkmonkey.com, the internet, we really didn't need to do any research of our own because it was all so accessible and easy to get too, who is going to think for themselves?