Education is Politics

1. "If I were a primary grade teacher, I would devote my time to problems of socialization. The most important thing children learn is not the three R's. It's socialization" Bethelheim

Socializing is so important for children. It builds character, friendships and opinions. In the classroom that I work in, the teacher starts her year with a friendship poster and pictures. This seems to help with opening the lines of communications between her and her students.

2. "You must arouse children's curiosity and make them think about school."

A simple question was asked to me by one of my students. She asked 'does it matter if you get a good grade on your report card in gym?
Now, I teach a reading group and this was not part of my lesson for the day, but I felt it was important to discuss the question with my students. We opened the conversation up to how important gym is. Suggestions came up like good health and fitness as we continue to grow. How many of our parents work-out? All hands went up. I explained that gym/physical fitness will follow you even after you finish college. It's very very important. We had a wonderful conversation that was educational. The students spoke out and voiced their opinions and feelings about physical education.
I felt it was a wonderful lesson, even more important than the Main Idea of our reading in class. Children have many questions that need to be answered. We should try to take the time to answer them. It's important to show how to be verbal as well as socialize.

Education
1. Is to say that education is a contested terrain where people are socialized and the future of society is at stake. 2. On the other hand, it is socializing activity organized, funded and regulated by authorities who set curriculum managed in the classroom by teachers. 3. It is a social experience of students who come to class with dreams and agendas

Lessons - Teach students development to values, power and debates in society.
(FNED 346 - this is what we've been doing all semester!)

Politics in the classroom: Teacher empowering or dis empowering
I have worked with teachers who don't take the time to get to know their students. Telling them to "sit down" and never giving them a chance to talk. This relates to Power and Pedogogy "Delpit"-silence dialogue.

Relating personal growth to public life, develop strong skills academic knowledge, critical curiosity about society, power in equality and change.

Empowerment doesn't mean students can do whatever they want. Student need to develop skills. Therefore, teachers need to teach them the skills they need. If teachers tell students to "sit down" and never give the students a chance to have a voice, they will never understand what empowerment means except for not having any power.

This article mentions Mclaren "the process throughout which students learn to critical appropriate knowledge existing outside their immediate experience in order to broaden their understanding of themselves and the world.
"Hands on" experience helps.

3. "We learn by doing and by Thinking our experience." Piaget
Interacting help get a better understanding of the process.

4."Rote learning and skills drilled int traditional classroom do more than bore and miseducate students. They also inhibit their civic and emotional developments." Dewey's

5."Cooling out process" Clark - depress the aspirations of non-elite students in an economy with limited rewards. This reminds me of Kozol - an unequal society.

Resisting Endullment: The performance strike
Mass education has become notorious for low motivation of many student (an burnout of many teachers) - Reminds me of the Central falls issues . Large #'s of student refusing to perform at high levels. Low test scores. These strikes keep authority at bay.

Dewey, Piaget to Freire many educators have asserted that learning works best when it is an active creative process.
6. "There is now a good deal for research to suggest that the more time and efforts students invest in the learning process, the more intensely they engage in their own education and growth."

Self doubt, hostility, resentment, boredom respect, frustration is mentions about these low performing students. This reminds me of the students in the "freedom writers" This occurs when culture and language is imposed. In traditional classes, student learn that education is something to put up with, to tolerate as best they can, to obey or to resist.

I liked this comment: Students are people who's values are worth listening to whose minds can carry the weight of serious intellectual work.

Great article about Respecting the students as individual learners and remembering that they have a voice.