Freire discussed his concerns about education in his paper, "The Banking Concept". One of the issues he mentions the training of the American students into worker drones or "adaptable manageable beings". This is proved by the following statement: "It is not surprising that the banking....." (pg. 2) In "Chalk" this is backed up by Mr. Lowery trying to control his class and gain their respect he checked out a book on classroom management.
Gatto's main point in "Against School" was that American kids are being pushed to conform with standards set in the 1910's. There is a tendancy towards as a Gatto"forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years" (pg. 2) The documentary Chalk supports this point clearly when one of Mr. Stroope's female students disrespect him because she is bored with the class and curriculum.
Lewis Black, a comedian, discusses in the video "Back to Black" how American schools are "broken". "NBC dedicates one week to education and 51 weeks to incarceration." He further goes on to summarize the failure of the American system by describing it as "We are 25th in math, 21st in science. We fall behind in almost every topic except confidence. Who needs science, math and physics if he'd had a little more confidence he'd have cleared the roof."He and Mr. Stroope both utilized humor to make people pay attention and to motivate them.
In "Resolutions Someone Should Make for 2011" Mike Rose discuses the need to measure students and teachers success by improvement and knowledge instead of test scores. He explains it as "To stop making the standardized test score the gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness." In Chalk this is supported by Mr. Lowery's improved realaesionship with student which effected their desire to learn in his class. When his relesionship with them exceeded his exspectations his own personal confidence grew.
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