Small group blog post: choose one scene from chalk and use it to show one of the concerns that each of the writers (Freire, Gatto, Rose, and Black) have about education.
Freire talks about how our education system uses teachers just as a machine to relay information to students who temporarily memorize it for a test. In Chalk, there's a scene where Mr. Lowrey is having all of his students simply repeating what he says; no thinking, no learning, just memorization.
Black talks a lot about unqualified people working at and teaching at schools. Mr. Lowrey is a perfect example of this, as he is completely new to teaching, and he's teaching History as a former Engineer. He goes to the Library and looks to check out a book about simply controlling his class, because he's completely new to teaching and doesn't know how to maintain control in his classroom.
Gatto talks about how students are isolated and separated by titles and how teachers treat them, saying "Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes." The student in Chalk who is kicked out of class by Mr. Lowrey is an example of this idea; he is kicked out of class not just because of his cell phone, but because there's a "mutual disrespect" between them. Mr. Lowrey labels him both as a distraction and as disrespectful.
Rose says that one of the main goal in reforming out education should be "To have more young people get an engaging and challenging education." In Chalk, Mr. Stroope talks to some of his students after class, and tells them to stop using such big words and stop being smarter at history than him during class. To these kids, their education is not at all engaging or challenging
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