Freire, Gatto, and Some Agreements

Friere believes that students are forced to conform and that the teachers are oppressors that stifle creativity, the teachers teach and the students are taught in a rigid manner. "Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor". Mr. Lowry was very strict and anxious in the beginning, demanding respect from his students when  he really had not done anything to earn it, like yelling and sending students out of the class. Over the year he starts to loosen up, he wins the Spelling Hornet and starts letting the students teach him and they open up to his teachings. In Gatto's "Against School", he speaks of students and teachers boredom and the structure that a public school environment enforces, namely conformity and teacher/student dynamic. We see this in Chalk when Mr. Stroop the history teacher pulls two students aside and asks them to dumb themselves down so the teacher does not appear stupid in class. In effect he tells the young male student that they both know he knows more about history than he does, and to the young woman to stop using so many big words. He does this because he has a huge ego, but more importantly because the teacher/student dynamic was being disturbed. Gatto says "let students manage themselves" which in a sense is similar to what Freire believes also but instead of students managing themselves he thinks that teachers and students should be teaching each other and the should be a more free dynamic in the classroom. Altogether teachers are the rock in changing the education system and they both believe in that idea.