John Taylor Gatto talks about public education and he proves these theories by using the work of ancient philosophers He talks bad about schools in many different ways. He talks about the classes that children are put in, the way that they are seperated, and how children are not worked to the best of their ability anymore. Gatto says that putting children with children and spending time with adolesents all day keeps children from growing up and being responsible, "Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up." I disagree with this quote. School is supposed to help us grow up and work on our own. Its supposed to teach us to advocate for ourself and get the grades we deserve while working as hard as we can. Although the grades don't always show how the teacher teaches or how well the student knows the lesson, the tests are an unfair way to assess a student. Teachers now a days are teaching to the test insead of teaching for the children to get smarter in every day life. "Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?" Teachers get bored teaching the same thing over and over, teaching for the children to complete a final exam to decide if they pass the class or not. This can get especialy boring if children aren't getting the lesson or don't understand.
Ray Bradbury
In Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury uses persuasion through the characterGuy Montag. He tries to explain to people the way he felt when that woman took her own life for the books, he wants to know what is in the books that is so special. "You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing." this shows me that hes very interested and Montag is telling his wife all of this because he doesn't understand but she understands less than him.
Another way Ray Bradbury shows this in his books is when Guy goes to Fabers house (the college professor) to see if a book can be copied because there are very very limited amounts of the Bible, Shakespear and Plato left in the world. Guy has to return the "only" book he has to the boss at the fire station tomorrow and he wants to make a copy to be one of the only people to have it. Instead Guy and Faber are coming up with a plan, "Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemaen's houses burn, is that what you mean? this is how he wants to stop the way things are going by getting rid of all the firemen and maybe saving books. He has to persuade Faber to do it though because they will both be in danger of getting burned.
"Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magis is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us"
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