Education 3603 Social Context

2006-02-12T19:01:00.000-08:00

Social Justice In Education

I found that this article was a little confusing, but I will however attempt to comment on it. I believe that this article talked about what exactly should educators teach in schools. Should they simply teach skills needed to succeed in the big bad world or should educators teach children about social justice as well? Also who should be the one’s to make the decisions on what teachers should teach? Should it be the rich? Or should it be the poor? Should everyone in the entire world be able to have access to an education or only those that can afford it? I believe this article is trying to raise these questions in order for people to think about the answer.
Personally I am not too sure about the answers to these questions. I personally think that everyone in the world should have access to an education starting from an early age, since that is the most crucial time for learning and retaining information of all kinds. I think that this should be the case but I have no idea how this could be accomplished. I think it is very sad that not everyone gets this opportunity and I feel lucky that I live here in Canada where I could get this opportunity even thought sometimes I am not fond of school. I also think that everyone from parents, teachers, and administrators should have a say on what should be taught in schools. I understand that this may be difficult but we should try to give an equal opportunity for everyone involved to have a say in the matter.

2006-02-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

Big Business Targets Kids

I am so disgusted and appalled by this article. I can’t believe some of the things they were mentioning in this article. I’m sorry I just really had to get that out. First of all if you have not read this article it is about marketers trying to target kids to buy their products. Marketers will do just about anything to get the word out to kids whether it would be morally right or wrong. They will bribe schools to put their advertisement on screen savers, on billboards, even on students with the help of tattoos (whether they are permanent or not I am still not quite positive about that?) in exchange for new computers, textbooks, resources, etc. The thing that got to me the most was the fact that they were arguing the fact that learning about the environment and recycling is wrong and should not be in schools. I could not believe that they would say such a thing.
I understand that schools have a difficult time getting funding for everything the school needs for a year of schooling and that bribes might be very tempting especially for schools that are very poor. But can we, as teacher and educators, condone this type of behavior and bribery? I suppose it is easy to say that if you were put in that situation that you would do the right thing and not take the bribe at the expense of your students and your morals. I suppose if I was put into that situation it would be very difficult for me to say no despite what I believe. But I would like to think that I would only agree if the product we were advertising was a healthy product that delivered a positive message like drinking water or milk and eating healthy. I hope that if I will ever be faced with this dilemma that I would make the right decision.

2006-02-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

ADO
A comic short story

I thought that this article was funny and crazy all at the same time. The story is about a teacher who wants to teach Shakespeare to her class. She gives everyone a consent form and asks them to return them in a couple of days. Some students in her class were excited to read this and others were completely opposed to the idea. Throughout the teacher meets with the principal and goes through all of the objections of parents and various organizations and goes through the grueling tasks of eliminating the lines that were objected. The students who objected to reading Shakespeare’s work ends up protesting outside of the school and ended up misspelling everything on their picketing boards. By the end of this story, they end up reading Hamlet but since they had to eliminate most of the story, the story is reduced to about one or two pages and does not even make any sense.
I’m guessing that this story was exaggerated but that these issues do actually occur in school to a smaller degree. When I was in high school I hated most of the things that we had to read because I didn’t find them to be that interesting. I thought that teachers must be so boring if all they could give us were boring books to read in school. Now I realize that this was probably not the case and that teachers are restricted to what they show their students for fear of offending parents or organizations. I think to a certain point we need to be aware of this and we need to be wary of what we choose especially for younger children. However, I think even if something is offensive or politically incorrect we still need to teach our students about the past and read historical literature like Hamlet. I think however if you do teach about a sensitive issue it is important to address to your class that it is a sensitive issue and to emphasize that it may be historically correct but not presently correct and above all it is important to discuss the contents of what you are going to teach to the principal and to the parents and to get their approval before teaching about a sensitive subject.

2006-02-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

Educational Responses to Poverty

This article talks about the negative impact of children living in poverty. They are saying that children living in poverty come to school at a disadvantage from their richer counterparts because they may not have as much opportunity to learn the basic skills needed to achieve in schools from their parents since their parents are busy earning money to provide for their families. These children mostly come from single-parent homes or from homes where the parents have been laid off from their jobs or from working class families. The article also stresses that the issue of poverty is not solely the responsibility of schools and that poverty needs to be better addressed by policy makers, the government as well as schools.
Personally I think that the government should do more about this issue. It seems now a day the cost of living seems to get higher and higher and that companies do not adjust salaries enough to compensate for this rise of cost. It is definitely not like the older days where you can have one parent at home, whether it would be male or female, that could take care of the children and have the other work and make a living to provide for the family. I personally have been looking for a house in Calgary and you essentially have to pay at least 400,000 to buy a basic brand new house in the N.W. The same exact house would have cost about 250,000 about 5 or 10 years ago.
I also think the government should give more money to schools especially to those who have a high number of students living in poverty. Schools can organize lunch and breakfast programs for those students and can use the money to gain more resources to help these children to learn and to enjoy learning.
As classroom teachers I don’t think we should set our expectations lower just because a student comes from a poor family. I think if anything we should expect higher standards and be willing to stay after school maybe to be able to help these children out. We need to teach them that it takes hard work and dedication to achieve in school and that asking questions and seeking help can help them attain their goals.

2006-02-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

The Working of Class

How understanding a subtle difference between social classescan promote equality in the classroom- and beyond

This article was about how class can effect the way people think and in turn how this can effect the way teachers, students and parents interact and communicate with one another. The article talks about how there are two styles of individualism. The first is a "soft", upper-middle-class individualism, which focuses on the cultivation and expression of unique feelings, thoughts, ideas and preferences. The second is the "hard", working-class individualism, which focuses on the cultivation of self-reliance, perseverance, determination, protectiveness, and toughness.

Before I read this article I never realized that the class system can have such an impact on the way teachers, parents and students could relate to one another. I suppose I just thought of it as people having different belief systems. I like to think of myself as a person who accepts and embraces other people's views and beliefs but I guess sometimes it is difficult to do that especially if those views are completely different from your own. I think the first thing that we need to do as teachers is to get to know our students and their parents because it is important to understand where the student's are coming from and what are the families belief system. To be able to satisfy both classes, we as teachers may need to look at our own values and try to identify with the values of the other class and use that in our teaching. Maybe we could try and incorporate both ways of thinking in our lesson plans. I think it is important to incorporate as much as possible, real life situations in our classrooms and to stress that hard work is needed regardless of which profession the student's would pursue. However, we also need to emphasize that it is beneficial to be in touch with our softer side and to encourage the students to think and express themselves in new ways and to develop their creativity.

2006-02-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

Today we had Narcis Blood as a guest speaker. He came to talk to us about the Native American culture and to explain to us how important it is to teach our students about the world around them before exploring the world that is far from them. I can tell you that before I got into the education faculty I hardly knew anything about the Native America culture. Now I have had about 2 or 3 sessions where they talked about the Native American culture. I especially liked the presentation from Narcis Blood because he was funny, interesting and I learned something new. I never really understood why many Native American's had drinking problem and had family problems. Now I know that its due to all they went through when the settlers came and when the government forced them to split up their families so they can send their children to residential schools. I think it is very important in the schools to aknowledge what has happened to Native Americans and to try to find ways on making it better. You could organize a Native American awareness month or week. You can take an outing with your class to see what its like on a Native American reserve. I think it is important to teach our students the history of the Native American culture but to also look at the positive future they have in front of them. You could invite successful Native Americans to come talk at your school, to show that it is possible to be successful regardless of your culture.

2006-01-31T21:24:00.000-08:00

What do we say when we hear "Faggot"?

I think that it is very important that we as teachers, teach our students to accept different cultures and individuals whether they be Hindu or Chinese or lesbian or gay. I think that to do this we need to start teaching this at an early age. We can teach them in kindergarden that males and females are equals and that they can both do the same things. Men can cook and clean and women can play hockey and can fix cars. I think if we tried to teach them this at an early than maybe we can help by iliminating gender roles. It mentioned in the article that since men have a more defined line of what men SHOULD do than females boys are more often called faggots or gay more than a girl get to be called a lesbian or a dyke. You see if we try to level the playing field on gender roles than we may be able to reduce the biases and the name calling amonst children and adults.
For the older students who have already learned the gender specific roles it is very important to make sure that you are clear with your students that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated in your classroom and tell them why. I liked the suggestions the article gives on how to teach and discuss this subjects with your students. I also observed a class once where they had a communication book or communication box where all of the students can write something in this book or box anonymously. Students are encouraged to write about what they like about the class or about certain situations or individuals that may not have been positive experiences. They can talk about bullies or name calling. This is a great way for the teacher to know what is going on with their students in and out of school. If there is a comment about bullying or name calling the teacher can address this issue with the whole class without having the person who wrote the comment be identified.
Another way to teach your kids tolerance amongst each other is to have them write one good thing about each person in their classroom. The teacher can pick all of the comments up and write up the comments that each person said and then give them to each person in the classroom. The teacher can also comment on each person aswell which makes the students feel appreciated by their fellow classmates.

2006-01-21T07:27:00.000-08:00

In the article, "Yes: The trouble with television" by Marie Winn, she talks about how television is corrupting the minds of children today and suggests to parents and teachers to decrease the amount of time of television watching so that they can do more productive things like do their homework, be active, be creative or to read. She stresses that you need to make rules on how much television they are allowed to watch (which should not be more than an hour a day) and to teach the children to create their own fun.
If I would have read this article a couple of years back I would have told you that this article was wrong and that there wasn't anything wrong with watching television. Now, however I agree with her completely because I myself watch way too much television. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the television programs that I don't even realize how much time has flown by and how much time I have wasted. It seems that my schedule is based around what time my shows start. I can even remember from an early age that I loved watching tv and I hated going to bed at night because I wanted to watch my shows. I think because of this, I have terrible time management skills which isn't really good if you want to become a teacher.
I think that this article is a good one and gives great ideas for parents and for future parents such as myself, but what I would like to know is if you are older and set in your ways how can you get rid of or manage this addiction?

2006-01-16T07:25:00.000-08:00

The article “What is the School’s Hidden Curriculum Teaching Your Child?” talks about the hidden curriculum and that its largely determined by societies views on what subjects boys and girls should pursue in schools and by the students.
I think that there is no escaping the presence of a hidden curriculum in any school but I think parents, teachers and administrators can help diminish the negative aspects of this hidden curriculum. Parents could pay more attention to their children and be more aware of the things their children are doing and who they hang around with.
Teachers can set a high expectation of the students’ academics and talk about societal issues such as bullying or gender biases and to give them decision making skills. Teachers can also get to know their students and try to eliminate “clicks” as much as possible by grouping the students with different people.
Administrators can also try to create a positive school atmosphere where bullying and froshing is unacceptable and where caring for others and academics are the priorities.

2006-01-16T07:22:00.000-08:00

According to the article “The Explosion of Teen Magazines In and Out of School”, they suggest that magazines such as Seventeen, Jump, Cosmo Girl and YM should be banned from schools because of their negative messages they send to our students.
Personally, I think that this is ridiculous! The schools reasoning for this is to censor what students are reading but who’s to say that they aren’t reading these magazines at home or with their friends anyway. Even if students do not read these magazines they could always see these messages on commercial or shows like Entertainment Tonight or Extra. If schools did ban these magazines I think it would also make students want to read these magazines more because doing something forbidden is after all always the “cool” thing to do.
I think that instead of banning the magazines that we should explore them in class by having debates or giving out projects to our students so that they can look at and be aware of the positive and negative messages of these magazines. We could talk about advertising and how advertising companies want teenagers to buy all of the products that are in the magazines.