Paulo Friere and John Gatto

Paulo Freire and John Gatto agreed that school is not a stimulating environment and that information is taught in a way that does not allow students to apply what they have learned. Friere says that students are part of a “banking concept of education”, and that all students do is soak up the “content of the teachers narration”.(Freire, 1) These children, or 'receptacles', are expected to use this information on tests and quizzes without truly understanding what the have been taught. Therefore, they graduate for school without developing skills they might need as adults, and are almost like 'robots' who can only process information without truly understanding it. Friere state that “The more students work at storing deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.” (Freire, 2). Gatto's agrees with this, stating that, "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." (Gatto 3)  and that "Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?" (Gatto 4) Gatto's means to explain that schools do not allow children to think like adults, just like Friere. Gatto, however, takes a different turn when he talks about how the american school system came to be and its goal to create mindless and consumer citizens, saying "But what shocks is that we so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to produce mediocre life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace "manageable." (Gatto 11)