Chapter 9 - Responding To Diversity

After reading all those history chapters, I found this one to be very interesting. The introduction to this chapter explained a scenario where a girl was in an auto mechanics class, and she was not being treated equal to the boys in the class. The author asks us if the girl should drop the class or not. I don't think she should, because American society needs to realize that things are changing and becoming more diverse, therefor, should encourage this girl for exploring auto mechanics; going beyond the stereotypes. I learned that a very important difference is all the different cultures; macroculture and microculture. Teachers need to understand the means of communication, the means of interaction, and the values of driving people or groups, and how these things influence learning. A new term I learned is enculturation, which means learning formally or informally through parents or other adults. Certain strategies on teaching culturally diverse students are as follows: emphasizing verbal interactions, teaching students to use self-talk, facilitating divergent thinking, using small-group instruction and cooperative learning, employing verve in the classroom, focusing on real-world tasks, and promoting teacher-student interaction. Multicultural education has two primary goals; 1. promote educational equality for all students, male and female, minority or majority, able or disabled 2. enable all students to learn and develop knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to successfully participate in and contribute to an increasingly diverse society. Multicultural education has five dimensions and they are: content integration dimension, knowledge construction process dimension, prejudice reduction dimension, equity pedagogy dimension, and empowering school culture and social structure dimension. Multicultural education also has five approaches and those are: teaching the exceptional and culturally different approach, human relations approach, single group studies approach, inclusive multicultural education approach, and educational multiculturalism and social reconstructionism approach. The author also states that the hardest thing as an immigrant is keeping a healthy ethnic identity while developing an American identity. The major elements that are produced by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are: the right to a free and appropriate education, identification and nondiscriminatory evaluation, an individualized education program, least restrictive environment, and procedural due process. There were many other major points covered in this chapter, but these are the ones I found most interesting. America needs to learn to adapt to every situation, and realize that the whole world is slowly becoming a mixture of all the different cultures!

DaNo

Freire Text

After reading the Freire text, I learned that his education philosophy is based on his belief in human liberation, through the use of critical consciousness and dialogical methods of interaction between people. He didn't agree with the method of "banking" teaching, but favored more of a "problem-posing" method. A "banking" method is where teachers "deposit" knowledge, the things they know best, into student's minds. The students record, memorize, and repeat what they are taught, without truly understanding what everything really means. The people who think they are the most knowledgeable feel as if they are giving a gift of knowledge to those who know nothing. Freire did not like the "banking" concept, and preferred the "problem-posing" method. For him, this meant that teachers, as well as students, develop their own visions of the world by using their own voices, not someone else's. Education should be a practice of freedom. I agree with Freire's "problem-posing" method, because we have the right to be who we want to be and believe what we want to believe. I don't like it when people try and impose things on me that I don't believe in or don't want to belong too.

Illich and Goodlad

Goodlad's text was about the different purposes of schooling. There were twelve in total. Here they are:
1. Mastery of basic skills or fundamental procedures
2. Career education-vocational education
3. Intellectual development
4. Enculturation
5. Interpersonal relations
6. Autonomy
7. Citizenship
8. Creativity and aesthetic perception
9. Self-concept
10. Emotional and physical well-being
11. Moral and ethical character
12. Self-realization

Illich's text was about disestablishing school. He thinks schools have a way of destructing the lives of the children who attend them and that the children are being brainwashed into believing whatever the people with the highest power believe. He thinks teachers have too much of an impact on their students lives and therefor doesn't let the student make its own decisions and doesn't have enough control over their own life. There are three different roles a teacher can play: teacher-as-custodian, teacher-as-moralist, teacher-as-therapist. Although Illich has some very strong points about this topic, I do think that school and education is still necessary in everyday life.

Chapter 6 - American Education: From Revolution To The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6, just like chapter 5, was full of interesting historical information. One thing I will now always remember was who invented the dictionary; Noah Webster. Back then, their dictionary was called the "blue-back speller" because of the color of the book's binding. That fact will definitely stick with me. There were many different types of schools as well. For example, monitorial schools, charity schools, Sunday schools, infant schools and academies. An interesting thing about those days, that is very different from now a days, is that men often made twice as much money than women did, for doing the SAME job! If things were like that now, I don't think I would be a very happy woman! HAHA! The part of this chapter that I found most interesting was the part about the education of minorities in America. The main social groups I learned about were the Native Americans, the Hispanic Americans, the Asian Americans, the African Americans, as well as women. The education for these groups of people was often neglected, segregated, and not fair to them at all. They were not allowed to learn anything but English and were forced to assimilate into the American society. Often the ones that dropped out and went back to their homes found that what they were taught in the schools was useless. Personally, I think education has come a long way and will only keep improving as time goes on! :)

Dano

Brown vs. Board of Education + Savage Inequalities

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas is what reversed Plessy vs. Ferguson. The law was that the white and black people could be separate, as long as they had something of their own that would be equal to what the other had. For example, bathrooms, schools, restaurants, etc. In Brown vs. Board of Education, the separate but equal law was found to be inherently unequal. Brown sued the Board of Education because they wouldn't let his daughter go to the white schools, even though they were a lot closer to home than the black schools were. The education for the white people was very private and taught by private groups, where as the education for black people was almost nonexistent, and in some states, even forbidden. Separating young kids because of their race gives them a feeling of inferiority in society and will most likely affect their hearts and minds. Today, education is a right that is made available to everyone on equal terms (or should be anyways)

In the text Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, the author argues that American schools are even more segregated now than they were back in 1954. The author describes his experiences as a teacher, when he visited countless different schools in different cities/places in America. There were never specific ones, he just went wherever he knew people. Most of his experiences in these schools were bad ones. The kids were not getting proper education, if you could call what they were getting education at all. There were not enough teachers for the amount of kids, barely any learning materials, and not even enough room in a classroom for all the students. I couldn't believe what I was reading throughout this whole text. It amazes me that these poor children have to go through all that pain and uncomfortableness in order to learn what it is they learn. So many kids drop out because they have no motivation and it doesn't matter to them at all whether they are getting an education or not. I found this article to be very sad and I really wish there was something that could be done to improve these school systems and help these poor kids get the education they deserve.

Chapter 5 - American Education: European Heritage and Colonial Experience

After reading Chapter 5, I was completely...speechless. There was so much information that it was hard to retain the most important parts. Personally, I find history really boring and hard to remember all the different aspects. The biggest thing I learned in this chapter was that our education today has evolved a lot and has come a long way since the "Ancient Societies". There are a lot of different, yet important, people who influenced education in many ways and at many different times in history. For example, Socrates (Education in Ancient Societies), Thomas Aquinas (Education in the Middle Ages), John Calvin (Education During the Reformation), Friedrich Frobel (Later European Educational Thought), and many, many more. I found out what a bunch of new terms meant, such as: humanism, naturalism, hornbook, dame schools, and many others as well. Another interesting point is that Christianity (or religion in general) had a huge impact on education and society. The five steps that Johann Herbart followed to plan his classes (preparation, presentation, association, generalization, application) are still very similar to the way we plan our classes now a days. The first education laws were that selectmen from each town had to go around in houses and check up on the children, make sure their parents are teaching them what they are supposed to be taught. Girls could attend dame schools, but most of them received very minimal education. There is a lot more information given in this chapter, it is hard to narrow it down. Overall, after having read this chapter, I feel a lot more educated on the history of our education today.

~Dano~

Chapter 4 - The Impact of Educational Theories on Educational Practice

This chapter talks about the different theories of education. There are six main ones: Perennialism, Progressivism, Behaviourism, Essentialism, Social Reconstructionism and Postmodernism. For each of these six theories we learn about general information, their purpose of schooling, the nature of their learner, their curriculum, their instructional methods, their classroom management, their assessments, the way their teachers are and their leading educational proponents. There is a lot of information about every single one of these theories in the chapters. At the end of the chapter, the authors ask the reader which theory they can most relate too. Just like the philosophies, I still haven't quite decided which theory I can most relate too. I'm hoping the more I learn in this class, the clearer it will be for me. It is not necessary to fit clearly into one theory/philosophy, because most of them somehow overlap each other. Even taking bits and pieces of a few of them and putting them together could possibly create a great teaching method. I also learnt that the theories are constantly changing due to economic, social and political climates. With all this new knowledge, I can't wait to start figuring things out for my own teaching career!

~Dano~