Friday, September 17, 2010
The Purpose Behind it All
I created this blog as an assignment in one of my classes for my master's degree. I decided to use it as a tool to help me with a different assignment for a different class. The purpose is to create MY EDUCATIONAL THEORY. This will be usefull to me in the future, because it will be my educational theory that will guide the decisions I make and the practices I use as an educator and a future educational administrator. Please feel free to comment and share your insights. I hope to have thought provoking discussions that will keep my ideas in perspective.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Food for thought… especially as it peratins to the declining population and waning quality of shop (and agriculture) classes in secondary schools nationwide:
ReplyDelete"So what advice should one give to a young person? If you have a natural bent for scholarship; if you are attracted to the most difficult books out of an urgent need, and can spare four years to devote yourself to them, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. But if this is not the case; if the thought of four more years sitting in a classroom makes your skin crawl, the good news is that you don’t have to go through the motions and jump through the hoops for the sake of making a decent living. Even if you do go to college, learn a trade in the summers. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems or low-level ‘creative.’ To heed such advice would require a contrarian streak, as it entails re-jecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable."
–Matthew B. Crawfor Ph.D.
His is a pretty pragmatic perspective. What kind of implications might this realistic way of thinking have on a public education system that functions almost entirely on teaching abstract principles?
P.S. best of luck with the blog.
Wow, hmmm, I don't entirely agree with this thinking. Reducing public ed with such a sweeping generalization as "teaching abstract principles" seems unfair. I know that I try very, very hard (8th grade English) to focus on real-world application- reading and writing. While there are A LOT of hoops in college, if one has the right focus while in college, he/she can constantly be wondering how the learning might translate into real-world work. Shop is important. As a former general contractor, I'm shocked at how few people can wire a ceiling fan, replace a switch, install cabinet hardware etc. Shop is definitely real world. We certainly do need more real world application. We also need more real world math/finance and less abstract algebra.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite teachers was (Josh Jackson) my middle school English instructor. I’m now tri-lingual and read nearly 100 books annually… so to say the least, the course appealed to my sensibilities. But what he did well is the exception rather than the rule. He drew on my living passion for words rather than simply foisting some dead mechanized version of the subject down my throat. The former cultivates a desire to learn, and I’m afraid that the latter is the status-quo in education. His was pragmatism. One only need read anything written in Middle English to realize that the mechanics of the language change, and rather than being bogged down in the mire of (abstract) technicalities our public education system would be more effective in interesting young people in the content and language as a means of expression. I think there is proof enough in the fact that the product of our public education system is largely a rhetoric worshipping “thus saith the media” people with little concern for the absence of objective information. Ask the average 18 year old who William Faulkner is and he’ll likely reply, “Captain Kirk on Star Trek.” But he is prone to be well versed in the “Diary of a Wimpy Teenage Vampire.” Please don’t mistake this for a jab at teachers. I don’t mean to imply that the fundamental problem is a crisis of conscience. Quite the opposite, actually… between socioeconomic systematic failure and the lack of guidance in the home, I believe that real potential for change is in the hands of instructors. Pardon the cliché reference, but if you’re a “Mr. Holland’s Opus” type teacher… then goodonya, man. I submit, though, that you’re a rarity, friend. And further, you’re fighting an uphill battle against a system that idealizes quantifiable processes and makes a martyr of craftsmanship.
ReplyDeleteSorry to keep rambling John, but that's what I do :). This poem by Pound is spot on my school of thought.
ReplyDeleteThe Logical Conclusion
When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall 'baaa' on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;
When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
When there shall be nothing to research
But the notes of annoted notes,
And Baalam's ass shall inquire
The price of imported oats;
Then no one shall tell him the answer
For each shall know the one fact
That lies in the special ass-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the ass shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look