Quotes for Essay

"Children are organically predisposed to be critical thinkers," "Children's passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only. Most children are taught early on that thinking is dangerous." bell hooks,
"Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it." "I had more than enough reason to think of our schools - with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers - as virtual factories of childishness," "[What] our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands" John Gatto
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that our school systems are broken," Lewis Black john gatto,
""Worse yet, it turns them [students] into "containers," into "recepticles" to be "filled" by the teacher," 

Citation and Qutoation Practice

• In the essay "Against School," John Gatto, a former teacher, discusses the flaws and conditions of school, saying "I had more than enough reason to think of our schools...as virtual factories of childishness."
• Satirically highlighting flaws in the school system on comedy central, Black opens with "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that our schools are broken--which is good, because none of us are!"   

Work Cited

• Gatto, John. "Against School." Harper's Magazine Sept. 2003: Web. <http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm#source>.
• Black, Lewis "Back in Black." John Stuart Daily Show. Comedy Central. Television. Web. <http://politicsisstupid.com/>
• bell, hooks "
• Freire, Paulo, "The Banking Concept of Education," Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968: Print. Excerpt.

• John Gatto was an American school teacher with nearly thirty years of experience in the classroom and the author of multiple essays concerning the conditions of our schools, including "Against School" and a number of books, including "Dumbing us Down", published in 1991 and the more recent "Underground History of American Education," published in 2003. He discusses the school environment saying "I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom." Further discussing the school environment, bell hooks, best known as a feminist author comments that, "Most children are taught early on that thinking is dangerous."
•  Paulo  Freire, Ph.D was a Brazilian educator and philosopher and an advocate of critical pedagogy. He is also the author of "Education for Critical Consciousness," "Pedology of Freedom," and a number of other education-centric books. In his book "Pedology of the Oppressed," published in 1968, Feire discusses the banking method saying "Worse yet, it turns them [students] in "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher." John Gatto discusses a similar condition in his observation of the school system in "Against School," Saying  "our schools...are laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands."

Work Cited

• Gatto, John. "Against School." Harper's Magazine Sept. 2003: Web. <http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm#source>.
• Black, Lewis "Back in Black." John Stuart Daily Show. Comedy Central. Television. Web. <http://politicsisstupid.com/>
• bell, hooks "
• Freire, Paulo, "The Banking Concept of Education," Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968: Print. Excerpt.

 

Ranking

1. Large--Character
2. Gilyard--Art and Curiosity
3. Hooks--engaging study and teacher connection
4. Boyce--Emotional nurturing
5. Aronson-- involvement with school management

Large, Boyce, Gilyard & hooks

      hooks      hooks asserts that teachers need to learn to asses the emotional awarness and intellegence of a class room. She reasons that this is important because:

• teachers need to be able to determine what the students need to know
• interacting with students beyond the surface builds positive energy

           hooks also talks about the importance of teachers encouraging the inner voice of all student. She belives this is important because:

•  it engages the hearts and minds of students
• creates a space where everyone can speak
• creates an environment where all voices can be shared
  
  lastly, hooks highlights the overall value of engaged pedagogy, saying that it:
  
• empathizes mutal paticipation
• forges meaningful working relationships in the classroom
• establishes integrity in the teacher
• encourages students to work with integrity 
  
  Gilyard
  Gilyard discusses the importance of the arts within schools, saying that they are:
  
• vital to the process of shaping the critical and productive citizens we need
• for the common good
• a linkage between potential and achivment
• expands perspective
  
  Aronson
  Aronson says that teachers must become engaged and active in politics in order to
• ensure the best for the students
• get educated, experienced voices out into the school board environment
• protect students from bureaucracy and misinformed information
• help students excel
  
  LargeSchools need to nurture character and 'grit' because
• it helps students to suceed
• helps them handle stress
• promotes optimism, self-control, curiosity and soical-intellegence
• gives the example of the two extremes--too many rules and stress at KIPP and too little motivation and challenge at Riverdale

Small Group: Chalk vs. Authors

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

Black vs. Rose

To be honest, I found these two very difficult to compare, because Black seemed to give less concrete examples of error or solution. Black seemed more interested in outlining comic and satirical examples of the stupid ways people seek to 'cure' education, as evidenced by his statement that "I went to school in an empty carton of Paul Mauls," while Rose outlined concrete examples of what he considered could be actual solutions, for example highlighting a real problem by saying " Just when you think the lesson is learned – that the failure of last year’s miracle cure is acknowledged and lamented – our attention is absorbed by a new quick fix."
Both Rose and Black seem to be of the opinion that our educational system is broken. As Black says eloquently, "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand our schools are broken--which is good, because none of us are," and Rose affirms that the reason for his resolutions is due to the "troubling developments and bad, old habits of 2010," indicating he considers past years an example of bad schooling. Another similarity between the two is their general disdain for the ignorant behavior and meddling of the press, Rose asking to "have the media, middle-brow and high-brow, quit giving such a free pass to the claims and initiatives of the Department of Education and school reformers." and Black mocking NBC , saying "NBC: a week for education, 51 weeks for incarceration,"

What Is School For?

I think that that purpose of school should be, first and foremost, education. We need to know our history and learn how to affect out future. We need to be taught how to fit into todays society and be successful. But there are certainly other important aspects of it. For example school should be to help people explore their interests and discover where they want to go in the working world and what they want to pursue. It should also be about teaching students how to live in the modern world. Finances and economics are an extremely important aspect of  day-to-day life, and as is evidenced by the levels of debt and foreclosure in our country, the recent generations are not well educated on the subject. In the same vein, the real-life application of many of the subjects we learn about is not well explored. Much of student boredom in school can likely be attributed to the fact that well, the curriculum is boring but also to the fact that few students can discern any real reason for them to learn what they are taught. I would like to seem more of these aspects in school, as well as more exploration of individuality, creativity and independence.