Education is Politics - SHOR

"On the other hand, education is a social experience for tens or millions of students who come to class with their own dreams and agenda."

I do believe that education in schools do develop one’s social skills. Interacting with other people, especially your own age, is a way of learning. Also interacting with other develops communication skills to be fully functioning successful adults. This social experience is something a student learns during their first few year in school.

"Participation is the most important place to begin because student involvement is low in traditional classrooms and because action is essential to gain knowledge and develop intelligence."

Participation is very important in education. It’s important for both the teacher and the student. It shows the teacher that the student is engaged in learning and whether the answer right or wrong they are still making the effort to learn. For the student, participation keep them focus and active in a lesson. This is necessary to develop learning skills. It also is a way one gains knowledge from participating their own ideas and also listening to other’s ideas. Students learn a lot from their peer therefore participation is important for education in schools.  

"Situated, multicultural pedagogy increases the chance that students will feel ownership in their education and reduces the conditions that produce their alienation."

Learning about multicultural is important aspect in education. In today’s diverse society it is beneficial to all to learn about one another’s culture. This will allow students expanded their horizons of another culture as well as feeling connected when learning about their own. Also with this it would allow students to be more accepting to one another, to realize that people come from all over with different beliefs but that does not make them less important. This is important that children learn this at an earlier age therefore they’re more accepting.

I did enjoy this reading. I found it very informative about how to approach thing in a class. It also taught me problems to avoid. I agree with shor’s ideas and opinions.  

Tracking: Why Schools Need to Take Another Route - OAKES

OVERVIEW:

I fully enjoyed this article. It brought up a lot of great point about tracking in school. It allowed me to see both sides of the issue, and the positives and negatives about each. I do believe that changes should be made to the tracking system in order for equality for all students.

“Moreover, the nature of these differences suggests that students who are placed in high-ability group gave access to far richer schooling experiences than other students. This finding helps explain, at least in part, why it is that tracking sometimes seems to “work” for high-ability students and not for others.”

This is unfair for low-ability students for obvious reasons. If classes are divided by learning ability there should not be discrimination of classes getting less money and fewer amounts of the best teachers. It is wrong. All different learning classes should be equally divided with materials and concepts they must learn.

“In low-ability classes, for example, teachers seem to be less encouraging and more punitive, placing more emphasis on discipline and behavior and less on academic learning.”  

This is something that I have personal witnessed at my tutoring. While I am in the classroom as a whole, the less-ability students are more focus to the lesson. But when it is time to break up and the less-able students going into another classroom the aid teacher and myself the students become more rowdy.  It is harder to keep the students focus and I find that a lot of the time is wasted to keep reminding them to stay on task.

“For teachers, evaluations might involve more private, individual questions, such as, “What did she learn?” rather than “How did she compare with others?””

In schools I feel like it is competitive between students. Scores and grades are everything. They determine how much you really know and understand. But to be compared to other students is unfair because everyone learn at different rates and are stronger in one subjects than others. I do like this idea that Oakes suggests to compare scores to the individual student alone, and focus on what they learned. I believe it is a more positive way of evaluating students. 

Race, Class, and Gender Why Students Fail - McLaren

“Ogbu draws attention to no less than seventeen behavioral categories that constricted for black students what it means to ‘act white’. These include speaking Standard English, working hard in school to get good grades, being on time, and so on.”

For one I don’t believe these behavioral categories should be referred to acting white because there are many many whites who would not fit in all seventeen categories. Perhaps it should be called the “perfect student”?  Also getting everyone ethnic group to act like these categories would make them lose their native background, which is said in both this article and Rodriguez’s article “Aria”.

“I witnessed numerous daily incidents in which girls clashed physically and violently with boys or with other girls. In fact, some of the girls were among the school’s most menacing and gifted pugilists.”

‘Bein’ Tough: Bein’ Female’ was one of the larger sections. It showed that girls did have a lot more pressure in schools than boys. In the article it states that girls care a lot about the trend (e.g., hair, makeup, clothes) and the competition with other girls. Also girls have pressure with boys/relationship, not to give “too much” or too “cold”. Girls have higher standards than boys which more a lot of pressure on them, which may be a reason why girls are more popular.   I do agree with McLaren in this quote. Throughout my years in grade school I have witness or heard of more girl fights than boy fights. Girl fights are also more intense and vicious compared to boy fights.

“‘Psychologizing’ student failure amounts to blaming it on individual trait or series of traits (e.g., lack of motivation or low self-concept).”

I believe this has a major impact on a student’s success. It is not the student fault who has develop such traits but things within their background that has triggered them. Although many reasons may cause these traits, it is possible for the teacher to get behind them and eliminate them. That is what makes someone a good teacher. To be able to take a failing students and shaping them into a successful by learning about them and where these negative traits come from.