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MadArchitect
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 Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:51 pm Post subject:
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Oops. Repost.
Last edited by MadArchitect on Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dissident Heart 
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| Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 4:45 pm Post subject:
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| Why: I don't think the students who aspire to become cashiers at Barnes and Noble are really suffering from any deficiency in the education system as it is currently being offered. |
How do you think Public Education should adress the issue of aspiration in its Students? When and how is it appropriate to utilize, tap into, or build upon Student aspiration: should it be encouraged, challenged, or simply ignored?
I think aspiration is a powerful motivator, certainly not infallible, but it can be something that pushes a Student onward and pulls them up and out of circumstances they can and must change. What a Student aspires to can be linked to what a Teacher aspires to, as well as a School as a whole: this linkage of aspiration can be the adhesive needed to create solidarity in the struggle for something worthy of sacrifice. |
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seeker
I can enter The Chamber
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| Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 6:56 pm Post subject:
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Dissident Heart wrote:
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| How do you think Public Education should adress the issue of aspiration in its Students? When and how is it appropriate to utilize, tap into, or build upon Student aspiration: should it be encouraged, challenged, or simply ignored? |
I recently heard a talk by the Dean of Students of the local branch of the state university that focused on students entering college later in life. One of the stories was about a student who returned to college because a former high school teacher, at a chance meeting, told him that he was smart enough to go to college. He went on to get a master's degree. Another story was about a female student whose husband told her, after her first year, that it was a choice between him and school. She chose school. I had somewhat forgotten the dramatic impact a liberal education can have. It is hugely motivating and empowering. We should never underestimate the ability of the human mind to seize knowledge and make it a door to freedom. |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:34 pm Post subject:
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| seeker: I had somewhat forgotten the dramatic impact a liberal education can have. It is hugely motivating and empowering. |
Could you elaborate more about liberal education? What makes it liberal, and what do people look like who receive a liberal education: i.e., how do they engage the public arena?
How should Public Schools engage a liberal education for its young and developing students?
For me, a liberal education is training for freedom and an education in liberty. Sounds corny, perhaps, but it is an examination of ideas and skills that protect individual rights and promote the general welfare. I think it is motivating because it encourages students to imagine a world worth living in and prompts them to make it real. It is a challenge to tyrants and despots everywhere, and good news to those oppressed and kept apart from knowledge and tools that can change their world. I think liberal education is about changing the world: attaining the good society by telling the truth about those who oppose individual liberty and reject the general welfare. It is an attempt to beautify self and society. |
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