HW 46 - Research and Writing

Dumbing Us Down by John Talyor Gatto highlights the major problems behind the curriculum of compulsory school that school can never be parallel with education. Instead of learning given materials by the “experts” in a community that deals with participation and engagement, what teachers taught are the “seven lessons” that is behind the curriculum that will shape the students to conform to the social orders and economy for twelve years. Not only have that locked students in an institution as an “involuntary network”, it dehumanizes the students in varies of ways that they will never be fully human from the blockage of access to a real community.

This relates to my topic because Gatto reveals a very typical vision of the truth purpose of schooling. In the first chapter, he described the seven lessons that are being taught to students that is the “only curriculum truly learned” by students. Instead of telling the reader that school’s purpose are getting a good job, or for your future, Gatto went above all to tell the reader that school is really just a mechanical institution that makes people inhumane and to conform in a network, not community. Real education is to find the meaning in learning the materials in a way that make sense to your own life as combining transcendent and immanent. Although Gatto did not really criticize specifically what kind of subjects should be teach in school, he did map out the general issues that he saw from his thirty years of teaching focusing on the curriculum of compulsory schooling. Not only by pointing out the problems of schooling, he opened the readers’ vision to search for an alternative of the situation that is going on at school. He direct the students, parents, and teachers, to realize what they are doing at school might not be simply what they are, is way more complicated than just going to school and learn, or going to school and teach, or sending kids to school for a better future.

Sidenote: the seven lessons from the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling

1. Confusion (The natural order of real life is violated by heaping disconnected facts on students.)
2. Class Position (Children are locked together into categories where the lesson is that “everyone has a proper place in the pyramid.”)
3. Indifference (Inflexible school regimens deprive children of complete experiences.)
4. Emotional dependency (Kids are taught to surrender their individuality to a “predestined chain of command.”
5. Intellectual dependency (One of the biggest lessons schools teach is conformity rather than curiosity.)
6. Provisional self-esteem (“The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests, is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials.”)
7. One can’t hide (Schooling and homework assignments deny children privacy and free time in which to learn from parents, from exploration, or from community.)

One of Gatto’s ideas in the seven lessons was indifference. “When the bell rings I insist they drop whatever it is we have been doing and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch….Bells inoculates each undertaking with indifference.” This portrays a typical life experience going to school, is to learn that nothing really matters. While students are enjoying their lessons and just got into the mode of focusing, they have to move on eventually and stop learning. Sure, people say we can come back to it tomorrow. But all these interruption will just ruin the environment to learn. Going to school is mainly to learn and keep our curiosity about the materials being given in relation to meaning of life, but it turned out that all students learn is conformity to the curriculum being given that shaped our habit to lose own individuality. The purpose of school did not only turn out that is to dumb us down, it also awake the ones who try to look for a better purpose to go to school to make an effort on making a difference about the school curriculum.

John Taylor Gatto did not really offer an optimistic purpose for students to go to school by telling the reader that’s what they have been learned (the seven lessons), but he did alert the readers that we shouldn’t just accept what school is doing to us but try to work together to make a difference. As my earlier topic question of searching for a satisfied reason to go to school, I realize that there is no such answer after reading this book, because school itself is corrupted by dumbing us down. “We have abundant evidence that each is readily self-taught in the right setting and time”. Gatto is arguing that each of us have the ability to teach ourselves and by setting ourselves to learn when we are motivated, we can learn way faster than spending more time at school, but less. By saying that, I am not saying that school is not the right setting, but the curriculum is the central impact on school that makes school a bad setting to learn. Students are the majorities that form the institution, therefore I do not believe school itself as a setting matters, but the way or habit we learn shaped by curriculum.

Although I do agree with Gatto's idea of spending too much time at school, I also doubt that by forming such freedom for students will cause them to procrastinate and form the inability to form multi-task. There is a chance that students will never feel like learning or never motivate themselves to learn. But in either way, I realize the main purpose of school is not simply to learn, but pick or modify the curriculum that best fits you in order to benefit yourself out of the most through schooling. Throughout the whole book, John Taylor Gatto did offer lots of the ideas that are true to me based on my own experience at school. But after all, who can determine what is best for every single student? By realizing these purposes of going to school to learn these seven lessons, I come to a conclusion that students should know what is best for themselves. Without the students, school is never an institution. Therefore, students should be responsible for finding their best way to learn other than just accepting what school has shape us into.

HW 45 - More Big Thoughts on School

E.D.Hirsch was “campaign for cultural literacy”, which means he believed that people are suppose to be familiar with a wide range of things such as “historical reference”, “street signs”, “use of trivia in creation of a communal language”…etc. in order to communicate and understand complex comprehensions. All these trivia are within the dominant culture, and is required to know in order to have the basics of knowledge to make sense of everything in the world. In addition to that, Hirsh wrote a book in 1986 named “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know” to help people, mostly immigrants or people who do not have the chance to learn the same thing as most of the normal Americans learned as a way to catch up. One of his quotes described, “not every child is learning about James Monroe in the first grade” reveals his perspective on education is all relying on background knowledge in order to move on to the next level. Although many people disagree with him and described it as “the culture wars have ended”, Hirsh’s belief is not completely unreasonable compared to Theodore E. Sizer’s theory on education even though his technique to learn is “mere rote learning”, in other words transcendent educational paradigm.

On the other hand, Sizer formulated the idea of “education must rooted in a kind of democratic pluralism”. He believed that school should measured students’ abilities based on the standards that they shaped themselves. As he argued, “schools should abandon one-size-fits-all education methods like standardized tests, grading and even the grouping of students into classes by age”. He believed students should be able to ask good questions and often practice more critical thinking using the habits of mind. Instead of following the “national standards” that Hirsh suggests, Sizer thought that will just lead to more tests that might not measured the strength of the students. Instead, he believed that “when smart, devoted people are given room to shaped standards, students succeed”. This means students should not just memorized what the teacher is given during lessons, but be able to come up with their own thinking and make sense of things to value the meaning of learning. Students should be open to form their standards depending on where they are at, and tests or grades sometimes really do not mean anything other than measuring how much the student memorize the materials. “Inspirations, hunger; these are qualities that drives good schools” as he stated in Horace’s Compromise shows that school is not just about learning the basics, but coming up with your own motivation to learn, the desire to know, and make sense of things out of curiosity, in other words immanent educational paradigm.

Although Sizer and Hirsh’s ideas for ideal school are completely the opposite of each other, I think that both of them are actually directing to the same direction-contributing by forming better education for students. When asked about their grade-level, both are completely different whereas Hirsh is mostly focusing on elementary, and Sizer is mostly on high school. Sizer said “students should be able to read and know basic number facts by the end of the first grade” and Hirsh stated that “students should leave school as well-informed skeptics, able to ask question as a matter of habit”. This shows that although they have very different ideas about school, they are not even directing to the same targets other than is for school in general. But discussing about methods, I think these two contradicting ideas could actually adapt to work together.

Based on my own personal experience, I believe combining the two will help the students the most. But all in all, it depends on the student’s own situation. As for me, studying earlier in China for close to 10 years, everything is “rote learning”. Not only being forced to memorize the whole passage for Chinese, math never explain the formulae but being forced to remember for the convenience of problem solving. This might sound absurd to a lot of people, but after immigrated to U.S., math is never on my way and it makes more sense as I learn along because of the years of memorization. I am no longer being force to memorize the whole passage that means nothing after all, but everything, especially math/science starts to make more sense for me as a passionate learner after attending to schools in U.S. (I don't know it has to do with age or the different types of teaching method) This supports my argument that combining the two is actually beneficial for the student in my case. There is certain thing that needs to be forced to remember such as the multiplication table or other basic knowledge as Hirsh claimed. Without it, nothing makes sense as you learn along. In addition to that, learning how to make sense of what you learn requires you to understand the materials that is being given first, then tries to understand them as a whole of answering the questions with "why". However, I do not fully agree with Hirsh's idea of just providing materials to students so they can memorized it without fully understanding them for subjects like history or social studies.

As for other people, I think it depends on their way of learning. Some people learn it better by rote and they have the ability to make sense of it as they learn. But as for my situation, although I don’t fully get it, by knowing how to solve things, I can make sense of it afterwards. This shows that maybe we can use Hirsh’s theory for the early childhood schooling, and then switch to Sizer’s to develop habits of minds after having the basic knowledge of things so people can build from it. Also in many cases, tests do not measured the students’ ability of the materials, and students should find a school that fits their own habits of learning in order to get the most out of their learning experience at school. Such as SOF, people do exhibitions instead of taking regents to measure their abilities. Although grading and tests are hard to avoid, and they are useful in many ways to sort students in the society, students should be responsible and have the right to choose the way they want to learn. If the student only memorize the material for tests but never understands it, then they should know they need to pick a school that believes in Sizer’s idea. But in either way, I believe the best way is to combine both and find the balance between the two. I think it is necessary to learn certain basic knowledge of things, but at the same time be able to use the habits of mind to develop our critical thinking to know the meaning/significance of knowledge. Simply only following one or the other will not be as helpful as combining the ideas to help the students to achieve as much as they can.

HW 44 - Big Expectations for School

Obama is demonstrating the responsibility of being a student in this society, and our job is to learn and go to school, not only for us, but for the country. If we do well at school, we are on the road to attain success and be able to graduate from college. Our responsibility is not only to do well at school; we have to consider the country as a whole. We have to contribute by doing our best at school, and later on to be “something” that will benefit the country. “I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make?” In my own opinion, Obama’s speech is supportive but in a bad way that sounds more like a manipulation of hard workers for school as a factory instead of a place to achieve your dream as a valuable experience in your life. He depicts school as a challenging place for students and for him by getting up in the early morning to study when he was little. But this is the only way to success in his opinion, and we should never take any shortcuts to success like the ones we saw in movies. We shall never give up, and just keep climbing for the fruit at...... school.

In his perspective, successful means to be able to graduate from college and has something to offer to this country and lastly “make us all proud”. In order to do that, school as an institution is the place where we should get started. His argument was strong that before we try anything at school, we will not know what ourselves are good at. However, he gives an image of all the students as workers for this big factory, or puppets for the country instead of fulfilling our own dreams to be self motivated. His major reason for all students to go to school is not to let the country down. “When you give up on yourself, you give up on your country”. (WOW) As a student, I take this like a threat more than an encouragement. No matter how supportive Obama tries to feel for the students by sharing lots of the difficult experiences of himself and others, he never really seem to focus on how much pressure school has given to students other than telling the students to value the opportunity to be able to go to school. “So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down.” We as individuals in this society should aim for Obama’s definition of success other than fulfilling our own desire. Furthermore, we shall never think for ourselves, but the others as a big family – unity.

“But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.” My future? My destiny? This is totally a false statement. Where I am right now, whether doing well or failing at school, as relating to what he said earlier, it does determine where I’ll end up. Simply, school is the only choice and in this case, Obama refuse to suggest any other alternatives than going into this institution for success. My future or the country’s future? As relating back to all the films we watched in class, Obama’s speech totally neglected some of the students that might not ready or want the “escape ladder”. Is this a speech or a threat or just some big expectations from the country or is just simply pressure on students to know what to expect in their future?

Similarly, in the texts of "Where the Bar Ought to be" and "Liberal Arts education: why it still matters", both follows the same idea of school just as Obama's view of the purpose of this institution. From the Liberal Arts article, it suggests the importance of this major. “The most straightforward answer is liberal arts colleges, at their best, provide an exceptionally effective learning environment for developing the kind of intellectual power and propensity for action that the world needs to tackle the daunting challenges we face.” Simply, going to school will benefits the country or the world as a whole and it always seems relevant and correct that is the way to start. Furthermore, going to school seems to provide an image of guarantee getting a job to start our career. Just like the article “Where the Bar Ought to be” describing Ms.Kenney’s core things for her kids, “I wanted them to be wholesome in character. I wanted them to be compassionate and to see life as a responsibility to give something to the world. I wanted them to have a sophisticated intellect. I wanted them to be avid readers, the kind of person who always has trouble putting a book down. And I raised them to be independent thinkers, to lead reflective and meaningful lives.” All the texts including Obama’s speech is about responsibility of being a student. It almost seems as a commitment when going to school, that someday we will graduate and starts to contribute what we can to the world or country, not really enhance the importance of fulfilling the self.

I personally did not fully disagree of what the texts suggests about school, but I think there is some simple alternative that all of them fail to suggests in the article/speech. I feel like all these texts are only suggesting the benefit of their self or long term interest as for the country more than the importance of getting the student to be self-motivated. I think school primarily is for students to learn and soon to start their career. However, I think school should also suggest the value of experience at school as everyday life experience. Other than deciding for the students such as “there is no excuse for neglecting the homework…etc.” or like Ms.Kenney suggesting the five cores, I think they should look at the whole situation as considering the student’s perspective. They act like they understand what is going on at school because they are students once before, but they totally neglect student’s own self worth and life experience as a whole.

I think school should teach students not only to be trained to be “something”, but suggesting the importance of having these great experience. Why do we always have to aim for success other than looking at the situation that we are experiencing during the present? Obama claimed that he is successful because he failed a lot. This shows how most people at school are being taught to look forward to the benefit of the situation other than putting more worth or value into their present state of what they are actually experiencing. Simply shaping the students without their own self motivation to be there will just worsen the problem of increasing hatred for school. Other than trying so hard to shape everybody to benefit the country as a whole, why can’t we learn how to determine our self worth at school by looking at the present? I believe learning to value our life experience at school, or anywhere else, should be top priorities and that’s why we are there at wherever we are in the situation. Only focusing on majority success for the country’s own benefits will just letting the students down, then the country. We all might be somehow a tool, but the very least, we should and needed to be valuable.

HW 43 - Journaling About School

Lying in Bed

Earliest Memories

I thought about having to write an essay about who we want to be when we grow up, and I said a teacher because I love grading with a red pen. Then I thought about how much I love school and enjoy going to school when I was little. But when things get harder and there is more homework, I transit to dislike school. I never really hate school because of grades; I am there really just to learn. I barely compare with others; I just meet my own standard. Another thing that I thought of was that I never in the going to school mode, since my mom skip pre-k and pre school for me, I always learn with people who are 1 or 2 years older than me that I am unable to catch up. I am always confused and don’t understand my classmates and super immature. Some other things that I thought about was getting lost in my school don’t know where the class was when the bell rang and having to clean the classroom with classmates and clean the school to compete for some awards that looks like a label that will be put on the wall of the classroom.

Strongest Images

Got hit by my math teacher in 4th grade, which is also the vice principal of my school at that time, because I don’t know how to answer some 2 digit multiply by 2 digit math problems in 3 seconds. I still remember how nervous everybody is, and afraid the teacher will choose our role to get up and answer those small wooden blackboard math problems. And he did choose our role one day, and almost the whole row are unable to answer it at the speed he wanted, so we have to get online in the front desk where the teacher teaches, and put out our hand to be hit by teachers with those black boards. Sometimes he would break those boards in half also. Then after everybody gets hit, he will start his lesson.

There’s always pressure going to school, afraid to be late for school, have to memorize the whole reading passages and present it to the class representative for a grade, afraid wearing the wrong uniform, afraid getting yell or sent to the teacher’s office, a strongest image of a whole stack of tests to practice for the final. There’s always a thing to worry about at school.

My mom transfers me to another school because of a teacher, and then transfers me back to my old school because of a teacher. I don’t have issue being friends with other, but dislike talking in class because there’s a strong pressure. Having to raise your hand, and stand up from your seat to speak. Also thought of being a homework collector for my row, and everybody has to give their homework to me, or else I will mark it down for teacher reference. I am also a leader who has to stand on stairs with another student to pick on students who did not wear the red scarf to write their names on our mark book. There’s status in school, and people who often have badge, or other types of pins on their arm are the ones who receives more respect. There’s also a class rank in the back with names.

Primary and Secondary Feeling

I thought about how I used to be very passionate going to school, but when I get to 8th grade to high school, I start to hate school more. I hate dealing friendship problems and having to compare with the others. I hate getting low grades, and start to feel more stressful going to school. I also thought about how much I hate waking up so early not even ready to start my day, but being force to go to school or else my parents will be upset.

HW 42 - More Research and More Thinking (Significance)

What is school for? Parents made the decision to send their kids to school without putting too much thought into this question. Kids have no idea what they are doing at school other than being shape by the system. Then most of us learned that school is good for us, is for our future. Is it true that the first 20+ years of our life at school is simply for our future? We barely can see our future, perhaps predictable through patterns, but what is the “future”? If it is, why we complained so much about school? School suggests such a vague answer to the students that most of us will sure believe it and take it without a question.

Many of us including myself always think school is for our future, as John said like “stepping stones”, but we don’t know where we are going. Is life really predictable? Maybe by following such pattern, having good grades, leads to another good school, then maybe a high chance to graduate in a good college, lastly maybe having good job, great life pursuing happiness. It seems everything is predictable by going to school, and is easy for schools to trick us that school is really for our future. Then what about the present? Do we live our lives just looking at what is in front of us, but not questioning ourselves “what are we doing NOW?” I believe that if we keep looking forward to what is going to happen later; we are not living at the moment most of the time. School is there to tell us instant happiness will not last? We should not enjoy life until we get to the future? If keep stepping these stones, is it an endless trail due to human desire? Or we will get to the last stone, and have no idea what to do but just land on it until the stone sink? School taught me to look forward to the fruit without guarantee, but never teach me how to value these experiences in the institution.

As a student, I go to school and still at school. Future, my future, same - school. This pattern sure is predictable, and sure is for my future. But I barely see this happening in my own life. School seems to provide me a blur image that is waiting for me to remove the fog. I don’t know and have no idea why I am at school. Moreover, I always imagine what happens if I don’t go to school. Although my parents never pressure me to get good grades but supportive, they also do understand that grades do not determine my future in terms of getting a good job. If spending so many years at school might not lead us to anywhere but only left us with some worthless experience memories, why are we at school? Why don’t we learn something until we find our interest, and work hard on that to find a job and be an expert? Why after having these basics, we are still encouraged to go to school?

Not being able to answer why I am at school even if I don’t like it gives me a complex feeling. If I have no idea what I am doing right now, but seeing some blur image of my future, life seems like joke to me every day. I don’t know what I am doing right now; I also do not know what I am doing in the future with some bubbles dreams of different possibilities. If this is the case, will I ever have a clear thought or answer of my own existent other than going with the flow? I don’t want answers like I go to school because my mom told me to, or is for my future. I want something that can satisfy my question, something that is clear and certain. Simply future, is just too vague for me, at least. Especially when I know my parents sacrifice so much for three of us (brother, sister, me) to move to the U.S. for better education, going to school better not be a joke for me. Why my parents chosen to have such a hard life in the U.S. for us to have better education instead of having a stable upper middle class life in China? Was this changed for school really worth it? What is school for?