Empowering Education - Ira Shor

QUOTES

1.) He urged teachers to encourage students to question their experience in school: "You must arouse children's curiosity and make them think about school. For example, it's very important to begin the school year with a discussion of why we go to school. Why does the government force us to go to school? This would set a questioning tone and show the children that you  trust them and that they are intelligent enough at their own level, to investigate and come up with answers"(Meier 1990).

This is an important to question the children before going into school each year. I remember growing up my dad was talk to me about the importance of my education and why I must go to school. I would ask why are we forced to go to school. However my teachers never raised any of these questions until later in my schooling career. 

2) "Human beings do not invent the themselves in a vacuum, and society cannot be made unless people create it together. The goal, of this pedagogy are to relate personal growth to public life,

by developing strong skills, academic knowledge, habits or inquiry, and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and change."

Incorporating this quote to the article is important to remind the reader or teacher that everything taught is reflected onto the society. This is important to remember especially in order to better the world. 

3.)  "Large numbers of students are refusing to perform at high levels. de-moralizing the teachers who work with them. At time, performance strikes become organized resistance to authority, with leadership and articulate demands."

While I was in high school I remember performance strikes being a thing for standardize testing, students wrote petitions and had their parents sign papers allowing them to miss these test. This is similar to what the author is talking about because the students that refused the testing where given detention for not obeying the schools required tests. 

Tracking: Why Schools Need Another Route - Jeannie Oakes

             Reading Jeannie Oakes' article on "tracking" gave me a good sense of both the pros and the cons of the technique of tracking. Some parents believe that tracking could be good because their "smart" child would be placed with all the other smart children and therefore they would never get placed with the lower level, or misbehaved students. However this causes a problem of segregation in the schools. Many of the times these lower-performing students come from a low income family or are many times people of color. Tracking is another way that these students are faced with a greater disadvantage than their white, or wealthy pears.

              I connected my blog this week with Emily's blog, I have the same opinions on tracking as Emily does.  I feel as though tracking is not a good technique used in the school system and I feel as though we can find a better, more efficient way of teaching students. Emily says "Being integrated into a classroom with less and more successful students will help influence those who are less academic to do better." I agree with this idea, however I feel like the students who don't do as well may feel discouraged if they don't perform as well as the "smarter" students. But on the other hand tracking can be just as discouraging. 

         
          I too saw in my school that when students were separated in AP, honors, college prep, and essentials the higher up groups always thought they were better then say the college prep and essentials kids. What I did like that my high school did was the groups weren't set for every class for example, in math and english I was placed in the college prep classes and for science and my anatomy class I was in honors. So based on how well I did in a certain subject I was place in a certain level class. 

        Here is a video that I really enjoy watching and I can connect to this reading:

         The question I formed while reading the article was "what better system can the schools use to end this education segregation, and keep all students and parents happy?" is that even possible?