Before taking this class, I personally thought the most important part of education was probably dedication. If we worked hard, and got good grades, it would surely pay off in the future so I would be able to get a good job and support myself one day — or so I thought. After starting this reading, it’s insane to think about how education is truly so complex but at the same time, contradictory. I am really being able to see how important socialization and participation both are when it comes to education. If a student is not socialized from the beginning when they are enrolled in Kindergarten, all hope is not lost just yet, and there is still time to have the student question the status quo of the controversial and extremely biased education system we operate in. I mean, the student is only 5, how much can we really expect from them at this age? (However, once the child enters their secondary education level, and they are still anti-social, then we are allowed to start panicking.) If a student is engaged within the classroom discussion, and feels comfortable with the instructor, there is a much higher chance of the student succeeding. To quote Shor, “Many students do not like the knowledge, process, or roles set out for them in the class. In reaction, they drop out of withdraw into passivity or silence in the classroom. Some become self-educated: some sabotage the curriculum by misbehaving.” If a student resorts to passivity in the classroom, this means can mean two things: 1. The child could not care less about what being what is taught in the classroom, which is like 99% of us (because really, who cares about the Pythagorean Theorem? I sure as hell don’t) 2. The child feels as though he is not in a comfortable or safe-zone, which I am afraid is even worse. In case anyone needs a refresher, education is a social environment where the future of society just happens to be at stake. Now I don’t mean to put all of the pressure on the child being social in class, because a large amount of this problem relies on the teacher as well. It is the teachers job to make everyone feel safe and valued in the classroom. They must be present in knowledge that is being taught because if they are not, then the students will not be there either, which is highly problematic.
“Empowering education“, a familiar term that we were just introduced to quite recently with by Mr. Patrick J. Finn in “Literacy with an Attitude“, is brought up quite frequently by Mr. Ira Shor in “Empowering Education“, as well. To me, it’s interesting to see both sides of the equation. Mr. Finn viewed it as a type of education that extremely harmed our students, since the only ones he viewed to be receiving this type of education were the “future elites”, who didn’t really need this type of eduction anyways because they were bound to be held the family inheritance regardless of their education status. He felt as though that we should all be receiving an empowered education, even the lower class people who were handed a domesticated education, without choice. I found that Shor went back and forth with both sides on this. Just from the first couple dense pages of this reading, Shor discusses the importance of empowering students into questioning and acting upon a corrupt school system, that some of us can easily find ourselves in. However he them says that: “Traditional schools [thus] prepare students to fit into an education and a society not run for them or by them but rather set up for and run by elites.” A little further on, Shor states: “To take participation into an empowering terrain, I would add that the more involved the student, the more he or she wrestles with meaning in the study, excursus his or her critical voice in a debate with peers, and expresses his or her values in a public arena, where they can be examined and related to contains in society. This is what Giroux [1988] emphazied as the “public sphere” of education, or education as an activity that could invigorate the life of a democracy if it became critical and empowering.” I think I would have to disagree with Mr. Shor when he says how traditional schools are empowering, and how those are set up for, and run by, the elites. I would think that traditional schools are more on the domesticated side than anything. Yes, it can be argued that domesticated schools do not have the power to escape from the routine establishment that the empowered are so forth claimed to have “put them in”, but if I have learned anything from this course whatsoever, it is that these domesticated schools are the ones with the behavioral problems and unstructured curriculum. I do understand that it can then be argued that these domesticated schools are not given the opportunity to escape from such conditions, but I do not feel as though the empowered have put such limitations on these domesticated schools, I feel as though the problems lie within the faculty and student body.
Shor reiterates one thought continuously throughout this entire reading, and that is that: “Education is a social experience.” In order to fully take away from the entire education experience as products of the of the system, Shor believes that participation and socialization are two key factors in order to succeeding. Remember, “the more involved the student, the more he or she wrestles with the meaning in the study, exercises his or her critical voice in a debate with peers, and expresses his or her values in a public arena, where they can be examined and related to conditions in society.” Not only does involvement benefit us in this long run, it also opens the possibility of transforming the students power of thought, and opens up the conversation for constructive criticism. Learning is not an individual experience, it is a cooperative experience. I find that today many of us are very sensitive to what others can put forth in a discussion, and we scary very easily. What I’m trying to get at here, is that today since people ARE so sensitive, and since everyone is so concerned with being politically correct, this can limit the classroom discussion in a negative manner (well at least, in my opinion.) The fact of the matter is, is that someone could take (what someone means to be constructive), in the wrong way. What we need to remember is that since education is a SOCIAL environment, involving both thought and feeling, we shouldn’t be restricting ourselves to discussing something that might come off as “insensitive” to someone else.
Link:
I have included a little bit of a different link this week. Its a video that perfectly describes how I described in my last paragraph how “sensitive” the world has become today.
Final Thoughts:
I think we all just need to grow some backbone.
That’s all.
Love,
Mary
Schooling in a Democratic Society 