Cindy Li
Peacock
College Writing 102
12/10/2012
We Do Need School Education Education is the crucial component of any nation’s education system. I had been told to enter a school and to get a great grade since I was such a young kid. I have never thought that there might be something wrong with it before. Recently, more and more scholars and education critics claim that we do not need schools anymore. They blamed the current education for its failing system, and they claim that schooling is not really education, and the education is not schooling. This opinion spread fast, and gained a lot of supports from the peers and young people. But I have to say, there is no doubt that we do still need school education and it is very important for our lives. Why are people against school? I think it is because something makes them feel bad about school. People dislike to go to school for many reasons, some of them are understandable. The mother of my host family, Mrs. Oytt, told me about her story. “My youngest son, Mike (alias), he is 13 years old and he is in his 7th grade now. But he doesn’t go to a real school, such as the schools with buildings, he is taking the online school at home, and he does a really good job on his study.” She also told me that she does not want her son to go to a real school for many reasons. “We have our own business at home, we make dental casts for the dentists, there is no school that can teach him this and he can just learn it at home,” she said, “well, another reason that he doesn’t go to a school is many students here are not taught well. I am afraid he will make bad friends when he goes to school. My other children who went to a school, especially my daughter, didn’t make really good friends and those friends give her a really bad influence. So I don’t want those students to influence my son. And also, my son has a bad illness. He is going to fall down at any time that also means he can’t go to a school.” I have to admit that these reasons are really strong and understandable. But I do not think it is a good idea to protect a child by boxing up him in a house. It will inhibit his all-over development of abilities as he grows up, especially the ability to communicate with others. “Well, when he grows older, if he likes, I will send him to a real college, I think it will be more helpful on his life.” Mrs. Oytt told me at last. And there is also another voice about school, and it is a big yawn. Gatto. John T, in his article he states like this. “Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored,” “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there.” I am not a teacher so I do not think that I have right to say he is wrong, but I am a student, so I cannot agree with him. I do feel bored at school sometimes, but most of that time is when I cannot do well at school, and I feel frustrated. He also claims that “school didn’t have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all.” I totally disagree with this point. I do not think we students are so stupid like that. Everyday when we are in school we have to think about everything, think about a math problem, a writing topic, think about how to communicate with teachers and think about how to deal with our classmates. The school itself can teach us to think, can make us improve in our comprehensive abilities. I agree with the opinion that schools should help kids get an education rather than merely receive a schooling. Gatto discriminates clearly between school and education: “I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary?” But