Homework #51, School Paper

At first I had been planning on writing a paper on how poetry can be incorperated in schooling, and I had been reading the book Teaching With Fire, yet as I have been writing my exhibition, the topic of this paper has changed as well. Though it isn't finished yet, the paper that I was going to write for this class was also going to be the same as my exhibition. So here's what I've got so far:

Introduction-
In the past, school used to be a place where students would have to memorize endless facts that had no relevance to their daily lives. Assignments consisted of reading textbook pages, memorizing the facts, and then being tested on them, either aloud or on paper. Though they may have good memorization skills, this type of education leaves students frustrated, bored, and disinterested. In order for students to be able to learn, they must be engaged in the material and the process of learning it. The relationship between the teacher and their students is of key importance to the learning process. School should not be a one-sided education, with the teacher talking and the kids being treated as empty boxes to be filled, it should be a process of the students learning from the teacher and the teacher learning from their students. And, in order to learn, teachers must supply their students with the tools that can help them to process the information they’re being taught, and how this information can apply to what they are learning. Instead of teachers trying to shape their students, they must encourage them to learn by inspiring them, providing them with the tools that they need to learn, and to have a relationship with their students that isn’t one-sided. Or Teachers must be inspirational to their students by developing a caring relationship, and to provide them with the tools to help them learn. Or Teachers must develop caring and inspirational relationships with their students, and provide them with the skills to help them learn. Or (I think this one) In order for teachers to successfully engage their students they must develop a relationship which inspires them and to provide the students with the tools to help them learn.

Argument A: Kids must be inspired to learn
In order for students to want to learn, the material that is being taught must be engaging, because: “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” (Mann, Horace. Brainy Quotes) If a teacher tries to teach without catching the students’ interest, it is like trying to shape a metal object without heating up the hammer first. Some teachers have that they can lecture their students and shape them into how they want their students to be, yet this is very ineffective. If pupils cannot be engaged in the material that they are being taught, then they get the feeling of boredom and discouragement. There is this problem in some classes where both the teacher and the students are bored, therefore the teacher does not want to teach, and the students do not want to learn. According to John Taylor Gatto, when students are bored they blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and when the teachers are bored as well, they blame their students. He feels that when the bells ring, it means to stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. (Against Schools) Instead of kids looking forward to when the bell rings, they should be engaged in material that they wish to continue even after the bell has sounded. If material has to relevance to their daily lives, then kids will not want to learn it. When teachers help their students to be able to apply the material to their own lives, the process of learning becomes more hopeful.

If students feel like they can contribute something meaningful to their learning process, it can provide them with motivation to learn: “Write what’s on your mind, push yourself to see the letters that represent the words you’re thinking.” (Push, pages 61-62) In Push, by Sapphire, the main character Precious gets kicked out of school for being pregnant, and ends up in a school that is the last resort for students who have gotten kicked out of the regular schools. The teacher, Miss Rain, encourages her students to keep a journal, and to write down their thoughts and feelings. While they are able to write in a place that they feel comfortable to express their ideas, this also helps them to learn how to read and write. At first, her pupils feel like they have nothing to write about, and are not sure how to write for the time that they were assigned to, yet she tells them to write what is on their minds and what they are thinking. Writing in a journal gave the students a chance to express their own ideas, and to be able to interact with their teacher, Miss Rain, because she would respond to what they had written. This student-teacher relationship is an important part of the learning process, and is the difference between teachers just lecturing their students and students being able to influence their teachers.


Argument B: Learning cannot be a one-sided process

In order for students to learn, there must be an environment in which the students can incorporate their insights alongside their teacher’s insights. There are two different types of possible relationships between teachers and their students in school: "teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers." (Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Page 80) The 'teacher-of-the-students' with the 'students-of-the-teacher' is a relationship where the teacher is doing the teaching, and the students are the ones dutifully memorizing what the teacher is saying, and the students are supposed to be learning. This is called the “banking” method of teaching, “in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing their deposits.” (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, page 72.) The banking method of teaching, where teachers insert knowledge and have their kids memorize it, only allows students to store information without actually being able to process it for themselves. This is very ineffective compared to the idea that teachers and students should work together to process what they know and how this can be applied to themselves and the world around them. Pedagogy of The Oppressed discusses the oppressed -the people being weighed down-, and the oppressor, the figure that is doing the weighing down. The relationship where the teachers and students are learning from each other is much healthier than when the teacher is doing the lecturing and the students are the ones taking notes, because the first relationship has the teachers accepting that the students have actual experiences and insights worth sharing, while the teacher that teaches to be heard treats the students as objects and prevents them from learning. It seems that what As the oppressor, the teacher that is only interested in planting facts in the students', and that the students that are memorizing what the teachers are saying are the oppressed.

There are times where teachers must consider their students, and teach them something useful in life that other teachers may not teach: “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.. Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.. don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.” (Dead Poets Society) In the Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams plays a teacher named John Keating, who teaches his students how to see the world in a different way. The school is a white, all boys private school, where most of the teachers are old and stubborn to change their way of teaching. The other teachers don’t consider their students as living things, they consider them as useful parts of a robot machine that they must shape. To these traditional teachers, “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider know nothing.” (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, page 72) Usually, in school, it is against the rules for kids to stand on their desks. Yet John Keating encouraged his kids to go outside of the norm, and to find another perspective for themselves. Instead of the kids just processing information that a teacher has given them, the students are allowed to think for themselves and to develop their own ideas. The pupils not only are given the process their own thoughts, it also gives them the feeling that they are as worthy of considering what they think as the authors are. This also keeps them thinking, even after the students feel like they have found a solution. In order for students to thrive, they must feel like the teacher is both making an effort to understand where they come from, and that they’re being seen. In Dead Poets Society John Keating admires his students, and sees the potential in them. He encourages them to express their thoughts, through poetry, and he encourages them to be what they want to be. This is similar to Miss Rain in Push, telling Precious that she can write every day and that she has something to write about. Instead of teachers thinking of their students as inexperienced and uneducated, they must find the potential within their students and find ways to help them incorporate this into their learning experience. In order to be able to learn to think for themselves, teachers must provide their students with the skills that can help them to learn.

(I'm not going to use the quote from the blog, but this is the outline part still)
Argument C: Teachers must provide us with the tools to think, and how to apply them
“In some ways this same collision played out in the 80s and 90s in the US - between E.D. Hirsch & Ted Sizer.

Sizer was a founder and a leading thinker of the Coalition of Essential Schools - which SOF has always been a part of - and focused especially on the student's development of Habits of Mind. Hirsch was widely known for insisting on the crucial role of a thoughtful and coherent core content - so that students would learn the knowledge that would provide building blocks for their understanding.”

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2005/12/21/habits-of-mind/



OPV 1. Schools conform students
Traditionally education has been about teaching facts
-Gatto: schools conform kids and confuse them
-Programming/memorizing
it doesn’t teach them to think for themselves


Dead Poets Society: “Now I didn't bring them up here to ridicule them. I brought them up here to illustrate the point of conformity. The difficulty of maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others.”

John Taylor Gatto-
He believes that schools confuse children, programming them to memorize things that will eventually be forgotten because they have no application to the kids' real lives. That school is like a rigid "cell-block-style" place, that creates boredom and encourages childishness. He feels like school makes students accept their class position: "It teaches them to accept their class affiliation." For example, a poor kid that comes from a bad home may feel like they aren't worth anything and that they can't succeed in life. Or like the girls in books and movies that accept that they must be prom queens and soccer moms. To Gatto, schools make students indifferent to the outside world and their potential. That kids are constantly looking for approval and rewards in school, which can affect them in their lives outside of school. In Andy's words, John Taylor Gatto feels like the best thing to do is to "Get out of school [because] you're turning into a robot".

Some people believe that schools are the right place to send children to, because it keeps them out of the streets and under the watchful eyes of the teacher. It is like babysitting teenagers, so the parents don't have to worry whether or not their kids are okay, because they know where their kids are. Yet Gatto believes that school conforms students into all being the same indifferent, childish, dependent people. This is another way to think of the school system, compared to all those teacher as savior movies.

Another thing that he said is how the students are bored, and blame what they're learning as the source of their boredom, and that the teachers are bored as well, and blame their students. That bells mean stop what you're doing and whatever you are doing doesn't matter enough to be completed. He feels like there are a lot of successful people that thrived outside of the school system, either by being home-schooled or taught outside of school. (Such as 'George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln') This is a different way to think about schools, compared to the philosophers and films that show school as the best place for people to start.

-The Board Of Education
-Board of Ed: Promotion Policy
-Dead Poets Society: Other teachers
“No. Tradition”
-Learning Spanish in school



Works Cited:
-Gatto, John. Against School. 09/2003.
http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
-Sapphire. Push. Vintage Contemporaries/ Vintage Books. New York City. 1996.
-Dead Poets Society: http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~phoover/dps.htm