Professeur de sept leçons

Most of the countries have realized it by now: education is the basis of every healthy society. It is, indeed, a priority, but also a continuing source of debate. How should we educate children? What is the best educational system? Does school provide a full education? What are the strategies to adopt? These questions will always be asked, and will always receive an uncountable number of answers. John Taylor Gatto, a renowned author who was named New York State Teacher of the Year after publishing his article “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher”, has dedicated a great part of his life searching for ways to improve the educational system. However, we can’t rely on one person’s idea. In the first chapter of “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher”, John Taylor Gatto criticizes the way things are taught to children. But what if today’s educational system hides a philosophical thought to why it is the way it is. In my opinion, even though we find plenty negative sides in our educational system, I do approve it because it gives a general knowledge that we need in order to acquire an opportune and noble education.

In his article, “The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher”, John Taylor Gatto talks about the confusion that school teaches to children because of what is learned to them. He says: “teaching is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of planets....What do any of these things have to do with each other?” (John Taylor Gatto) I would answer that all these things have to do with each other if the individual is disposed to utilize this cognizance to understand, apply, and refine it with the avail of some curiosity and perseverance. What if our knowledge was limited to specific fields since our little age due to the fact that the government needs that its population practices a certain type of profession. We would be in this case predisposed since our childhood to be someone that we haven’t chose to be; we would lose our identity. Our brain brings us so a lot of useful, and over the years it grows up as we grow up. So at a certain point of time, we reach a level where we understand and make connections between the things that have been inculcated to us since our childhood in an incessant manner. In my opinion, the only ones to reprimand are the ones who haven’t used the tools that are naturally given to them even though the information were transmitted in a perplex way; because, as humans we have the abilities to fill in the blank and to make patterns.

Moreover, Taylor Gatto adds to his seven lessons that school teaches us indifference. He says: “Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do.” Through this quote, Taylor Gatto puts forward the way children take into consideration the things that are being taught to them. Let me say that it all depends on how a professor is involved in his class and how interesting he is, just as children themselves who should put all their efforts and be entirely invested in their class in order to make any lesson attractive and useful to their life. If we follow John Taylor Gatto’s perspective we will end up in a vicious circle that never ends, where all the points referred in his article follow another one, and one cannot exist if one doesn’t too. Confusion leads to indifference because we choose it to be so. Our reflection

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