School = Bottomless Abyss.....

“6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling”
The Onion, August 15, 2008, Issue 44-33, Accessed: April 15, 2011

Topic: Compulsory Education

Summary: In a light (it’s from The Onion) article, the idea of compulsory education as a type of jail sentence for children is poked at. Poor first grade Connor just wants to play outside with his friends but hasn’t yet realized that he is doomed to a “dire and hopeless” situation.

Intended audience: General Public

Key Points:

• “Basic math – which the child has blissfully yet to learn – clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed.”
• Estimated 14,400 hours of his life will be spent in a classroom (not including college)
• “It’s difficult to know the effect on his psychological well-being when he grasps the full truth: that his education will be followed by approximately four decades of work, bills, and taxes, during which he will also rear his own children to face the same fate, all of which will, of course, be followed by a brief, and almost inconsequential retirement, and his inevitable death.”

Relevance: The article pokes fun at a 6-year old who doesn’t want to go to school and would rather play with his friends. What it really gets at is the theme that we see in most of Gatto’s writing referring to school as a prison sentence and painting a dismal picture of the compulsory education system in the United States. I feel like this article is a funnier version of Gatto’s “Dumbing Us Down”. The article may be intended as a spoof, but it touches on issues that people say seriously…