Difficulty paper- John Gatto

I can honestly say that I am pretty much on the same page as Gatto with his views on education. He really seems to cross the line in the best possible way and ask what our schools are really teaching children today, and I love it! He suggests that we are basically sending our kids off to school to create the same cookie cutter robots that have no imagination and find it hard to even think of questions to ask that aren’t spelled out for them already. For example, I have a friend that is finishing up her degree and planning on being a teacher. She currently works at an elementary school and oddly enough, not even a week ago she was complaining to me that the children, ages 3 to 6, literally do not have any imagination. She told me how she would read them a story and tell them to draw a picture of the story while she was reading it, and more then half of the class claimed that they wanted to see what she was going to draw and copy her. She then told them that they could not copy her and they needed to think of something on their own, suggesting that they close their eyes and draw what they saw in their head. They all said all they could see was black. So what are we sending our kids to school for at such a young age? I know I don’t want my child to feel like they need to be like everyone else, they should stand out, in a positive way obviously.
Thinking this over, I come to the conclusion, yes we need school, but I think we need to ask our teachers to expand their teaching techniques and try to be more creative. We need to send our children to school giving them the impression that it is not only for them to get an education, but for them to discover themselves using the education as a backbone. Overall, I really enjoyed reading John Gatto’s take on education and for the most part agreed with his theories on how we should approach it.