Cailene Gunn/ What Do Teachers Think?

In her responsive editorial "A Teacher's Essay on the Public Education System" (2007), Erin Falconer, Editor in Chief of Pick the Brain, is a supporter of teacher and public education critic John Taylor Gatto's views on public education, and she provides the readers of Pick the Brain with a sense of the monotony and disgrace of modern day education. In order to reveal the flaws of the system, this editor takes us through each of Gatto's criticisms of the confusion, division, indifference, inferiority and fear that public education instills in its students. The author uses direct examples and compelling opinions in order to affirm the issues of today's education to the reader and to encourage a more "free market system in public schooling" to promote creative thought and intellectual curiosity- something public schooling lacks today. Falconer emphasizes public education's restrictions on expression, natural learning and individual thought to her educated audience as she urges reform on today's education system to her active audience.