HW 46

I read a book about the biggest institution in America, the military. The book is called Jarhead, and if your talking institution wise, the military wanted well trained soldiers that doesn't mind being kept in the dark. For instance the soldiers in the book knew how to calculate the distance a bullet can travel, and work together, but without a reason other than fighting for America. If we look at how the military works, discipline is one of the main skills they want soldiers to learn. After discipline, they teach other skills along with loyalty, and how to act. But in the end, they don't just teach you how to act like a soldier but a decent civilian.
My topic was about how schools want to form their children into civilized adults. This is no different then what the military is trying to accomplish. For instant, they both teach about respect, and disipline while educating students the skills they need to "achieve" in life. Look at the "go-army" commercials, they make people believe that they teach people skills and knowlegde to help them better themselves, nothing more than what school is already doing. Every institution is trying to teach their people their way in acting in life, military and schools happen to be the same. They teach you the "proper" ways to act like a civilian and have people believe that thei progras can change people.
In Jarhead the soldiers in the beginning act like children. They are immature, play harsh pranks while showing they cannot complete a simple command. Though once they are in a battle, they all act as a unit, trying to keep each other alive while remaining calm in the most dangerous of task. The military has taught them the basic needs to survive in a fight, how to act in a fight, what to do and how to do it. Same goes for schools. In the beginning were suppose to arrive at this institution all gullible and stupid, and come out intellectual people with a college degree, dress well, eat well, and maintain a health body day after day. That is the goal of both these institution and their answer to maintain a number of health mentally stabled individuals

HW 47

Ideas for the film:

1. You have a person who is down on their luck and fake their resume to get a job as a teacher. Then throughout the year the students somehow helped the teacher get back on their feet and on with their life.

2. You can do the usual teacher teaching immanent rather then transcendent.

3. An add-on to the last one, you cane have two teachers in a competition to see whether immanent or transcendent is better.

4. You can have a teacher not only teaching but going through extreme lengths to help their students with their home problems or any other problems.

5. I really liked that movie with the dead poet society, where the teacher doesn't only teach but teach with enthusiasm and pride. I thought this is the most interesting because the teacher manages to make everything alright and fill the classroom with excitement and mystery. This kind of film would be interesting to make rather than the usual teacher saving student thing.

Hw 45

In most movies that we recently watched, all the teachers started out teaching like E.D. Hirsch, who teaches transcendent, or a step by step lesson. Eventually the teachers end up teaching like Ted Sizer, who teaches immanent, which basically is work with what works. I feel as though E.D. Hirsch is the kind of teacher society wants. People believe that the more someone knows about something, the smarter they are. Filling a person with information seems like something our parents what as well. As long as kids come home with some new knowledge, it keeps the parents happy that their child learns something even if it is not necessary. Though this technique is good because it separates the fast learners from the slow learners. Not because one class is dumb, this will help the teachers come up with new techniques that will maybe improve students to learn. Life is a competition and this technique is too.

Ted Sizer influenced our school to teach the habits of mind. Unlike Hirsch, people will learn new ways of looking at things, develop new points of view and come up with their own inferences. I like this technique better then Hirsch because with the other technique, they teach you what is right and wrong and with history you can never be sure if the textbooks are accurate. Sizer teaches us to question things, to teach us that nothing is absolutely true if we can question it. The thing about these two techniques is that Hirsch doesn't feel confident when using his techniques with elementary students and Sizer does feel comfortable with high school students. Yet most people in our school, I bet, were taught Hirsch's technique in elementary and Sizer's technique in high school and we turned out fine. Frankly, I feel like Sizer's technique is more important when living your life but Hirsch's technique is more important when getting a job or sorts.

hw 44

I have watched the Obama school speech, and read two of the articles about school and although each one talks about the "war" or most important battle is school, they each brought up their own points of view. For instance, Obama said we must try and try if we want to accomplish something because the best things in life aren't free. He also said that if we drop out of school that goes against America. Also no one who drops out of school lands on a good job. I would disagree with most of the things he said. Other than the best things in life, or at least some, kids dropping out of school has been a part of the U.S.A. and isn't freedom what this country was suppose to stand for? And the other thing, there are a lot of people that dropped out of high school and still land on a good job, even better than most. One of the articles i read was about liberal arts and how it can expand out thinking. Yes an open minded person is caring, but the article seem to suggest that it is the most important of classes. They seem to believe that it is so important, years from now important people got where they are because of it. I do think that a class that increases your thinking is important but isn't really the most important of classes. Lastly, the second article i read was about school needing two system, one employee and one entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is basically a person who creates his own company, therefore more jobs are available and more people will be employed. Although this is a nice idea, i do not think it is a solution to the number of employees. First off, there are a lot of unemployed person not because of the limited job offers. Second this won't solve our problem but merely delay it and in the end making it worse. Like shoving trash into an already filled trash can. If there are numerous companies, there is going to be competition. Competition means winners and losers. Losing team will lose company and everyone working for it will lose their job. none of these solution present is even doable or a solution at all. All these people believe that school is the most important because of how gullible children are. That's why we are important, because we're new.

Although none of these are solutions to school or even the future, i do believe that school does offer things to children. For instance, with the amount of people around, they teach you what other people can be like, other then your parents or neighbors. They give you a glimpse of what life as a normal adult would look like; who to talk to, who is your superior, your superior's superior, etc. work life. The best thing they can do for students, and i believe this myself, if introduce you to new things. Subjects, ideas, authors, techniques, points of view, and many other things. Although the school itself might not teach you things, but that's why school is made up of different minds, so students can share thoughts with each other. That, i believe is the purpose of school, to introduce you to new things, and its your choice whether to take an interest towards it, or ignore it.