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.