My HS experience vs. Gattos ideas

My experience in high school was similar to Gattos in that I felt like I was being stifled by several varieties of the same stupid institution that bred conformity and lack of critical thinking among its learners. I went to five different high schools before I graduated. One was an online public high school, one was a "bad" school with a few exceptional teachers but the constant threat of gang violence and the apathy of teachers who were already looking for new jobs. I went to another in Texas that was snobby and felt like I had teachers political opinions shoved down my throat, a school on Cape Cod that was also snobby and inclusive, and finally another school in Texas that was too large to have any kind of real drama within the student population, but you were ultimately just a number to administration.

I definitely did see some of the themes discussed in Gattos paper, especially in the mentions of the "functions" of education.

I saw the differentiating function in action when I was trying to get into an AP government class in high school. My first 2 years of high school were spent being flung across 4 different high schools, and I had a hard time getting a solid foundation. Plus, it honestly is not very motivating doing school work when you know you are not going to get any credit for it in 6 months due to lack of communication or stubborness on the part of the school district. My junior year though I had an awesome history teacher who challenged me and and inspired a great love of learning, I ended up with a 99 average for the whole year in his class.

My senior year I was basically fighting to graduate, retaking classes that I had passed in other schools or just taking classes that I hadn't taken before. My counselor treated me like an idiot, and when I wanted to take an honors level class so I had at least one challenging class in my schedule, she ignored my requests after I bothered her about it for a month. I got my parents involved and they told them they denied my request but could not be bothered to at least let me know. My parents were very angry and finally got me into a honors level class about 2 months into the year. The school had decided that I was not competent even though my test scores were brilliant and my grades were great because it did not fit into the picture they saw my freshman and sophomore year. My counselor even laughed at me when I told her my plans to go to a 4 year school eventually, they were incredibly disrespectful of any idea that didn't fit into their norm.