Sunday, December 1, 2013

Talking point #10 Shor

"Empowering Education: Education is Politics" 
                                   Ira Shor
 
In Shor’s article “Education is Politics in shorter terms she is arguing that in today’s world, education is not what is should be.


In school systems today schooling is not how it looks like in the old fashion movies. Teachers are given curriculums to teach, and these topics have to be taught at a certain time during the school year, for a certain amount of time. The teachers try to teach this as fast as they can and then they give a test. If the children pass it great, if they don’t then it is still on to the next thing because the teachers “need” to get to the other topics. Then teachers have to prepare for state wide tests also which honestly to me mean nothing because personally on the SATs, if there is pre-calc on there and I am nowhere near that in my math studies, how is it even fair? It’s not, so why?? Why do we need this? Why can’t schools simply go off of students grades in high school alone? Why is it always about testing? Also I am going to school to be a phys. Ed teacher. Why do I need the Praxis? When am I going to need any of that to teach children to be active and help them with those skills?

 Students today are honestly just writing down notes to write them down pretending that they can go back and look at these notes and maybe learn something when in reality they are clueless half the time. I once had a teacher who told me that I asked too many questions in math at my old college and we had to move on to something else. Shor states “ People are naturally curious”, meaning that they want to know answers and when they don’t know the answers because the professors don’t have time, then that is a huge issue and something needs to be changed.  Teachers need to encourage children to want to ask questions, not push them away before they all actually go away and not want to go to school and get a great learning experience like Shor mentions.

To me this article relates to Kliewer and “Citizenship in School” because although this article was not about people with down syndrome, everyone has their different ways of learning and teachers should all treat their students equal and no matter what teachers need to help students out so that they enjoy being there.  We need to make more positive opportunities for children in schools.
   
TALKING POINTS: Is it only me or does anyone else believe that testing should not be the answer? Personally I am a horrible test taker and I have a big fear that in the future it will end up hurting my chances of becoming a teacher if I do not do well on the Praxis. Shouldn't there be some other way of going about getting in to school, or being a teacher without having to take these tests?

1 comment:

  1. Hi Jaclyn,
    I was so shocked to read that you "once had a teacher who told me that I asked too many questions in math." That just seems crazy! We are supposed to ask questions in order to further our learning and for your teacher to shut you down just seems insane! I thought this story fit perfectly with the Shor article that we read this week and demonstrated why it is important to allow students to ask questions.

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