This story is not only a great ending to the education unit but also to my semester. As an eductaion majaor these readings were really interesting and this one was one of the best. Everytime I read a story about education and teachers going the extra mile for their students it makes me want to be a graduating senior ready to go out their and make a difference.
I hope that when I become a teacher I will be willing to take risks like the teachers in this story. This story also reminded me of a movie I watched in my education class about a tecaher who taught in a bad neighborhood in Los Angeles. He took Lation and Asian students and showed them the world, He treated them as equals. That's all studnets need in this world. Students will be willing to learn and cooperate as long as you keep them interested and teach them things that will later help them in the real world.
I truly loved the combination of curriculum that the Graphic Arts Academy had. I would have loved to go to a school like that. In my orhcestra class in high school we always talked about more than just music. We would learn all the Italian words that were on our sheets of music, I would then compare them to Spanish words and before you knew it we were having a forgein language lesson. Between doing research for my education paper in this class and my education class in general I have come to realize that learning is all about incoprarting everything. You can't just learn chemistry and not expect to learn math. Learning is a circle everything is connected.
This also ties in the social aspect. It reminds me of my mom and her parent teacher confrences. She cared about my grades and making sure I was keeeping up with my homework. Then when all that was discussed she amde sure to ask my teachrs how I was doing socially. This is a skill that willbe with you for the rest of your life. The Graphic Arts Academy has been able to take a group of kids that in any other situation would have never talked to each other but now they're working together and can't get things done without each other. That is the true meaning of education.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
"Idiot Nation" by Michael Moore
You can obviously tell that Moore is all about satire. I absolutely love it! Even though he is making fun of our education system, he proves a lot of points that we as a nation need to start fixing. I have known that as a nation we have been lagging behind other countries for a while now but I didn't know it was this bad. Just knowing that there are 44 million people in America that can't read above the fourth-grade reading level makes me sad. Then I continue reading and see that we only read on average 99 hours a year compared to 1460 hours watching TV. This is just not okay. We have so many opportunities offered to us, we are just to happy being mediocre.
President Bush telling people it is ok to be mediocre is not okay. Like Moore said yeah he was able to be President because he had other things going in his favor but he shouldn't tell other they have the same opportunity. My history teacher in high school used to complain about the nation being ok with being mediocre all the time. It is a problem that we have to fix. We used to be the top nation but once we got there we got to comfortable and now expect things just to be given to us. Everyone is talking about holding schools accountable for test scores and not meeting state standards but sometime students and parent are to blame too. We as a nation have come to terms that we like being mediocre and until we realize that its not okay nothing is going to change.
Moore also talks about the lack of state funding for schools. My favorite line is "its a bigger priority to build another boomer than to educate our children." This explains exactly how I feel about education funding. So many presidents and politicians talk about how important education is and how that we have to support our children because they are the future, yet they do nothing about it. Its sad that schools have to go to companies and sign their lives away just so that they can get money to buy some textbooks. Our students are getting fat because the government isn't willing to spare some money so that schools can be all around better. The saddest thing is that many politicians probably read this piece of writing or something like it, thought about how they really should try to change, but then went to bed and did nothing about it. Who is going to be the first person to move us out of this rut we are in?
President Bush telling people it is ok to be mediocre is not okay. Like Moore said yeah he was able to be President because he had other things going in his favor but he shouldn't tell other they have the same opportunity. My history teacher in high school used to complain about the nation being ok with being mediocre all the time. It is a problem that we have to fix. We used to be the top nation but once we got there we got to comfortable and now expect things just to be given to us. Everyone is talking about holding schools accountable for test scores and not meeting state standards but sometime students and parent are to blame too. We as a nation have come to terms that we like being mediocre and until we realize that its not okay nothing is going to change.
Moore also talks about the lack of state funding for schools. My favorite line is "its a bigger priority to build another boomer than to educate our children." This explains exactly how I feel about education funding. So many presidents and politicians talk about how important education is and how that we have to support our children because they are the future, yet they do nothing about it. Its sad that schools have to go to companies and sign their lives away just so that they can get money to buy some textbooks. Our students are getting fat because the government isn't willing to spare some money so that schools can be all around better. The saddest thing is that many politicians probably read this piece of writing or something like it, thought about how they really should try to change, but then went to bed and did nothing about it. Who is going to be the first person to move us out of this rut we are in?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)