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Dissident Heart 
Embodiment of Reason
Bronze Contributor
Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 1430
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 Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 2:49 pm Post subject: Public Education
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| Explain what you understand as the goals and outcomes of Public Education and describe how these are implemented in the classroom. |
I think Public Education is essentially a way to educate citizens to thrive in the public arena: to take responsibility for maintaining the public good and receive training in implementing this responsibility. Taking responsibility is an issue of values: what ought I do and why should I do it; and implementing this responsibility is an issue of competency: what skills will I need and how can I learn them.
I think Public Education is a communication of values and skills from one generation to another. The accumulated wisdom of a community's history and traditions is passed on to its younger members with a hope that what is good, true and beautiful about the past be retained and carried forward into the future. I also think it essential that the next generation be equipped with the critical thinking skills that can identify the flaws and failings of preceding generations. I think Public Education should equip its students with values and skills that will remedy the mistakes of society and improve upon its failings, so that the errors and terrors of past generations not be repeated upon the present or the future. I think this is adifficult but necessary tension between retaining and rejecting the wisdom and folly of the elder generations. I think the tension can be soundly respected by educating students to ask themselves: what is good, true and beautiful about the values and skills I am receiving from my school, family, community, and the world at large.
I also think there is an urgency that must be addressed when defining the values and skills inculcated in Public Education: the threat of climate catastrophe and its attending social chaos and physical destruction. I think this threat requires all subject matter and classroom activity be constructed with a desire to remedy current damage and redirect current trajectories. If this threat goes unheeded, then there will be no public arena in which to thrive or survive.
I think the term thriving is important and should be placed in contrast to merely surviving. Public Education, I think, should be an imporvement upon current circumstances, not their replication: this improving is essentially a drive to promote individual and communal flourishing: a more full expression of one's creative and intellectual capacities as an citizen member of the public arena, as well as an organism bound in multple ways to an interconnected and interrelated ecosystem.
I think students learn in many different ways and access the curriculum through a variety of learning modalities, better described as Multiple Intelligences. Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences identifies at least 8 intelligences: verbal linguistic, music rhythmic, body kinesthetic, math logical, visual spatial, naturalist and interpersonal and intrapersonal. He posits a 9th intelligence, existential, that addresses issues of meaning and purpose and "why" of it all. I think teachers must construct their curriculum such that all of these intelligences are tapped: offering multiple entry points and perspectives for discovery and expression. I think assessment of student acheivement should also structure itself according to this cognitive model.
I think that entire schools should work across grades and disciplines to focus students, teachers, parents and communities upon single issues throughout the school year: a new one each semester perhaps. For instance, "You are what you eat", could be the central focus and integrating theme that connects students and disciplines. The hard sciences and humanities will adress this theme in ways appropriate to their discipline- such that the student will be examining the theme in different ways and contexts throughout the school day. Furthermore, every student in the school will be doing the same, in ways appropriate to their developmental limitations. Shared projects will bring younger students into contact with older students: building a pea patch, creating a menu for meals, preparing the meals with items from pea patch, and constructing a compost bin for waste....is one example. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 7:13 pm Post subject: Re: Public Education
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| Dissident Heart wrote: |
| I think Public Education is essentially a way to educate citizens to thrive in the public arena: to take responsibility for maintaining the public good and receive training in implementing this responsibility. |
The structure of that sentence would seem to indicate that its two clauses are fundamentally identical. I don't think that's necessarily so.
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| I think Public Education is a communication of values and skills from one generation to another. |
I'd agree, but only because, if you make the term "Public Education" sufficiently general, the above sentence becomes almost tautological. Any given society will communicate a set of values and skill from one generation to the next, and that communication certainly constitutes a form of education. Whether or not that communication ought to be the motivation behind a compulsory institution is another question altogether, and the evidence of history has shown that societies can and will communicate those values and skills with or without a formal system of schooling.
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| I think Public Education should equip its students with values and skills that will remedy the mistakes of society and improve upon its failings, so that the errors and terrors of past generations not be repeated upon the present or the future. |
I think those values and skills should be fostered and passed on whenever possible, but I think formal schooling systems are gravely inadequate to that task, and have a tendency to actually pervert that goal, if for no other reason than that students have a tendency to rebel against any values that are instilled in them by an involuntary educational institution.
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| I also think there is an urgency that must be addressed when defining the values and skills inculcated in Public Education: the threat of climate catastrophe and its attending social chaos and physical destruction. |
Which sounds an awful lot to me like you're interested in transforming public education into an ideological think tank. Laudable as your goal of warding off climatic detrioration may be, I think it's a misuse of an already dubious institution to treat it as the means to your own ideological end.
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| I think that entire schools should work across grades and disciplines to focus students, teachers, parents and communities upon single issues throughout the school year: a new one each semester perhaps. For instance, "You are what you eat", could be the central focus and integrating theme that connects students and disciplines. |
And they can decorate bulletin boards with colored construction paper, which is fun. |
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Why
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Joined: 09 Nov 2007
Posts: 22
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:43 pm Post subject:
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| I am not qualified to provide a cirriculum (no degree in education here), but in my opinion cirriculum content is the least of our problems. I believe the problem lies in the fact that our students have less opportunity to further their education after graduation. And that means less hope. And that means less motivation. How do you motivate a student to learn more challenging concepts and content if he/she does not believe he has any hope for furthering his/her education? Unless we make higher education more accessible, it won't matter what they load the public cirriculum with. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
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Location: decentralized
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject:
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I agree to the extent that we're also impressing students with the fact that they absolutely have to have a secondary education in order to make it. But it hasn't always been the case that you needed a college education just to be competitive as a cashier at Barnes & Noble. Nor do I think it ought to be terribly important now.
I don't know that more secondary education is really the answer. If anything, it looks to me as though we've got too many people towing educational debt into careers that don't really make use of anything studied at the college level, and don't offer any promise of providing a way of paying off the debts incurred. I think we'd do better to have a more efficient primary educational system, and to find ways to ease the pressure that appears to be all that necessitates, for most people, any kind of further education.
Last edited by MadArchitect on Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
Bronze Contributor
Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 1430
Gender:
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:35 pm Post subject:
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| Why: I am not qualified to provide a cirriculum (no degree in education here), but in my opinion cirriculum content is the least of our problems. |
You may not have a degree in education, but I suspect you've undergone at least a decade and then some of your own time in the classroom. I think this more than qualifies you to adress what worked for you, and what didn't...and offer some ideas about what could have, or should have been different. I agree that curriculum content is not the whole equation, but would you agree that some things are better taught than others...at least a less of a waste of time perhaps? Would you agree that any informed citizen has a right, even a responsibility, to speak intelligently about what goes on Public Education classes? Or should we leave it to the experts?
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| Why: I believe the problem lies in the fact that our students have less opportunity to further their education after graduation. And that means less hope. And that means less motivation. |
I agree. But I don't see hope and motivation as entirely linked to access to University or Graduate School (I'm not sure if that is your point). I think hope and motivation is linked to experiencing how newly aquired knowledge and skills can actually make a difference in their lives- and in the lives of their elder siblings and fellow classmates. I think if students experience positive growth in school, they will grow to trust the education process and seek learning opportuniites their entire lives. Some won't, but I think most will. These learning opportunities will not be restricted to the Academy or Graduate Seminar...but will involve the rest of their lives adapting to new challenges and shifting environments as they grow and become adult citizens in their communities. I think students will find far more hope when they see their elders engaged in lifelong learning: pursuing practical needs as well as personal passions. I think part of the obstacle is a dominant economic system that simply does not value a truly educated public, and works against the kinds of public education that will actually produce many of those changes.
By truly educated I mean a citizen able to participate in the public domain, democratically, with all the liberties and freedoms as well as obligations and responsibilities this requires. I think the dominant economic system is one that pits economic classes against each other, providing valuable knowledge and skill to an elite few while relegating the great majority to rudimentary competency, geared to keep social inequalities fundamentally in place, and hope for a better world out of the equation. Most students find Public Education meaningless and hopeless because it is, for most students. For a few it is a thrilling and exciting time of discovery, development of valuable skills, and learning to interact in a world full of potential wealth and opportunity. I think this makes sense when the vast inequalities that arise from our dominant economic system are seen for what they are. |
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Why
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Posts: 22
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:00 pm Post subject:
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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. But for those who would aspire to become more but have no hope because a secondary education is out of reach, how much do you really think they are going to get out of their public education? I don't think more secondary education is the answer at all. I don't think focus on secondary education as a determination for public cirriculum is appropriate. But, I think accessibility to secondary education has a huge impact on the motivation of the student in the public education system. I think given access a lot more of our students would aspire to be more than "the best Barnes and Noble cashier I can be" (not that I'm knocking being a cashier) and would get more out of their public education. There isn't a sense anymore that a child can grow up to be anything they want to be. It's just a matter of cause and effect, not one of making the cirriculum more suitable for the student who wishes to further their education.
The educational debt is exactly the barricade I am referring to when I say "access" So you have a bunch of wealthy kids wasting time on useless majors so they can spend 4 years partying and living off their parents, while there are thousands of kids who would love to go to college and cannot because there is no money, so they give up before they even graduate and end up with a useless public education.
But I think there is more at stake here than whether or not the "average" person needs a college education (probably not). As long as access is limited by affordability, it is going to be more and more difficult for this country to compete in areas that do require a significant education, i.e., science and technology. There is one place you can get an affordable college education....prison.... |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
Bronze Contributor
Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 1430
Gender:
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| Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:42 pm Post subject:
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| MA: I think those values and skills (remedying the mistakes and failings of society) should be fostered and passed on whenever possible, but I think formal schooling systems are gravely inadequate to that task, and have a tendency to actually pervert that goal |
I think many are gravely inadequate, and are actually working to perpetuate the worst mistakes of earlier generations, preparing the way for a worse than bleak future. I think Public Education should pursue values and skills that will translate into solutions for real world problems: if Schools are not up to the task, we have a responsibility to change them. I do not think reducing them to the least dangerous denominator (which is what I think you are trying to do) is a solution. Danger is unavoidable. I would rather we seek the values and skills we want, knowing full well the danger- then settle for values we know won't make any difference. I think education should make a difference.
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| MA: if for no other reason than that students have a tendency to rebel against any values that are instilled in them by an involuntary educational institution. |
This is a valid point. Students will always display degrees of dissidence and rebellion against structures they deem illegitimate and forced. I think the spirit of rebellion that says "no" to illegitimate authority and coercive systems is healthy, and a sign of intelligence. I think that much of this dissidence is not at all authority, but towards authority that leads to nothing: demands that go nowhere and ludicrous rules and guidelines. I think real rapport and true solidarity between Student and Teacher begins when real problems are given consistent respect: and worthy solutions are found that actually make a difference in the Student's life. I think questions of value and meaning are terribly intresting to most students, who are really quite fascinated with the "why" and "how come" of life's many conundrums and tragedies. They want to be hopeful and are hungry for a future worthy of their sacrifice. I think Public Education will only work (avoiding the grave inadequacies you mention) if hope and value and meaning are taken seriously in the classroom. Otherwise, it's just bean counting and maybe doing as least as good as the old man did...or, if they have any sense at all, its a way to waste time awaiting the inevitable crash of everything worth living for.
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| MA: Which sounds an awful lot to me like you're interested in transforming public education into an ideological think tank. |
Thinking about ideologies and how they influence social structures and economic systems and cultural patterns...not a bad use of public funds, I say! Not only thinking, but imagining and constructing the ideology they want to live by: what values are worth carrying into the future, which should be abandoned, and what sorts of institutions will help them to be experienced in ways that make a difference? I think these are excellent questions for Public Education.
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| MA: And they can decorate bulletin boards with colored construction paper, which is fun. |
Fun is no minor ingredient in Public Education. Good Teachers will be wise to keep fun always close to the surface of instruction and learning. As for bulletin boards, lets hope they include information about where my plate of food began, how far it has travelled, what resources were needed for its journey, how long it took to get here, and what sorts of people and the kinds of labor and planning it took to make it all happen. Let's hope the colorful construction paper includes graphs and charts, images and maps, examples of technologies, soil chemistry, water distribution, seed harvesting, packaging, merchandising, advertising, and the rules of economics that determine what the true cost of a pound of beef steak really is. And lets hope that bulletin board contains information about the pea patch the entire school has lent a hand in building, preparing, planting, harvesting, and brining to culinary delight.
And, considering the eventual collapse of the fossil fuel system and its impact on how food gets from field to plate: there may be no more important skill than learning, precisely, what it takes to feed oneself, family and community. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
Gender:
Location: decentralized
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:25 am Post subject:
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| Why wrote: |
| 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. |
I'm not talking about aspiration. The reality of the situation is that there are a lot of people coming out of college who will take on that sort of job because the jobs they thought they were training for were unavailable. Moreover, competition over those kinds of jobs has grown to the point that people who lack college degrees are finding it increasingly more difficult to compete in the job market. What I'm getting at is that more and more it's becoming a prerequisite that you have a college degree, even for jobs that don't require any skill set specific to a college education.
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| But, I think accessibility to secondary education has a huge impact on the motivation of the student in the public education system. |
That's, in part, because they recognize that the public educational system is currently geared towards prepping students for secondary education. It's practically broadcast to them in everything from the emphasis on standardized testing to the pride with which schools display the statistics of how many of their students go on to some form of college. Give students a convincing reason to think that compulsory education is essential regardless of whether or not it leads to more formal education, and they may be inclined to treat it accordingly. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
Gender:
Location: decentralized
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:35 am Post subject:
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| I wrote: |
| I think those values and skills (remedying the mistakes and failings of society) should be fostered and passed on whenever possible, but I think formal schooling systems are gravely inadequate to that task, and have a tendency to actually pervert that goal |
| DH wrote: |
| I think many are gravely inadequate... |
"Many" obscures the fact that I mean intrinsically inadequate.
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| I do not think reducing them to the least dangerous denominator (which is what I think you are trying to do) is a solution. |
I've spelled out what I'm trying to do, but I don't think you're really paying attention. My intent is not to make schools "less dangerous" (although, it does strike me that you're trying to make them workhouses for the sorts of ideas you like to call dangerous). Rather, I think they're only justified by whatever potential they may have to outfit the student for the sort of society in which they can expect to live. Once they've acclimated themselves to a reasonably well-informed sense of what society is, they can go about figuring out whether or not they can tolerate that society.
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| I would rather we seek the values and skills we want, knowing full well the danger- then settle for values we know won't make any difference. |
I'm all for that. I just don't think it's fair to make your kids do it for you. |
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Why
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Posts: 22
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| Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 11:22 am Post subject:
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Competition and perception are certainly obstacles in today's job market, and I don't think that is going to change. There is a popular opinion that the college experience is just as important in one's development as the education itself. And there you have the college graduate with the useless degree beating out the high school graduate, who may have been working retail for any number of years, for an entry level sales job. A high school graduate is perfectly capeable of performing the duties of, say, a grocery store clerk, training to advance in the company and eventually managing the store if that is what he or she wishes to do. But, if someone walks in off the street with a college degree and applies for the job of store manager it is likely they will get the job over the person who has been toiling and training for years in-house. The college-educated person is simply perceived as having more value. And that is something I don't see changing. And it adds to the hoplessness of the person who either cannot or does not want to go to college. And again, it doesn't matter what the cirriculum is because you aren't going to change the social bias if it is based on the perception that the college education has as much to do with the experience as the education.
Another reason college education is pushed so hard is that college is big business. A lot of money flows through that system and there is no way that is going away! |
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