What’s Important After All?
In our English 101
class this quarter we were introduced to an abundance of great writers, like
Mike Rose, Malcolm X and Audre Lorde, just to mention a few. Most recently we
had the opportunity to read the writings of Gatto, Black, Freire, and more of
Rose. I really enjoyed reading about their insight and found it very
interesting that over a period of 100 years, there were many common flaws in
our school systems that we are still dealing with today. After summarizing the movies we viewed and
the articles we read, I could see many areas where our public schools could
better support today and tomorrow’s students. Our public school system needs a complete
over-haul, from adding pre-school classes to changing how we decide what grade
a student should be in. This should not be a one class fits all. Students need
a voice and should be free to make choices in their education decisions.
In chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed written by Paulo
Freire, his ideology consisted of the “banking concept of education”. He
described the teachers as the depositors and the students as the depositories. One alterative Freire
offers is “They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace
it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the
world. "Problem-posing" education, responding to the essence of
consciousness -intentionality -rejects communiques and embodies communication.
” (Freire) Every student should be able
to have a voice, should be heard, not be oppressed. Where there is dialogue
between two people there is education.
Boredom in our
schools, teachers, staff and students, is a common theme in the articles, books
and movies. In John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School”, How public education
cripples our kids and why; Gatto points out boredom is the #1 issue in our
public school system and that public school is not a great fit for all
students. Gatto’s advice;
“School trains children to be employees and
consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively;
teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a
low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that
they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up
material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology -
all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids
with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to
conduct inner dialogues.” (Gatto)
Most kids will
never have this opportunity. There are many reasons for boredom in the classroom.
If a student is in a classroom where he is not being challenged, or if he
cannot understand the information that is being given to him, then he cannot be
a part of the conversation, he will be bored. The way to avoid boredom would be
early education, assessing students at least once every year, give students a
bigger voice, and adding extra extracurricular activities.
In her book Zami, Audre
Lorde shares of an experience where her teacher shames her and humiliates her.
I have had the same experiences in school and all it did was teach me to be
afraid to be wrong. After those experiences I always had a fear of being called
on or raising my hand. So it was many years later until I learned how to take
risk. Bell hooks sums this one up very well in her first book Teaching to Transgress. She states “to
teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is
essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most
deeply and intimately begin.”(hooks) The
classroom needs to be a place where we can be free to be us, and be free to be
wrong or to have a different opinion.
As I read the
handouts, watch the movies, and videos, I think of my grandson who is in the 4th
grade. He is very bored in school. His teacher gives him work separately from
the other students because he is ahead of everyone else. In math he is on 8th
grade level and reading a 10th grade level. He is a very curious boy
and will ask you a million questions. Google, you-tube and Khan Academy are his
favorite pass times. First question he will ask when he comes over is “do you
have math homework I can help you with” and the second question is “can we play
scramble.” Not only does he use his knowledge and skills when playing board
games, but he is a great strategist. If he is not learning, playing sports, or
doing an outdoor activity he is bored. Compare him to my other grandson who has
a father and mother who both have been in and out of prison, dealing with their
drug addiction. He is 13 and cannot do basic math. He loses interest in a lot
of the activities that we do because he does not understand most of it. His
only interest is football and video games. Now that he has a permanent loving
home it will be our job to help him get caught up. Not the school. This is
where so many of our children our lost. They do not have the support they needed
to succeed so they get into crime and gangs to support themselves and to
survive.
In today’s world
most children live in a home with two working parents or a single working
parent. If a child is placed in a daycare that provides a learning environment,
they are more likely to be ready for school at an early age. Many parents, especially low income, single
parent homes cannot afford this type of daycare. They depend on family members,
baby sitters or a daycare that will sit their children in front of a TV, or in
a play area to play with other kids, with no educational activities. If these
children are not being educated at home they will start school behind the
others. Once the children are placed together in school, this is where challenge
begins. We have students who are ready and we have students who are not ready.
The teacher will spend the majority of the time working with the students who
are behind and the rest of the class is bored and just hanging out. The movie Stand
and Deliver was a great example of this. In this movie one person made it
his mission to teach students who others said were unteachable, but one person
cannot do it alone. Is there a solution?
We need to add an early
educational program to the public school system, for all children before school
age. There is some funding for head
start programs and there are a few churches in our communities that help with
this but not enough. Our public schools should be managed more like a college.
All children should take an assessment at the beginning of school and at the
end of school. A student is placed in an appropriate class based on knowledge,
not age. Summer classes should be offered to all students. I think our
community centers and schools should join and share space or be in a very close
proximity. A great example of this would be Garfield High School in Seattle.
The high school, community center, track and football field, park with a
playground are all on the same block. When I see how much my children and
grandchildren learn before the age of 5, I feel bad for all the kids out there
who do not have that same opportunity.
Summit, a k-12 school
in Seattle, gets the importance of the Arts in our schools. All programs are funded
through fundraising. I think they may have the record for the most extra
curriculum activities in this school. You would never find a bored kid in this
school. But these schools are now being
closed, and programs are being cut. In an article in the Presidents commentary,
Children, Arts, and Du Bois, written
by Keith Gilyard these issues are all addressed. “I predict doom for the
students” (Gilyard ) If we invested as much money in schools as we did prisons,
we would be a very educated country. Instead we are average, or below average. It does take a
village to raise our children and if we can work together with a common goal we
can raise them all to be well educated and well centered. Teach them the
importance of giving back and this experience will get passed down through
generations.
Works Cited
Freire, Paulo, PEDAGOGY OF THE
OPPRESSED by Paulo Freire. New York: Continuum Books, 1993
Gatto, John Taylor, Against School, How public education cripples our
kids, and why, 09/2003 Harper's Magazine
Burke,
B. (2004) ‘bell hooks on education’, the encyclopedia of informal
education, www.infed.org/mobi/bell-hooks-on-education.htm.
Gilyard, Keith, (2012) Children, Arts, and Du Bois, President’s
Commentary, pg 19.
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