HW 51

There are a lot of people we could blame for the students limited thought process as Freire and Delpit have described. For instance, as most people do, we can blame teachers for not taking a stand against this “depositor and depository’s” relationship (reference to Freires' article). We can blame anyone involved with school such as parents, adults, other students, and so on. Hell, we can blame our government seeing as they are involved in many things. We can blame anyone but it won’t help. Instead we should try and change school for the better. We’re the ones who have to live through school for a long period of time, so why not have the students decide what to change? I don’t know who or what grades should have that kind of authority, maybe have a representative. And no I don’t believe class president really represents anything. We should be able to change the things we have problems with. One thing is too shorten our time in school. We should also create a more meaningful curriculum to help us create a more meaningful life and change people’s view on students as objects.

First off, if there is one thing I will keep the same, it is elementary school. They teach the basics of the most important subject, math, science, english, and history. When we first arrive, they introduce us to new things we ought to learn, not just in class but outside of class. We are introduced to new people, and we develop new kinds of relationships that will last throughout the school year. Elementary school house many kinds of people with different culture, attitude, etc. for us to meet. Even the friends we choose to have can bring us insights on what kind of future they might have and what kind of future you will have. With an environment that you become familiar to, it gives you more energy and keeps you interested in school. I also have to say that elementary school was the best years of my school experience because everything was new to me, and because of my curiosity, I never really got bored. Elementary school introduced us to new and exciting things while giving us the experience we need.

Some people don’t view children as people, but merely things that can be used to alter the future. From child labor, to T.V. ads or when people say “they are fighting for our children,” people use children because it purposes the best defense. Children are supposed to be the future of countries because they will be long enough to see their elders die. Some people use them for harmless ads, such as diaper commercials and movies, and that isn’t so bad because the child is earning some money for the family. Others have found better use of children. Because of their age, people will assume that the child is inexperience with logical thinking. People use this to their advantage for their own benefits. An article written by dailymail.co.uk talks about children being used as guinea pigs to test the new wireless computer network that can potentially cause “loss of concentration, fatigue, reduced memory and headaches. There are also claims that it could increase the long-term risk of cancer.” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-472357/Children-used-guinea-pigs-mass-Wi-Fi-experiment-warn-teachers.html) With such fatal symptoms, they still manage to install these devices in over 15,000 schools. The future adults of UK are going to become cancer patients because of this company’s selfish reason to test out a device that is already too hazardous to begin with. They took no sympathy for the possible outcome of the children, as though they treated children like animals in a laboratory. Once we are able to change the view of some adults, and convince them that children are no test subjects and should not be taken advantage of then maybe we can be treated more like the human we are.

Teachers in school should be familiar and use the technique problem-posing to create a friendlier environment. In some school today, students and teachers have a weak relationship. The teacher acts like an authority figure, what they say goes without question. This would not only bore the students, but they can’t help but wonder how the lesson is at all important in their life. Without a reason, lessons become meaningless and time is wasted in class because the students won’t listen to what the teacher has to say. The solution is using the problem-posing technique which is basically “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught.” (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/subject/education/freire/pedagogy/ch02.htm) Teachers can only live one life, and only have so much perspective. By getting to know students, they can increase their thoughts as well as teach students to expand their thinking as well. Problem-posing is a way where no one person is teaching but where even the students have something to say. This way everyone is learning and experiencing new things which is what school ought to be.

Next is to shorten our time or change it for better use. Back during the 1700’s, the average life span was around 35. Franklin went to school for two years because his parents didn’t have enough money, and went on teaching himself. He spent about six percent of his life to school. The average person nowadays spend about twenty two years in school when you include elementary, high school and a four year college program and the average life span is around 75. We spent about thirty percent of our life in school sitting around and having teachers tell us things we can’t really be sure of. I think we should cut high school off and move right on to college. Benjamin had an idea of what he wanted to do at the age of fifteen. We need to forget high school and move right on to college where we choose majors for our future careers because going to high school for four years seems like a waste. Yes it teaches us more complex materials on subjects but nothing college can’t already teach. This will the amount of money earn especially when you have four years of your life back, this will also help us move on with our lives and do the things we want to do. And because time in college is short enough you can add mandatory classes such as financial aid classes and any other things that jobs can’t teach you. We would gain approximately eight percent of our life back.

There are of course drawbacks to these types of changes and I do feel like most people would prefer school as it is now because it already shows progress. We have more and more people educated even if some of them can expand their thinking at all. Some people say that schools are becoming worse and worse over the past few years, but when you look at it, the population has increased dramatically over the past few years. Of course we’re going to see more people failing but we will also see more people succeeding. There will always be someone on the bottom of our society, and there is always someone on top. Maybe it is a lot easier to have feelings such as sympathy for a guy living on the street which is why we noticed them more. I think, despite the poor class population, school has gotten better. We have more people attending high school, something Benjamin couldn’t get into. We have more and more people attending colleges and hopefully the majority of them becoming what they want to be. And even then, we have people succeeding even without a college degree or a high school graduation. I bet there are more people with a job today than any time in history and anywhere else on earth. So to me, school hasn’t gotten worse or better, just changed.