John Taylor Gatto's essay, "Against School: How public education cripples our kids and why" is about the structure of the public educational school system. His views o about how the systems purpose is to devalue children is very similar to that of Marx, Weber, and Paulo Freire's, view of how the social system controls people. They all share a commonality of studying and writing about the social structures and institutions of this world, and about how only a small group of upper class people benefit from these structures, while the majority working and poor class suffer greatly from these structures and institutions. .
Marx believed that under capitalism, people where prevented from reaching their full potential and creativity. Like Marx, Gatto wrote that the public educational system prevents a child from reaching his or her full potential and creative capacities. He agrees with the late H. L. Mencken who wrote that the aim of the public educational school system is not "to fill the young with knowledge and awaken their intelligence (Harper 2001: 35),"" nor was its aim "to make out good people, good citizens, and to make each person his or her personal best (Gatto 2001: 35)." Instead, Mencken concludes, that the systems aim is to simply reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, and to put down dissent and originality (Gatto 2001: 35). Gatto writes how the United States has deliberately adopted an educational system "designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring inner life, to deny students .
appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens-all in order to render the populace "manageable" (Gatto 2001: 36)." .
Weber theorizes about a notion called the iron cage, "which is an imagery of a powerful, cage like structure (Gatto 2001: 34)." This cage locks people inside and it is nearly impossible to escape.
