Response to Brophy (socializing)
Greetings,
While reading Brophy’s chapter on “Socializing uninterested or alienated students,” I came across an interesting quote on page 314. “Schooling does not aim to provide satisfaction of what is desired by students but instead to cultivate in them what the cultures construes as desirable.” I thought this was particularly interesting as I have thought this about school, but never was able to articulate it properly.
I would agree with the idea that, in its most base form, schooling does not give students what they would want at that time in their lives. In general, students do not want to be forced to wake up early, be on time to preassigned places, and accomplish a set list of objectives. Face it, most adults don’t want to do this. In my opinion, this is one of the purposes of a modern school: to indoctrinate students with what will be expected of them in the real world,
This, by no means, is the only, or even the main, reason for the existence of schools. I believe that one of the major reasons for schools is to educate students in how to be good citizens. By this, I don’t mean mindless drones that accept whatever the government proclaims, but rather citizens who will offer critiques of the government, propose alternative ideas to consider, and will vote for the best ideas. In doing this, the citizens will be able to take control of the government en masse, and, hopefully, improve the country’s ills.
Readings:
Brophy, J. (2004). Socializing uninterested or alienated students. In Motivating students to learn (2nd ed., pp. 307-334). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
