Reflecting on Gato

One of the major issues that Gato raised in Dumbing Us Down was the fact that people of different ages don't understand each other and students live in a continuous present, never thinking about their past or their future. This is because of the limits that school puts on students, causing different age groups to never interact. School places restraints on students, keeping them with the same people of the same age all throughout their lives until adulthood. During these critical years of development, students need many more influences besides their equal-aged peers and a few adults telling them what to do all the time. There needs to be more understanding among generations, and that won't be helped if students are always with other students of their same age group. Instead of learning about history from a textbook, students could look to their older relatives or community members to get real accounts of history. Students see that their problems are not the only ones that exist. It allows them to look into the future, another skill that Gato says students are deficient in. Even having reading buddies that are a few grades above or below the students' will improve their social skills, encourage them to not be intimidated, and appreciate the differences between ages. We always focus on "embracing diversity" in schools, but never this type of diversity.