After reading the Labaree article, my overriding questions is, “Why can’t we have all three goals?”  For those of you who do not know, Labaree states that we do not really need another study on what works best in the classroom or a discussion on if we need to have a national curriculum until we decide, politically, what we want from our schools.  Labaree continues to state the three different goals that are usually being fought over: Democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility.

The democratic equality approach to schooling is the idea that students are in school to take on the full responsibilities of citizenship in a competent manner.

The social efficiency approach argues that schooling is so that students will be able to carry out their useful economic roles with competence.

The social mobility approach argues that education is a commodity and the purpose is to provide individual students with an edge when struggling over desirable social positions.

So, returning to my question, “Why can’t we have all three?” Although I do not have an answer, I do state that the there has to be some way to relate each of those that will satisfy each camp.

Work Sited:

Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34, 39-81.

In reading our Burbules article for this week, I would have to say that it was impressive in its analysis over these two concepts, although I have to admit that my formal education in this area has been lacking.

As many of you who have read my other articles may know, I think that a major purpose of schools is to produce good, critically thinking citizens who will find it necessary to take it upon themselves to ameliorate or eliminate society’s ills.  Thus, when Burbules, on page 49, discussed how, or even if, critical thinking can be generalized across subject matters, I was intrigued.  The example that Burbules gives to illustrate that point is a scientific critical thinker versus a historian critical thinker.  When they evaluates “good evidence,” are they thinking about problems in similar ways, or are the differences in interpretation and application dominant?

I would be hard-pressed to state that given a problem, they would approach it in the same manner, aside from the most general of ways.  In my own experiences with history and science, I know that one of the first things a historian does is to examine not what is written, but rather who has written it and why.  I would trust that a scientist would perform a similar check before reading an experiment.  How they do this analysis, I would assume, would be different however.  Both would examine the credibility of the author and then examine the evidence that the author has brought to the community.  As opposed to a historian, I doubt that a scientist has much to worry about bias.

Thus, in my opinion, there are distinct differences of what each type of issues that the critical thinker must determine.  However, the similarities are still there (although I admit that I glossed over that) and can be taught.  In order to create critical thinkers, we, as teachers, must instruct students on how to think for themselves, and to distrust those who seem to give information freely, because there is “No Free Lunch” and those who do so usually have a bias or a hidden agenda.  By doing this, we can hope that our students, when they become adults, will think before they act, and thus will be more resistant to the lure of demagogues who will try to lead America down the path of destruction.

Work Sited:

Burbules, N. C., & Berk, R. (1999). Critical thinking and critical pedagogy: Relations, differences and limits. In T. S. Popkewitz, T. S., & L. Fendler (Eds.) Critical theories in education: Changing terrains of knowledge and politics (pp. 45-65). New York: Routledge.

I like how Ornstein leaves the philosophical question implied in her work open-ended.  The entire time I was reading this work, I was asking myself, ‘How does this philosophy or theory apply to me?’ and ‘Do I fall into this category?’  By the end of the two sections, philosophy and theory, I was growing slightly uncomfortable, because I didn’t identify with any of the theories or philosophies completely.  Thus I suppose I will answer Ornstein’s four ‘basic questions’ and create my own.

First off, Ornstein asks, “What is truth and how do we know and teach it?”  From my own education as a History major, I have decided that there IS a truth, a correct answer to every question, for example, what is 2+2 or why did someone do this? Whether or not we as a human civilization knows the answer, or can know the answer, is another question, for example, we can figure out what 2+2 is through formulaic processes, however we cannot know, for certain and in its entirety, e.g. why someone did an action, or what are the complete repercussions of that action.   For the latter, we can make educated guesses and support it from evidence from readings, experiences, or other, related, publications.  In order to teach students, we have to show the dichotomy of these forms of knowledge, then teach the students how to research the topic and then come to a conclusion of their own making, supported by evidence that outweighs evidence presented by any other side.

Ornstein’s second question is “What is right and wrong, and how can we teach ethical moral values?”  This, in my opinion, is a slightly unfair question.  By the time that students reach even a Middle School, they should already know the answer to what is right and what is wrong, as I see it that their parents should have taught them that.  However, if it comes down to me to help formulate a student’s moral character, I suppose that the most respectful way of doing so is to respect the law, and the rule of law.  Despite the flaws and (arguably) inherent ways of oppressing groups of people, overall I think the system that is currently in place in America does a decent job of being fair to people.  If someone does something wrong, they should be punished accordingly.  More importantly, the system can change in the face of well founded arguments (again, this can be argued).

Ornstein’s third question is, “How can schools and their curriculum exemplify what is true and valuable?”  This I see as somewhat of a silly question.  Since the school and the curriculum is created from the collection of both teachers and a general framework given by the community, state, and nation, this seems to be a self answering question.  Since schools and curriculum are created by people with their own views on that is true and valuable, implied in what is required to be taught are lessons on what is true and valuable.  For example a community that believes that history is written in stone and is unchangeable will reflect that in the school and curriculum, as the history classes will mainly be discussion-less, stereotypical classes with a teacher lecturing for hours on end.

The final question is, “How do[es] teaching and learning reflect one’s beliefs about truth and value?”  I believe that each person, regardless of the fact that the person might be a teacher or student, well translate the information into something that coincides with their learning structure.   For example, a student, who believes, as I do, that history changes with the times and effectively is alive, has a History professor that relates all the information in a drab, monotone voice, that consists of no-nonsense, facts.  That student will raise questions based on the historiography and other disputes in the evidence that might turn the emotionless classroom into something more lively and fruitful.  However, if the roles are reversed, the student might resent the teacher for not teaching the ‘facts’ and distrust the teacher for complicating everything.

Overall, I am not completely sure if I do or do not fall into one of the categories defined by Ornstein.  The fact that I did not completely relate to what the text’s descriptions, could relate to a lack of thorough reading or a lack of understanding.

Work sited:

Ornstein, A. C., & Levine, D. U. (2000). Philosophical roots of education. In Foundations of education (7th ed., pp. 388-420). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

In our reading today of McNeil (166-170), he comments that defensive teachers in fields such as social studies rely on lists to convey information instead of attempting to interrelate the information.  He then identifies the example of the labor-union movement in America.  He claims that most teachers would identify major ideas, tools, and people and then have the students define each of the items on the list.  The teacher would then move on.  A more effective teacher, however, described the conditions that prompted workers to unionize, and then continued with the tools that they used and the people led or opposed the movement.

I would contend that a combination of the two would be the most effective way of organizing the class.  I would suggest that the reading would be assigned the night before, along with a list of items to be defined.  Then, with the start of class, I would then teach the lesson similar to the latter teacher.  I propose that this idea would be more useful simply using the second teacher’s because of the assumption that students, coming into the class, have little or no knowledge of the history of the United States.  By giving them a list, the students will have a basic knowledge of what I will be lecturing about, as well as what they are going to be responsible for on tests.  This would then give students the ability to have questions to ask me when we get to areas that they did not understand, and might inspire a more in depth discussion of the topic.

Book Sited:
McNeil, L. M. (1986). Defensive teaching and classroom control. In Contradictions of control Boston: Routledge.

As I was reading our assigned selection for this week, I was amazed by the amount of time we, as teachers, had, but also by the lack of time we have.  On page 147, a chart describes how much time teachers have to begin with, but after clerical endeavors and behavior corrections, teachers have a very small timeframe to get the main ideas of the curriculum across to the students.

The book also focused on how homework fits into class time.  It offered two differing accounts, where the students announce the answers to the questions individually, and one where the students announce the answers chorally.

I was reminded of my Algebra teacher’s method.  At the beginning of class Mr. Jones (pseudonym) would have us get out our homework, while he would take attendance.  Then he would ask who did not do the homework, and take a note of who raised their hands.  To correct the answers he called on students individually, and we would ask questions on individual questions if we had them.  If a student gave Mr. Jones reason to doubt the fact that s/he did the work, he would ask him/her to show it to him.  If they lied at the beginning of class, s/he would get the late, as well as disciplinary action. After that, he would launch into the next section’s lecture.  As another measure to make sure the students were doing their homework, Mr. Jones had ‘Homework checks’ which were quizzes in which he gave us the page number and problem number and asked us to copy and solve the question, without looking at our books.

If memory serves, this method worked quite well for Mr. Jones.  It was a routine that the students would be able to adopt fairly easily, and would occur every day.  Then we would have a clearly defined boundary, as we swapped the homework for our notes, as he launched into the days lecture.

This structure could also be adapted to a Social Studies classroom, as we go over the main figures during an era or event.  Then, from that introductory exercise, I could possibly go into what the era or event means in contemporary life or what lessons we could glean from it.

Readings:

Weinstein, C. S. (2003). Making the most of classroom time. In Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from research and practice (2nd ed., pp. 142-170). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

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.

As I was reading the Brophy selection for this week, I was struck by the quotation at the beginning.  Overall I agree with every aspect of the quote, but I wonder about what exactly it implies for the future.

Initially, the quote divides the students into two groups, tortoises and hares, and states that it would be unfair and unwise to force them to compete against each other.  Although I would argue that there are three groups (upper, middle, and lower), I would still agree that it would be unwise to force them to compete against each other.  The quote ends with the goal of education is to get students to perform at maximum.  I would also agree with this part of the statement.  But the main question is how this can be done.

I would concur that a single teacher could create a classroom that would be able to accommodate the needs of the tortoise as well as challenge the hare, but I would also believe that it would be easier, and more efficient, to put the hares together and challenge them, and then group the tortoises together and challenge them.

If this is truly the most efficient way of educating students, how can we separate the tortoises from the hares?  Even though I am not an expert, or even well trained, in this subject matter, I can still attempt to reason out how to do this.  The first step is to announce the separation of the three groups, and to educate the students on the differences in each, and what kind of future each track (because this is really what we are talking about) will hold for them.  The second step would be to have the student indicate which track they would want to be in, and have teachers and parents concur with the decision.  The third would to have the separate the groups and begin educating them.  Since transfers from a lower to a higher track may be difficult to arrange due to the difference in material covered, more, sub tracks would have to be implemented.  I would also argue that transfers from higher to lower tracks would be made difficult to arrange, so that students cannot decide that the high track is too much work and therefore they want to be in the low track.  I would think that it should be by the recommendation of several teachers.

To me, this does not seem to be an unreasonable way to approach tracking.

Readings:

Brophy, J. (2004). Rebuilding discouraged students’ confidence and willingness to learn. In Motivating students to learn (2nd ed., pp. 119-150). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

As I was reading this week’s selection from Brophy’s book about supporting students’ confidence, I became slightly confused about the differences between “Internal focus of control,” and “Concept of self as origin rather than pawn” (58).

According to the definition of the former, “Effort and persistence are greater when people believe that the potential to control outcomes lies within themselves rather than in external factors they cannot control.”

According to the definition of the latter, “Effort and persistence are greater when people believe that they can bring about desired outcomes through their own actions rather than feeling they are pawns whose fate is determined by factors beyond their control.”

Now, in my opinion, either of these definitions work great, but if you use both of them as independent entities to explain different ideas. To me, both of the ideas present the notion that if people believe they can control things, they are more apt to be motivated.

So, I suggest defining “Internal focus of control” by stating that people are more willing to put forth effort and be persistent if they believed that the more effort they put into a task, the less likelihood of an outside force affecting the outcome. This is similar to the first concept of “Effort-Outcome covariation,” but that concept draws a direct link between Effort and Outcome, while this new concept promotes the idea that the individual can overcome foreign forces that would distract or foil the learning process.

I would also suggest redefining “Concept of self as origin rather than pawn” by stating that people are more willing to put forth more effort and be persistent if they think that they are pursuing something that they chose to do. I believe that this new definition represents the phrase better than the original definition. The new definition implies that if people think that this is something that is worthwhile, or even if the individual thinks he chose to learn the topic, s/he will be more willing to put forth a greater effort.

Why redefine the definitions put in the book, you may ask. Well, personally, I think that if I don’t understand something, and but I can extrapolate an understanding from the word usage and general feel from the article, I should do so. Even if I am wrong, and corrected at another time, making the information mine, by rewriting the definitions or main ideas, allows me to remember information well into the future.

Readings:
Brophy, J. (2004). Supporting students’ confidence as learners. In Motivating students to learn (2nd ed., pp. 55-86). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

As I was reading the article “A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century,” I stopped at one of the charts and took a closer look.  It was Table 7: Average prose, document and quantitative literacy scores of adults, by educational attainment: 1992 and 2003.  I was very much surprised to find that in all but three categories, the average score went down.  All but two of the prose scores went down by a ‘significant’ difference.  Less than half of the document scores were down by ‘significant’, and all of the quantitative scores were within the ‘significant difference’ category.

Does this mean that we, as Americans, are becoming less educated?  Does this mean that our schools are failing?  Although I cannot claim to know the answer, I can offer my reasoning.  First off, I must point out that this is a work based on two studies, and only two studies.  It is entirely possible that it is just a statistical anomaly rather than ‘hard evidence’.  I would suggest that further studies would be necessary in order to reach a serious conclusion over the significant loss of quality in the school systems.  However, I don’t think that Americans are becoming more stupid, since genetics will not change that much over the course of 11 years.  The quality of our educational system can, however.  The fact that the literacy scores have gone down and yet the level of educational attainment (Table 6) has generally gone up, does suggest that the quality of the educational system has decreased.  On the other hand, it could also suggest a shift away from the necessity of literacy, as defined in the study, in order to succeed.  For example, the vast repository of information that the internet is could provide students with the ability to use less in the way of this literacy.  I know that my own abilities to research topics in the classical manner have been severely retarded by the availability of internet search engines such as proquest and google scholar, which would decrease my overall literacy scores, but doesn’t mean that I am less educated than my predecessor who would spend hours in the library searching for the proper book through the card index.  

Overall, I don’t think that people are becoming less intelligent, they are not as classically trained as the tests would hope that they would be.  In my opinion, the overall goal of education is not to teach facts to the masses, but rather to give them the skills to find the information they need, and how to understand and interpret the information.

Readings:

A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century. http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF

As I was reading today, I noted that a gentleman by the name of E.D. Hirsch, Jr. was quoted from his book Cultural Literacy: What every American should know (1987). In this book he argues that there is a list of things that students must know before they can become useful and functioning members of society. I instantly remembered seeing his, shortened, list of items in the Tozer article read last week. I can’t help but returning to this, and think about how people cannot boil down culture down to a simple list. I mean this in two ways, the lack of context, the continual change of a single culture and the viewpoint of different cultures.

As I was looking over the list, I knew what most of the items were. However, if I didn’t, for example, suppose I didn’t know what the “Alien and Sedition Acts” signified. I would naturally look it up in the encyclopedia, or online. If I were to do that I would learn that they were designed to prevent a demagogue from raising a revolution while America is otherwise busy fighting a war. I wouldn’t, from that definition, know how to apply that to current events and ideas. This is what I mean by a lack of context. In order to understand the significance of the Alien and Sedition Acts, I would have to also learn about the XYZ affair, War of 1812, and the American Constitution. If we, as teachers, focused on just the list, all we would get as a society would be automatons with information but no way of applying that information in a useful manner.

As we all know, culture changes over time. Worldwide Capitalism, MTV, and the Internet all affect the change of culture and the diffusion of ideas quicker than ever before. Previously closed societies like France, Russia, and China now drink American soft drinks like Coca-Cola, listen to American music, and news is transmitted instantaneously. All of these has changed the face of cultures worldwide. It is due to this ability of cultures to change rapidly I believe that the attempts to boil down the “essentials” of a culture down to a list would only be effective (if it is effective at all) until the next cultural revolution comes, or some new technology affects how we as Americans work, play, or even think.

Finally, the viewpoint of different cultures affects the idea that there can be a list, because each culture would have its own list. A person from China would have an incredibly different list than a person from America, for obvious reasons. With the rise of the internet, and news channels such as CNN and FOX, the world news stage has shrunk, and thus the different “lists” from each culture must either be shrunk or combined in order for a person from America to understand news from China, as well as why it is happening.

In short, I believe that this idea of a list in order to understand the news and other cultural phenomena is at best flawed, and at worst an obsolete way of understanding the world around us.

Readings:

Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). From ‘reading’ to the ‘new literacy studies’ In New literacies (pp. 3-49). New York: Open University Press.