Rhetorical Analysis of "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher".
Many parents may argue that learning mathematics, spelling, grammar and science are important factors for a student to learn to be a successful and intellectual person in life. This argument is forcible denied in the paper "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher," writing by John Taylor Gatto. In his paper, Gatto tries to prove that it is not facts he is teaching, that he is actually teaching the "facts of life". He uses strong arguments which he is privy of to supply his argument with strong points that he uses to persuade his readers. From the start of his paper, Gatto tells what he knows from his experience of being a grade school teacher: that intelligence and high grade marks are not the buttresses that are typically thought of to support someone to success. Gatto has some very convincing arguments throughout his piece, yet there are a few weak arguments that seem to spoil his strong ones.
First, Gatto uses simple words and methodical speech to make his arguments as clear as possible to leave his readers with very few questions. He uses this approach very well, grabbing his reader's attention by arguing a point which is very important to all readers. Gatto begins his paper on an irate mother who wrote to him about her teacher's tactics on how they do not provide her child with important facts and knowledge, "What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn't idiosyncratic."(153). Every mother and father of a child in school has had their child's intellectual experience at school in question at least at one point or another. A parent of a child in school when reading this then would question their own child's experience in school. He later goes on to say, "I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny."(154).This is another good argument he has, he uses this to help parallel what he is teaching to what most parents deal with day to day, confusion.