Hw 50

My first article I read was by Gatto, entitled Against School. He said that school originated from Prussia, and it was meant to create common thinkers that can be able to do basic things and be used without their knowledge. To eradicate independent thoughts so we must rely on others to tell us what we want to know, to remove the logical thinking and the thought process and only provide answers to questions. Basically to make slaves, people who know their place, act their place, and think their place, all this because of profit. According to the author, we are profits to the rich men, we keep the society running and we keep it going. In war, those who control the intelligence control the battle. In school, the profiteers allow students to learn just enough to run our daily course, to keep ourselves alive and healthy as long as possible so they can milk us for every pennies worth. They pay millions to keep school running, and we grow up to become consumers who spend billions of dollars on things we do not need, things that will not benefit us but only comfort us. We buy things to create a fantasy that where we are important, and with a comfy blanket over us, a nice plasma screen TV in front of us, next to paintings and portraits of random people and places, how could we not drown ourselves in this world?
I already believed in most of the things that Gatto has written before I read the document. We are taught by people who are educated enough to teach children just enough or maybe even less. We are spewing crap to generations after generations. I think that if most people read this article, they would think its bullshit, and that school is mainly used to help people get a life. But our lives are already designed for us, with transcript and permanent records, and social security numbers, we are branded cows ready to be turned into food. Children are ripe for the picking. One way or another we can't go back to the way things were with Ben Franklin or any of the others teaching themselves or becoming an apprentice. There is no way to go back especially with the disturbing ideas and events the news and the internet tells us. No one trusts each other anymore and that we are all looking at each other as greedy people. We are going to have to live with this school system but it doesn't mean we can’t change it to benefit the future rather than creating mindless drones. If people, more specifically parents want a resolution, than they should be one of the main contributors of school. They should be able to put changes they believe will benefit students. Actually, thinking about it now, that might be as bad as letting the profiteers handle school work. For one thing, they don’t care for religion or ethics so much, so long as they make money. Parents, on the other hand, are a large group of people, with different ideas, opinions, and beliefs. If Gatto is right, that school freezes the mind of students so that no matter how old they become, their mind still maintains the mind of children, then parents who went to school will still act like children and school will probably be no different. One way or another, if you look at it, students will learn something. But should parents or profiteers run school education, I don’t know.



In Freire's article Pedagogy of the Oppressed, second chapter, talks about the extent of our knowledge when taught in school. In most public schools we are taught one way of thinking and repeatedly study this one way of thinking until we can regurgitate it exactly. He says that it is useless information if we know that four times four is sixteen but we don’t know how to get the answer. If there is no lesson on how to solve problems, we are limited to the questions and the answers. In other words, there is no how you get the answers, just what is the answer. Freire explained two typed of ways to teach: one is banking where students are depositories while the teachers are depositors. Then there is post-problem method which is to get more involved with students. Banking is when a teacher treats students like an incomplete textbook and the teacher has to fill out all the missing pages with random facts. They cannot connect with students or explain how this related to their lives, but if they memorized the random facts, they will become successful. Post-problems take a problem and try to relate to it. They explain why it is important and how it connects to the students’ life. Treating student more than mere objects can get students more interested, more in tune with the lesson and also ask question which will increase their thinking ability and knowledge. Again, banking turns you into a person with random facts, and post-problem encourages deep thinking and the importance of a subject.
I think our school acts like a post-problem school. Even though I don't engage in conversations with teachers, from my perspective, the students and the teachers know each other unusually more than they have to. With this kind of relationship, teachers are able to gain the respect of a student while increasing the interest the students have on a subject. This relationship is also better because it helps us become human. What separates us from a robot is that we can produce our own ideas and thoughts. What also separates us from robots is our communication. As humans we need to communicate to one another, it helps us from getting bored and going crazy. It helps keep lessons more interesting if students can engage in a conversation and ask questions. And it teaches us to be more like adults. For instances, you tell a kid something, chances are they are going to accept it without asking questions. As an adult or acting like one, you wouldn't just accept it without knowing how someone concluded to this kind of thought. An adult would want to know the thought process, why and how are important. Post-problems separate us from robots that banking hopes to create.



In Delpit's Interview with N. Stanley, is a Q&A about methods of teaching in school. She does not believe that tests will expose the brilliance a student can possess if tests only expose the students weakness. Teacher must go out and learn about the student from their community or from other students. She also tested out that students can learn much faster if they learned their official or main language first before learning a foreign language. By learning their language first, they can learn much faster because they are able to communicate with the people around them in their neighborhood or outside of school. The best method to teach is with art, whether it'd be poem, drawing, dancing, etc. This will take the bore out of learning and if you are able to write a poem about it, gets students more active and motivated to learn about the subject. Art also helps people feel like they belong to a sort of "club". Just like the movie Dead Poet Society, people will feel like they belong and somehow will feel encourage to participate in lessons or even understand lessons faster than those who don't use art as a method. Last thing she said was that every student has weaknesses and strengths. If teachers knew the strengths of their students, they should work with their strengths so teaching won't become a hassle. But there are some opportunities to turn a student’s weakness into a strength.
Delpit presents a lot of solutions for teachers in need of help. Most of her methods requires a lot of enthusiasm some teachers don't have such as asking around the students’ neighborhood to uncover the students strengths and weaknesses. Some of them involve parents such as teaching their child their native language first. Most of her methods take time that I think no one really cares for. If, I think it was Gatto, was right that teachers are bored of the subject they teach, and are told that they are unable to approach their students as human beings, then there is no way that they can use these methods. And the students being depositories for these lessons without an explanation cannot use art as a way of learning because they have not been taught creative. But in school where students are treated as humans, these lessons would be great. In fact, teachers might not even have to go to their students’ neighborhood to find out their strengths, just merely asking them would be sufficed. And the best part is, if teachers and students are able to get along, teacher can teach their lessons in an artsy way if it helps to learn better.



I only remember briefly what teachers we have interviewed in our class have said. Mr. Fanning never made it to our class. I don't remember Andy saying anything about his teaching experience or even high school experience. For Ms. D, I believe I remembered her speaking something about gender as a problem in her teaching years. Not really sure, but she was, I think, pressured for being a woman teacher which is why she left that school with a name I can't recall. Mr. Manly was just a few days ago, and he said that in his high school, the English teachers’ lessons were boring so he wasn't into English until college. Then when he became a teacher, he first taught in Math and Science of something as a grammar teacher for seventh grade, I think, and was told not to engage in conversation with students in any way other than what is needed to be explained from the textbook that was assigned for the curriculum. In his experience the students were not so much motivated to learn as appose to getting good grades. He believes that school to be the "antiSOF".
I have a slight memory problem but I do remember that they, or at least Ms. D and Mr. Manly, have problems with their previous schools that they taught in. Whether it was a bunch of sexist teachers, or teaching a zombie classroom, they all enjoy teaching in SOF. I can't be sure whether they are telling the truth or not, but I will have to take their word for it that SOF is not the worse school of all, but in fact offers new ways of teaching most schools don't have. But one thing I am sure of even at an early age when I use to attend private school, it was a lot better to have a teacher who is more enthusiastic about their curriculum, expresses themselves and put themselves in the lesson with stories about their life (even if they are lying) than a teacher who only teaches and never engage in conversation with the class only when talking about the curriculum.