As I saw the topic for this cycle and read through
the material, it really resonated with me.
The funny thing about this topic is that I was just telling my student
teacher, that I should to quit teaching American History and teach a class
titled “Life Lessons/Personal Etiquette”.
In this class, students would learn important idioms to live by and
proper social etiquette they need for life such as “when things get hard, try
your best”, “you are in control of your own destiny”, and when someone gives
you a compliment, you acknowledge them and thank them politely. Although these items may seem common sense to
you and I, today’s generation is lacking them.
I feel that most students are not being taught important lessons for
life the way that they should be. As a
parent myself, it makes me feel like these important skills and lessons for
life should take precedence over the history content. Of course, this is fiction and I cannot
totally dismiss the history content, so instead I must find a way to integrate
them together. An example of this integration
would be teaching the life lesson “try your best” while using examples of
famous people in history who made important decisions for our country while
“trying their best” to solve major problems.
In
the New York Time’s article about the Quest to Learn school, you can see the
importance of student-centered and student-directed learning. In this type of environment, you find a
balance between traditional content and required standards with modern
unconventional styles of learning and student engagement. I agree with the fact
that you need to find a balance between traditional and progressive education,
as well as do whatever it takes to get students involved and excited about
their learning. If moving students beyond textbooks and into the world of
gaming gets it done, I am for whatever it takes.
Geoff
Mulgan’s talk on Studio Schools in England follows this same idea of practical,
hands-on knowledge rather than traditional education that most students find
boring. It is no secret that most
people, not just students, learn by doing,
and so it comes as no surprise that students would like schools and
environments that would give them more opportunities to do real world
things. Personally, I like this type of
school better than the Quest to Learn
schools as they seem to focus more on career training and less on video gaming;
which seems more practical.
The
Hirsch Jr. piece was confusing to me. On
one hand I agree with him that we need more progressive education and not just
educationally accepted norms that are not working. On the other hand, he talks
about how there is not enough uniformity in education about what is being
taught and uses American history as an example.
In that area I disagree with him because if a teacher is covering their
state standards as they should be, we should all be covering the same topics/
time periods in our history class. I know that is not always the case, but if
you are doing your job properly as an educator it should be.
With
the standards based, high stakes testing world that we live in, I do believe
that it would be extremely difficult to carry-out and measure these new
out-of-the-box schools and progressive ways of teaching, but I don’t think that
means we shouldn't do them. If these Quest to Learn schools and Studio
Schools are what will work for kids in education then let’s make it happen. I think that education is not a
one-size-fits-all item and that is why having all students tested on the same
material is so hard, and why having state mandated curriculum is so difficult. Like anything else in life, we need to find a
balance and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think that in the world
of education, it is unfair to say that we have been doing everything wrong, but we can definitely do more right.
Hi Kristi,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post!
I agree, we can do a lot more right in education. But it does make me want to sit in on ED Hirsch's class. Does he do everything right? What gives him the authority to write with such confidence? (BTW, that chapter is from 1988, meaning he was writing at a slightly different moment in time; but his ideas haven't changed too much over the past 25 years).
What we can say about Quest to Learn is that it holds the line on test scores (after all, the students score the same as their peers), but that it most likely wildly increases student engagement and love of learning. And of course, the students aren't sitting around playing video games all day. They mostly seem to be solving problems, using technology, in collaboration with others. So we would hope that these students do better on those types of "soft" skills that are increasingly important in the 21st century.
So even though we live in this world of testing, such approaches might actually improve what we say matters, as well as a whole host of things that we forget also matter!
I think it's interesting that you are infusing a lot of etiquette into the curriculum. And important. Let's face it: all teachers teach values. Hopefully, those are the values of a democratic, open-minded, compassionate but also tough-minded society. That's what history was actually put into the schools to do. I think Hirsch gets that in his way, but he forgets that the values of American society are always in conflict with each other, and always need resolution at a personal level. That is, hopefully, what a curriculum sets out to help a kid do. Seems like you are doing a good job of it as well.
Thanks again for your post!
Kyle