Different ideas of school's function
Maggie
Prof. VanCalbergh
School has different function to different people, it can be positive to make people
better, and it can also be negative to waste time and to confuse people. In my opinion,
Rizga and Gatto has different ideas about the function of education in school. Rizga's
article refute the argument that" it is in the interest of complex management, economic
or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another,
and to discard them if they don't conform." (Gatto 97) and to show that school's function
are to explore students' own ideas and make them different from others to form their
own characters.
Rizga use Maria's story to claim that school's function is to make students become
confidence and different. At first, Maria "had a hard time writing in Spanish and didn't
know how to multiply."(Rizga 85) But after she went to the Mission High, whose
teachers helped her a lot on writing and math, she earned high grades on math and
even could talk to her Spanish-speaking teachers in English. Maria came to see her
teacher thousand times to talk about her essays and her assignments to solve her
problems and always made efforts to finish her workings which lead her to defeat her
shyness and become confidence and received "acceptance letters to five college and
two prestigious scholarships."(Rizga 85) Against the integrating function claimed in
Gaito's article which shows that schools' function is to make children as like as possible,
Rizga use Maria's story to show that school should make their students become
different from others with their own thoughts not become similar people and do the
similar works without their own thoughts. Maria's story shows us that everyone is the
independent individual, so people need to have their own thoughts react to the specific
situation, not to become mechanization. Educations in schools will not dumb people
down, in the opposite, the education will encourage students to create their own
thoughts and to develop their abilities and to learn how to solve problems by
themselves. The school offers students the opportunity to become independent to have
the abilities to hold them own. People not only learn the complex knowledge in the
schools, teachers also teach their students how to use the knowledge in the work and
also in the life time so that they can be all-round, not the people only fulfill with the
knowledge without any basic sense.
Rizga also refute the idea that the education in school will demoralize people by using
the Maria's story. Maria was not confidence because her English was not good, but her
teacher, Mr. Velez trusts her and helps her a lot. As she recalls,"I didn't believe in
myself. But Mr. Velez always told me not to give up, to keep going, keep
pushing." (Rizga 87) "By the end of 10th grade, she was writing essays that didn't fit on
one page." (Rizga 87) Maria was encouraged by her teacher, and got huge progress on
her study. Students can have progress on their studies in schools, but not have the
same reaction to the authority which claims by Gatto in her article. Opposite to the
adjustive or adaptive function claimed by Gatto which says that schools always train
their students to make the same reaction to the teachers and destroy the interesting
parts of study to make study become boring, Rizga use Maria's story to show that
schools' function is not making study become boring, schools should raise their students
up and be interested in studying. Rizga shows that it is possible to help student who is
not good in study to become excellent if teacher realizes what his student really want
and what part his student really need to improve, and also if student can show his