Christopher Smith Job

713 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Changes in the education system

The the famous actor and musician Willard Christopher Smith Jr. grew up just like any other kid. He was enrolled at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, despite his family being Baptists. He attended Overbrook High School. He had his fair share of school systems. Although his career started early and Will did not attend college, he had enough experience with school to make an educated observation. He observed that “Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests - not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life.” Mr. Smith’s job is to observe things and to interpret those observations with music and films. He is paid a lot of money for his observations in the form of movies and albums. Since he …show more content…

His job is also to take what is popular and make it profitable too. So, when Will is saying these things about the school system, it leads us to believe that he may just be playing to popular belief. He knows almost any kid, currently in some kind of school based situation, would agree with him, just because they are grasping at metaphorical straws to find something to even the scores. The essays, research projects, speeches, presentations and other forms of torture are not enough, on top of that there is a strict grading system that can make or ruin the rest of someone’s life. They, as students, want a little more leniency so the world will not come crashing down on them because they did poorly on one test. Even though one could have high marks on twenty homework assignments in a row, that one poor test could make his grade plummet. With the school system they way it is, nothing is going to change soon. Alas, one cannot keep from hoping that someday the education system will change so children, teens and young adults will not have to slave their lives away in front of a laptop writing essays with dreams of one day being able to get good enough marks to be accepted into MIT or

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Good Will Hunting

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before we begin to address this, we must first consult the definition; Among the various ones provided in our textbook, the following phrases will be especially useful for our analysis: Gifted and talented students have “potential high performance capabilities in…specific academic…ability”; “outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as an exceptional ability to reason and learn)”; “above-average general intellectual abilities” (Heward, Alber-Morgan, & Konrad, 2017, pp. 436-437). I find the word potential most striking, especially because many of Will’s friends (as well as Lambeau and Sean) believed that he had significant untapped potential. Also, when standing up for one of his friends at the bar, he went into much detail about historical facts and events in a strikingly logical and academic manner, with vocabulary and elaboration that well-surpassed many of those around

    Read More

  • Knute Rockne - Coach And Legend Of Notre Dame

    1658 Words  | 4 Pages

    fond of the idea of him going to a Catholic school, as they themselves were

    Read More

  • John Gatto Against School Summary

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto urges Americans to see the school system as it really is: testing facilities for young minds, with teachers who are pounding into student 's brains what society wants. Gatto first explains that he taught for 30 years at the best and worst schools in Manhattan. He claims to have firsthand experience of the boredom that students and teachers struggle with. Gatto believes that schooling is not necessary, and there are many successful people that were self-educated. He then explains the history and importance of mandatory schooling.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Against School By John Taylor Gattos

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    The average human would think that going to school and getting an education are the two key items needed to make it in life. Another common belief is, the higher someone goes with their education, the more successful they ought to be. Some may even question if school really makes anyone smarter or not. In order to analyze it, there needs to be recognition of ethos, which is the writer 's appeal to their own credibility, followed by pathos that appeals to the writer’s mind and emotions, and lastly, logos that is a writer’s appeal to logical reasoning. While using the three appeals, I will be analyzing “Against School” an essay written by John Taylor Gatto that gives a glimpse of what modern day schooling is like, and if it actually help kids

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of John Taylor Gatto's 'Against School'

    1754 Words  | 4 Pages

    John Taylor Gatto, who was a teacher at the public school for twenty-six years, and the writer of the essay “Against School” that first appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2001, censures and blames the American public school’s educational system in his argumentative essay with various convincible supporting ideas. Gatto argues that the demands of public education system’s schooling are essential problems in “Against School”. Gatto shows some positive examples of the educating without forced schooling and shows models of the ‘success without forced modern schooling’. Indeed, the writer insists that historically forced schooling is not related to intellectual and financial success in American history. James Bryant Conant, who was the twenty-third

    Read More

  • John Gatto Against School

    811 Words  | 2 Pages

    It’s no surprise that there are faults within our schools in today’s society. As both authors’ point out if our educational system is

    Read More

  • Research Paper On Good Will Hunting

    2108 Words  | 5 Pages

    The issue of how we should be educated and what we should learn in school is a highly talked about issue in the United States today. Should students go to school for twelve years? Do they need to all of these standardized tests to be a successful adult in society? Or issues such as grading and how it affects students. Good Will Hunting is a positive movie for a viewer, which shows the issue we see in schools and society today of being schooled or being well educated. Will Hunting is a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a rather quiet individual that doesn’t do much except clean the college and hang out with his friends. He does not go to college and instead is the janitor at one of the most prestigious

    Read More

  • Historical and Contemporary Perspectives of Homeschooling

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    In early America, schooling was taught in the home by either a parent or educated tutor. Public schools did not exist in America until the middle of the 1800s, leaving families to educate the children within the home. When public schools were formed, they were primarily church based and focused on doctrine more than academics. It wasn’t until the 1870s that public schools became more government supported academic institutions. More and more, public schools became popular. However, some parents still homeschooled their children for various reasons. Many of America’s presidents have been homeschooled, such as Washington, Adams, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. Even Thomas Edison and Mark Twain were homeschooled. In the 1960s, homeschooling was on the rise of popularity in the groups of New Age philosophers, ex-hippies, and homesteaders. It wasn’t until 1993 that homeschooling became legal in all fifty states. Before then, many families suffered hardship from the states that enforced public school attendance (Wilhelm and Firmin

    Read More

  • I Just Wanna Be Average, By Mike Rose

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    We live in a society where we are surrounded by people telling us that school/education and being educated is the only way to succeed. However, the school system is not up to the standards we want it to uphold. There are three issues we discuss the most which are the government, the student, and the teacher. In John Taylor Gatto 's essay “Against School”, we see the inside perspective of the educational system from the view of a teacher. In “I Just Wanna Be Average”, an essay written by Mike Rose, we hear a student 's experience of being in a vocational class in the lower level class in the educational system when he was supposed to be in the higher class. Both Gatto and Rose give their opinions on how the educational system is falling apart. Today the government is only trying to get students to pass, making it hard for teachers to teach what they want. Students are affected everyday by the school system. They sit there - bored - and do not think that the teachers care, making the

    Read More

  • Improper Socialization Of Homeschoolers Essay

    1293 Words  | 3 Pages

    When one examines the history, the quality, and the long-term effects of public education, and compares them to the history, quality, and long-term effects of other education methods, such as home-education, public school is found lacking. Although it may be simpler to merely follow the modern status quo of sending one 's children to public school, it is imperative to thoroughly research other available options to determine if public school will provide more benefit to an individual family than it does harm to both one 's family and society as a whole. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true

    Read More

  • Art Of Rhetoric Essay

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    His mother described his school by saying the first thing you see when you walk in is a desk and a security guard. They applied to a charter academy that was 45 minutes away, his mother said it was worth it if her son could have a better education. He wasn’t drawn in the lottery.

    Read More

  • The Other Wes Moore

    1139 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Mothers in this book play a large influence in relation to importance of schooling for the two Wes Moore’s. AWM mother, Joy, believed in schooling to the hilt and was obsessed with her children receiving the best possible education out there. She sacrificed a lot for AWM to go to the same school that John F Kennedy went to, Riverdale. She "worked multiple jobs, from a freelance writer for magazines and television to a furriers assistant- whatever she could do to help cover her growing expenses" (Moore 47). This woman clearly cared a lot about school and wanted her son to be the best he could be. She was also a college graduate, and before her, her parents. On the other hand, the OWM mother, Mary, did not get a chance to finish college. Ironically she dropped out of Johns Hopkins. This was because her grant was taken away; this might have had an effect on her because she was nowhere near as obsessed with her children’s education as Joy was. It is heartbreaking because Mary grew up in a rough part of Baltimore and she, "Made a pact with herself at that moment: she would get her education and leave the neighborhood no matter what it took" (...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Chris Hedges Why The United States Is Destroying It's Education System

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    He states, “A nation that destroys its systems of education…It prizes, test scores above critical thinking and literacy” (Hedges). Hedges indicates many times creativity is taken out of schools, in addition to not being used enough in educational development. However, what Hedges does not seem to comprehend is that testing students does not always have to be a bad affair. If the tests more accurately portray what is being taught in the schools, then the standardized testing would have a better effect on students because they’re being tested over material that actually pertains to them. As a result, the standardized testing is less of an agonizing hour and actually time well spent. If students and teachers were more willing to teach and learn the nuances of certain materials, then, as a community, this country would be stronger and have a better understanding of what is needed to succeed financially and emotionally in

    Read More

  • John Dewey Democracy And Education Analysis

    852 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rather than preparing students to be thoughtful, self-directed and ethical beings capable of arriving at social truths through critical dilemmas, schools prepare students to be ‘rubber stamps’ with dictatorial work and political structures, train students for work by providing the student with a limited set of skills and information to do a particular job, and discourage the chase of individuality and creativity. (Dewey, 1916).

    Read More

  • What Is Character Education Essay

    1485 Words  | 3 Pages

    It was not until the 1840s when character education became a priority focus within the classroom. Horace Mann was an American politician and education reformer who is known as the ‘father of public school.’ Mann said that the key to good society is “best expressed in these few and simple words: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it’(ppt).” Reflecting on Mann’s quote, I believe he was sharing his belief that public school could have a positive social and moral effect on students beyond the academic benefit they receive from the classroom and that he felt it was worthy of being intentionally taught. When Horace Mann passed away in the 1850s, John Dewey took that notion even deeper than Mann and emphasized the impact of character and moral education on the current society as well as the society of the future. Dewey believed that the school should create an environment similar to a community center in the sense of giving students an awareness regarding how their choices and behavior affect

    Read More

More about Christopher Smith Job

Open Document