Different Ideas of School's Function

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