Shor, Empowering Education

Chris's response: This week’s article was on a well known topic in our class: Empowering education. All this semester we have been taught how we deprive kids of that education, but this article tells us the now what of empowering education. As I was reading I made connections to a few authors that we have read and talked about in class.

My first connection was to Finn and Oakes. Right on the first page of the reading I saw the connection brewing. Finn and Oakes talked about tracking. They said how tracking is something that creates a low performing working class standard education. Once you get rid of tracking all together you can lead kids towards an empowering education. Shor talks about how there is more to learning then the “three R’s” of education. He says, “You must arose children’s curiosity and make them think about school.” This is what an empowering education is about. We must use critical thinking to entice our children to want to learn and get the education they deserve. So they both speak about how we can all be successful through an empowering education.

My second connection was to Christensen. As I read through the article I reached a point where media literacy was just screaming out at me. Christensen in her article talks about how the media does not take responsibility on how it perceives people. She also talks about the large effect the media has on people. She talks about the secret education and how we learn these things from the media without any knowledge that it is happening. Shor talks about this journalism class and how the children were asked to ask questions about the media. The question that stuck out the most was, “Why isn’t the media more accountable for its actions.” This relates right back to Christensen and how the media uses the secret education to teach us things we do not need to know. If the media is going to give us this education, then why not give us a knowledgeable empowering education. The media needs to learn that it is the middle man. It controls how we see society.

These connections just confirm how good an empowering education can be. If we give our children the chance to grow and learn without putting a tag on them or without having the media give them hidden messages then we could have a very bright future. Here are someways these people thought up to create a more empowering classroom to keep students more engaged.

In class I would like to discuss how our class really encompasses empowering education.

I agree with Chris when he talks about how Christensen explains in her article that the media teaches us about the secret education without us even knowing. Also, I really liked his quote he took from Shor when he says the media needss to be more accountable for their actions. This also relates back to Christensen and how the media shows us the secret education. Clearly the media does this on purpose and uses their power to keep the secret education alive and the codes of power present in today's society. Shor also talks about the importance of empowering education. Chris brought up a great point by saying he thinks there is a lot more to learning than just the "three R's" of education. Kids in today's school need to be able to learn in a variety of ways because everyone learns differently. If a classroom is taught just one way, how is everyone going to be on the same page and be able to correctly understand the material. If the classroom is set up where multiple learning styles are used throughout, then certain people will excel at certain styles. Everyone's strong points will be used and put forward in the class.
I found a link to a website that shows a few different teaching styles and it explains exactly what each one is and how what the teacher would focus on.
In class I believe we should discuss more about empowering education and how our past school did or did not use this type of education. Also we can discuss how RIC does or does not use it and how our class uses it and why it works so well.

Finn and Oaks, Argument

After reading the articles on Finn and Oaks I have seen that both authors argue that "tracking" in today's schools is not an efficient way to place students into classes. Having said this, before I read these articles I had no idea what tracking was. After reading these articles, however, it makes since and is definitely not the right way to place children in classes around the country. Pretty much tracking is all about where and what you come from. The more privileged and knowledgeable children are going to be put into the higher end classes and be taught at a high level. The not so privileged and less gifted children in education are almost going to be forgotten. They are going to be put into classrooms that do not teach the way the higher classes do. They are not going to have the same opportunities as the other kids are. For example, Oaks states about higher end classes, "Classroom tasks are often better organized, and students are given a greater variety of things to do. These differences in learning opportunities point to fundamental and ironic school inequities. Students who need more time to learn appear to get less; those who have the most difficulty learning seem to have fewer of the best teachers."  By giving these kids all the resources that they need and leaving the less fortunate kids to fend for themselves and in a way leave them out to dry, it creates an attitude that will make the less fortunate kids have negative thoughts and they will be more likely to give up and drop out.

I completely agree with both authors in the sense that we need to change the way tracking is used is our schools. If we could integrate the classes and give the less fortunate kids a way to feel equal and like they belong, I believe we would see a difference in how they perform in schools and how much more serious they would take it.

This is a video from the movie Freedom Writers. It shows a different style of teaching that gets the students involved and changes up the usual teaching style of lower end classes. I believe if there was more mixture of teaching methods in classrooms, it would make students want to learn and pay attention more.

In class I think we should talk about how our schools can get away from tracking and placing all of our time and effort to make sure higher end students have everything they need.

Gender and Education

In today's society everyone looks at people's opinions and views on every kind of topic. So when it comes to gender and education, there is no secret that there is some type of bias with both girls and boys. One of the first things that I've noticed throughout my education experience is the huge overload of woman teachers over men teachers in elementary schools. Throughout my years of elementary school, I only had one male teacher and he was my physical education teacher. The only other males in my school was one 5th grade male teacher and my principal. It was easy to see the shift that occurred in middle school and high school. I started getting more male teachers as the grade levels increased. So why is there a sudden change in the amount of male teachers? Why does it seem as though you only see male teachers in higher grades? I went online to find out about this issue and I quickly found a teachers blog about it. The post talks directly about why there are not many male teachers in elementary schools today. I really liked what the blogger had to say about the issue. He brought up a lot of great information and facts.

When I searched "gender and education" on the internet, I found a couple good sites that had some useful information on them. One in particular was a site that mainly talked about gender differences in schools today. The site claims that girl and boys learn the same subjects correctly by using different teaching methods. For instance, a lot of schools talk about physics and relate the material to stuff that boys like and are interested in. This makes it more difficult for girls to enjoy to learn about the subject because it is harder to relate to. The website also talks about the difference between single-sex schools and co-ed sex schools. There were a bunch of good articles throughout this website.

In class I'd like to discuss more about the issue of male teachers in today's elementary schools and also the difference between single-sex and co-ed sex schools.