If you dig deep enough, there are bits and pieces of these articles that are interesting, yet as a whole it's hard to get into. There are these two philosophers, E.D, Hirsch, and Theodore R. Sizer, and they both have different opinions on the direction students should be taught. Sizer thought that schools should focus on teaching students how to think using the Habit's of Mind (like our school), and Hirsch thought that we should learn the things that will help us learn other things.
Coming from our school, and having been there since sixth grade, I've had to work with the H.O.M's a lot. Yet the main time teachers make us use the Habit's of Mind are when we're doing our exhibitions. When we don't include the Habit's of Mind in our exhibitions, we get points taken off. I'm not at all complaining, but we aren't told a lot to use the Habit's of Mind in our daily school routines. Yes, we need evidence in science when we're doing experiments. There are mostly no alternatives to solving math problems, since math is based around formulas. We may use the habits of mind subconsciously, but we are not constantly told by our teachers to use them.
In a way, it doesn't seem like Hirsh and Sizer's ideas contradict each other at all. They both thought that students should learn in a certain way. For Hirsh it says "Hirsch, whose campaign for cultural literacy has resulted in several hundred whole schools designed around his specific nuggets of information all children should be expected to learn". And for Sizer, he expects us to learn based around the Habit's of Mind.
It's hard to balance Sizer and Hirsch on a perfect scale, because Hirsch mainly focused on elementary schools, and Sizer focused mainly on high schools. At the moment I can't remember who was saying this, but someone said how there was a teacher that used to be a teacher at college, yet they felt like instead of working with the unprepared students in college, they should be working in high school and to prepare the kids for college. That kind of sounds like Hirsch and Sizer both, but Hirsch because he focused on elementary school.
Something that I really agree with Sizer on is when he said "we have to stop equating serious education with test scores." There are so many ridiculous tests like the S.A.T's and the regents, which shows if students are good test takers or not. I feel like Hirsch would agree with him here, because Hirsch wrote in his book The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them "Second, Romanticism concluded that a child is neither a scaled-down, ignorant version of the adult nor a formless piece of clay in need of molding, rather, the child is a special being in its own right with unique, trustworthy impulses that should be allowed to develop and run their course." There are teachers out there that want to play the hero, and shape students (us young people) into how the teacher wants us to be. Yet Hirsch wrote that we aren't clay that needs to be molded. We have our own individual shapes, and our own unique selves.
Something that I found kind of funny is how Sizer had written “Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.” The 'then get out of there way' part makes it seem like we're all going to sprint towards some piece of knowledge and tear it apart, or eagerly tear into it. I do agree with him though, sort of. We need to be inspired, then it's up to us what we do with our knowledge.
I think that both of the theories could definitely be 'adapted to work together'. They're both concerned with the same thing::the education of students. Sizer wants us to use the Habits of Mind, and Hirsch wants us to be able to learn the building blocks so that we can acquire other knowledge. Yet in a way the H.O.M's are a building block to a way of thinking, so those theories are kind of meshed together already.
Yet in the end, it is up to every individual how they chose to absorb information that is given to us, and every individual has their own perspective and way of pursuing what they want to pursue.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Homework #44.
From the Obama video:
-They have a high school student to do the whole introduction speech on how important school is.
-If I wasn't pursuing my education I wouldn't be here. We'll continue to have support.
-Teachers have to get us inspired, parents have to get us away from the tv, and OUR responsibility is to go to school and to put in the hard work that we're expected to do.
-"You have the responsibility for yourself to discover what that is." "You might not know that until you write that english paper... you might not know it until you do that for the science class."
-"I guarantee you'll need that education in order to do that. You cannot drop out of school and drop into a good job. The future of America depends on YOU." <-- but not pressure.
-We need every single one of you, to do this, to help us. "You're quitting on your country", if you quit school.
-"There is no excuse for not trying. Here in America you write your own destiny, you make your own future."
-"You believe what I believe."
I zoned in and out of his speech, but the things above are some of the things that I noticed. He's saying that as a mass of students, he's expecting all of us to do our best. That there's no reason for us to not try, and that if we quit school then we're quitting on the whole country. Yet I don't really know how if one student drops out of school, then the whole world will be altered? I don't think so. He says that we can't be successful if we don't have an education, yet I feel like there must be some people out there that are very successful and have either no education or not as much as we're forced into having.
From the Liberal Arts Education link:
-"..for developing the kind of intellectual power and propensity for action that the world needs to tackle the daunting challenges we face."
- if we read good works of literature, including Shakespeare, then it "can help clarify our own ideas and values and better understand the perspectives of others." So reading helps us understand our thoughts and the views of others.
-Science helps us test what we think and to analyze data.
-Studying art helps us appreciate diversity and "human imagination."
-It's not really what we learn in specific classes, but what we get out of it. And though 'our culture' tells us to focus on what we want to be, yet a lot of CEOs are looking for employees that have multiple skills.
-"The leaders of the future" are most likely going to be flexible.
Both of these articles expect us as a whole to help the world. They expect us to go to school, and develop our skills. I understand that we're the generation that is going to run things, and that adults are expecting us to go to school. But they all speak as adults expecting the kids to try hard in school so that they know they will be in good hands in the future. Obama acknowledged that students may have problems, and he named some examples of students -including himself- that overcame those problems. And, he said that there is no excuse for not trying. I don't like that both of these people are expecting US as a WHOLE to be GREAT.
-They have a high school student to do the whole introduction speech on how important school is.
-If I wasn't pursuing my education I wouldn't be here. We'll continue to have support.
-Teachers have to get us inspired, parents have to get us away from the tv, and OUR responsibility is to go to school and to put in the hard work that we're expected to do.
-"You have the responsibility for yourself to discover what that is." "You might not know that until you write that english paper... you might not know it until you do that for the science class."
-"I guarantee you'll need that education in order to do that. You cannot drop out of school and drop into a good job. The future of America depends on YOU." <-- but not pressure.
-We need every single one of you, to do this, to help us. "You're quitting on your country", if you quit school.
-"There is no excuse for not trying. Here in America you write your own destiny, you make your own future."
-"You believe what I believe."
I zoned in and out of his speech, but the things above are some of the things that I noticed. He's saying that as a mass of students, he's expecting all of us to do our best. That there's no reason for us to not try, and that if we quit school then we're quitting on the whole country. Yet I don't really know how if one student drops out of school, then the whole world will be altered? I don't think so. He says that we can't be successful if we don't have an education, yet I feel like there must be some people out there that are very successful and have either no education or not as much as we're forced into having.
From the Liberal Arts Education link:
-"..for developing the kind of intellectual power and propensity for action that the world needs to tackle the daunting challenges we face."
- if we read good works of literature, including Shakespeare, then it "can help clarify our own ideas and values and better understand the perspectives of others." So reading helps us understand our thoughts and the views of others.
-Science helps us test what we think and to analyze data.
-Studying art helps us appreciate diversity and "human imagination."
-It's not really what we learn in specific classes, but what we get out of it. And though 'our culture' tells us to focus on what we want to be, yet a lot of CEOs are looking for employees that have multiple skills.
-"The leaders of the future" are most likely going to be flexible.
Both of these articles expect us as a whole to help the world. They expect us to go to school, and develop our skills. I understand that we're the generation that is going to run things, and that adults are expecting us to go to school. But they all speak as adults expecting the kids to try hard in school so that they know they will be in good hands in the future. Obama acknowledged that students may have problems, and he named some examples of students -including himself- that overcame those problems. And, he said that there is no excuse for not trying. I don't like that both of these people are expecting US as a WHOLE to be GREAT.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Homework #42, The Importance Of Our Topics
Part B:
At first, I was wondering if there was an actual guide-book to how to be a teacher, so that's my first paragraph in part a. Then I decided to change my topic again to see if it was possible to be taught through poetry. So my question is how can education be found through poetry/ how do schools teach students through poetry?
For five years that I can really remember, and probably even before then, I've been really interested in reading and writing poetry. I remember when I was younger I got obsessed with poetry and my mom bought be a huge stack of poetry books. I had stayed up really late each night reading them. I don't write as much poetry as I would like to in my daily life, but when I do I enjoy it.
I am a poet, and it is part of my life. When I was in sixth grade I submitted a poem to a poetry website, and to my surprise it was published in a book among other poets. Then a couple years ago, I got published in another poetry book by the same people.
There are times in school where the teachers decide to have a poetry unit. In eighth grade the teachers had us create books of poetry, through collages as well as through typing up poems. We had students from the high school come in and help us, as well as to perform poetry that they had written. There was also another grade after that where they had us doing a poetry unit.
I cannot answer how poetry will change the world, but I know that it is in my life, it is sometimes in school, and there are a lot of poets in the world.
At first, I was wondering if there was an actual guide-book to how to be a teacher, so that's my first paragraph in part a. Then I decided to change my topic again to see if it was possible to be taught through poetry. So my question is how can education be found through poetry/ how do schools teach students through poetry?
For five years that I can really remember, and probably even before then, I've been really interested in reading and writing poetry. I remember when I was younger I got obsessed with poetry and my mom bought be a huge stack of poetry books. I had stayed up really late each night reading them. I don't write as much poetry as I would like to in my daily life, but when I do I enjoy it.
I am a poet, and it is part of my life. When I was in sixth grade I submitted a poem to a poetry website, and to my surprise it was published in a book among other poets. Then a couple years ago, I got published in another poetry book by the same people.
There are times in school where the teachers decide to have a poetry unit. In eighth grade the teachers had us create books of poetry, through collages as well as through typing up poems. We had students from the high school come in and help us, as well as to perform poetry that they had written. There was also another grade after that where they had us doing a poetry unit.
I cannot answer how poetry will change the world, but I know that it is in my life, it is sometimes in school, and there are a lot of poets in the world.
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