Libby+Snyder+for+October+23

__ From Shannon: __ Throughout the century, public schools more or less complies with these proposals, developing vocational education, academic tracks, standardized tests, special education, and compensatory schooling laws to ensure universal opportunity. When the curriculum veered too sharply toward either academics or self- awareness, business leaders and political pundits would call for corrections, and schools would list back toward the industrial model. (127)

__ From Lankshear __ : Her goal as a literacy teachers is to enable learners to see texts and the reading of texts as problematic, to understand the political-ideological character of literacy as a social phenomenon and to become more assertive in interacting with written texts. (48)

__ From Gee: __ Middle managers conveyed and mediated knowledge, information, and control between the top and the bottom. This became, too, pretty much how knowledge was viewed in schools; knowledge was a system on expertise, owned by specialists, and imposed top down on students.” (95)

Traditional classrooms were hierarchical and teachers ‘filled the empty minds of students’. Many classrooms today look much different. However, the government standards, the amount of testing and the importance of the testing prevent teachers and school districts to stray too far from this traditional model. Students today are still not taught to be critical thinkers. Many go through schooling accepting everything they hear as fact. They reach an age when they realize that they have the power to be critical. To me, it almost seems like a paradox for teachers, how can we keep up with the changing times and students while staying on top of the testing and behind the red tape?
 * Discussion:** Viewing education as political is an important viewpoint to consider. Teachers, state leaders, and government officials all have personal opinions, views and agendas when it comes to education. As a result of this, education is constantly changing. As the world changed over the past century, education inevitably experienced major changes too. Theories, research, and history all told us something different about the way to teach students. As Gee discussed, the student is also changing. “Millennials” have had fundamentally different life experiences from their parents and teachers, and are therefore fundamentally different people. They are learning different values, and have different goals.


 * Questions:**
 * 1) At what age do we being teaching students to be critical thinkers and critical consumers of information?
 * 2) What has changed about the goals of the TV shows on Nick Jr. and other shows for young people? (Dora, High School Musical, Bob the builder) How are these shows different from what we watched as young people? (Full House, Sesame Street, Smurfs) What do these changes show about how our thoughts on education have changed?
 * 3) If so many researchers are presenting different ideas on how to teach our students, why aren’t we seeing more changes? Does education still copy the business models?
 * 4) Traditional teaching, Critical literacy, community of learners, standardized testing; they all aim to help us learn. If in the end, we all exit school “literate” to what extent do the ends justify the means? Does it really matter?

The readings suggest that the public school education system in the US was quite exceptional in the 1960's and produced some of the world's finest lawyers, doctors, teacher,s ect...what changed that has currently made our public school system one of the worst?