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” 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 because they also control our school. 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. We should decrease the time we spend going to school, while creating a more meaningful curriculum to help us create a more meaningful life and change people’s view on students as objects.

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

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 to when people say “they are fighting for our children,” people use children because it propose the best defense. Children are supposed to be the future of countries, they will live long enough to see their elders die. Some people use them for harmless ads, such as diaper commercials and movies, but that isn’t so bad because the child is earning some money for their family. Others have found better use of children. Because of their age, people assume that the child is inexperience with logical thinking. People use this 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 beings 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. The students would only be bored and 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 teaching students to expand theirs. 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 should be.

Next is to shorten the school years 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 in school. The average person nowadays spend about twenty two years in school when you include elementary, junior high, high school and a four year college program, 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 on to college where we choose majors for our future careers because going to high school for four years seems like an extra. Yes it teaches us more complex materials on subjects but nothing college can’t already teach. This will increase the amount of money earn especially when you have four years of your life back, it will also help us move on with our lives and do the things we want to do. 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. School becomes a competition for most students. There is the most intelligent student, the most athletic student, and then there is the worse student. Most students would aim for recognition, such as becoming athletic, or learning everything there is to know about a hot topic. That’s the upside to the school system today, they make us fight for attention. With competition there is progress, and medals are just for recognition. The downside to this system is that the worse of students don’t get enough attention. They start to slack off in their school works and eventually stop coming to school. This could be because of the pressure the school gives off towards people who are a bit slow, or maybe because they don’t see the point in these competitions. There are many students today who don’t go to school for similar reasons. I can’t say that my ideas are any better than the school system we have today, but there is definitely something we need to change about school.