The Myth of Education and Empowerment - Essay Example

The Myth of Education and Empowerment In the early days of The No Child Left Behind Legislation it had a clause that said it was created to "close the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" and it identified the "haves" as white children and the "have nots" as blacks and Latino children. For some reason that part of the act has been changed because I could not find it exactly in those terms. I remember being a bit angry about this because it was as though once again, certain types of children were being singled out as not being able to achieve. Now the legislation says things a little bit differently, but it basically says the same thing. The purpose according to the U.S. Department of Education is: … Closing the achievement gap between high- and low-performing children, especially the achievement gaps between minority and nonminority students, and between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers (US Department of Education, Title 1, Section 101, 3). The legislation assumes that there is a gap that is based on race and they miss the point that there may be more to do with the way students are taught than it is to do with their race. The education system today is based on this legislation as all school districts met the challenge by instituting some form or standardized test. This type of testing works for some children but not for others. In so doing, they also created a situation where teachers, afraid for their jobs may change the scores here and there to keep their jobs. There are schools that are being closed because they are being blamed for their lack of achievement. Some parents are taking their children out of public school in favor of home schooling or private school. When I look at the aspects of school reform that are happening because of the NCLB legislation, I can understand that there are still several problems that are facing children today and part of it is that there is a systemic change coming that will influence how education is done. Before we move to that information it will be important to state the answer to the question for this essay. We have four very different people who are speaking about education. Each one of these people could be called "radical" in the way education is done today. We have Malcolm X who learned to read using the dictionary and Elijah Mohammeds teachings in the beginning. He read many books after that and become a brilliant scholar in his own right through learning thorough what some teachers call to day, "immersion." He immersed himself in the aspects of education that he wanted to learn. I am not sure that he would be the leader of the group, but I do think that he would agree with Gatto and that he would be for the idea that children could learn better in environments that were not encased in school. Mike Rose understands the plight of the student in public school in a general way. Because he found motivation through one teacher who came to his school, he would understand the unmotivated student and what it takes to get them motivated. He would understand that most of the time, the teacher who reaches out to a child in a different way than most teachers do are the ones that an individual student will work to impress. He would also understand the reasoning behind grades whether he promoted the use of them or not. I am not sure that he would be the leader of the group either. Richard Rodriguezs essay talks about the changes that happen to a student who does not have English as their first language. Of all the essays, his seems to be the most difficult to read because it is the most painful. He calls himself a "scholarship boy" and lets us know that the educational system has created challenges for him in many ways. At first, it is about learning that he is sometimes confused. He has to do most of the work on his own because his parents are unable to help. His parents havent attended school in the way he is going and they dont have the motivation to do it now. He then talks about how it was to transform from being totally immersed n his culture to coming out of that to go to school. He says that school changed him and he became ashamed of his parents and of their lack of opportunity. He also realizes that he wasnt the best student because he learned how to mimic instead of learning for himself; something that many students do today. A point that he makes that is important to education today is: [The scholarship boy] tends to over-stress the importance of examinations, of the piling-up of knowledge and of received opinions. He discovers a technique of apparent learning, of the acquiring of facts rather than of the handling and use of facts (Rodgriguez, 1981, 7). Most of the school system as it stands now looks for students like "the scholarship boy" because this is where the foundation of the school system as we know it today begins. It is structured for those students who can learn to take tests by regurgitating information that is often useless. The school system rewards this type of student with good grades. I think that Rodgriguez would be a co-leader with one of the other people because he would bring the immigrant perspective. It is this writers opinion that John Taylor Gatto would lead this group and that they would all come together to create a school that was motivating, open and centered on student learning. They would create something that was totally different than what public school is today because they would employ only teachers who were good at motivating children. They wouldnt use standardized tests but they would develop techniques that would allow students to learn more on their own. They would also create opportunities where students could explore their own ideas and help them create projects that were interesting. The reason that Gatto would probably lead is because of all the ideas his is the most radical. He understands that the biggest culprit in school is boredom and that the classes arent taught in a manner that is relevant to the student. It seems that he would keep the others on track and with Rodriguez as the co-leader; the group would stay on track. As we look at school reform it is important to note some of the things that all of these essayists have in common because these are links to the challenges with public school. All of the essayists learned outside the educational system except Rodriguez. His learning was in school because as an immigrant he was attempting to keep up with the rest of the children. They all found ways to motivate themselves and get past the school system. Therefore, the design they would implement would be something that engaged students from the beginning. There is a body of research that entertains the idea of engaging students and why this is important. Bomia et. al. (1997) said that student motivation "refers to a students willingness, need, desire and compulsion to participate in, and be successful in, the learning process" (qtd. in Brewster and Fager, 2000, 4). By the time students get to a public school setting, they have endured many years of being on their own and learning new things. These things were interesting and inspiring and learned primarily on their own. When they get to public school the process of conformity begins and they are to act and react a certain way to what is being taught. Brewster and Fager (2000) promote the idea that students need to be engaged or they turn off their minds to the classroom. "It only makes sense that the more interesting an assignment is, the more likely students are to immerse themselves in the task and stick with it through completion" (Brewster and Fager, 7). They go on to say that the teachers who are most successful, create activities that take into consideration the psychological and intellectual needs of their students. Bentley (1998) proposes that in students who underachieve are socially isolated from their peers who achieve. He says that without this interaction they are unable to reap the benefits of the interactions that make them a more rounded individual (74). He says that several issues contribute to this social isolation: 1. Students are expected to meet the expectations of teachers but they are unable to do so because they havent learned how to do this through their families. 2. Students learn social competence from their families and informal social relationships and schools are to continue their training in this are. Schools specifically are to develop "self-awareness, self-esteem, empathy, persistence and the abilities to control and draw upon ones emotions" (75). 3. There are some young people who have underdeveloped emotional intelligence which creates a major problem in school life because they are overwhelmed by the various demands of daily school life. When students have these experiences, they begin to withdraw and become bored with the educational system. They start acting out because of their boredom and will either leave school on their own or get expelled from school eventually. In this process, we can see that there are many problems that add up to the reasons why students dont learn well. If Gatto, Rose, Rodriguez and Malcolm X were to start reform today, they would also have to initiate a paradigm shift in the consciousness of all those who work with education today. They would have to spend some of their time re-educating people as to what education should really be about in an age of conceptualization. If we go back in history to the 1800s when school was first begun, we will see that it was based on a Prussian Military Model and it was geared for upper-class white males. Much of this information has been documented by Gatto and a further comment on this states: Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. (Gatto, Against School, par. 22). This is the mindset that is set in everyones mind as to what a person must achieve in order to be sure that they "make it" in the world. If we look at school today, we can see that students still march to the bell, move from classroom to classroom, and spend most of their time in places that look like military institutions (Gatto puts it in these terms). The question then becomes, "How can students learn in such an environment?" especially when they are inundated by the ideas that some people achieve and others do not. The No Child Left Behind legislation assumed that the reason why students werent learning, why there was this gap between "the haves" and "the have nots" was basically because they werent being taught well in their schools. This set off the entire process of school and teacher evaluation along with standardized test scores. No one recognized the fact that the way that education is set up to teach is the problem. Many students, especially students of color, are taught in a variety of settings, not just sitting behind a desk. Underachieving students are constantly asking the question, "Why?" and when this question isnt answered adequately, they have a tendency to shut down, act out or ignore what is happening in school. The Myth of Education and Empowerment is a good title for the book and for this essay because it actually is a myth. Everyone is told from a very early age that in order to get a good job, you have to get an education. Everyone says they were bored in school, but that when they got to college and found a major, some things were interesting and some were not. What they may not recognize is that those subjects where they did well in high school or college were subjects that held their interest and were stimulating intellectually. They werent so concerned about learning for a test, but they were learning for the sake of learning. The myth of getting a good job because of school is also changing. Another person that is beginning to write on education is Daniel Pink. In his book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future he details the idea that we have moved out of the information age and into a conceptual age where we are going to have to train people differently. He originally wrote this book for business, but there are many things that are relevant to education and the way we teach. In an article in Reason Magazine, he further explores this idea for education and makes several good points. He points out that in visiting schools today, he was struck by the fact that they havent changed in 20 or 30 years: At first, such déjà vu warmed my soul. But then I thought about it. How many other places look and feel exactly as they did 20, 30, or 40 years ago? Maybe the sweet nostalgia I sniffed on those classroom visits was really the odor of stagnation. (Pink, 2001, par. 8). He says that we are going to moving out of this formal education for many reasons and that home schooling will take its place. He further suggests that we are going to be a Nation of "free agents" which will make how we get our education very different. All of these experts would support the new educational opportunity that Malcolm X, Rose, Gatto and Rodriguez would create. I do not think it would be a school as we know it today and I think that students would be learning outside of the four walls. They would have engaging teachers that would act as facilitators rather than teachers, and these people would guide students to express themselves creatively and study only those things that were relevant. There is another body of research around Adult Learning Theory that says this very thing. What is interesting is that many students come back to college who didnt do well in high school. They are looking to answer the question of "why?" Adult Learning Theory says that teachers must answer this question for adults in order to engage them in learning. If this is what everyone is asking, then why are we not teaching the answers? Why are we not making education relevant to everyday life? Finally, why are we trying to redevelop the old process instead of finding something new? There are no real answers to these questions necessarily but one thing that is important to note is that the current system is not working and recreating it in the same image will not work. Educators will need to examine the real reasons why students arent learning and some of this information has been included in this essay. Annotated Bibliography Bentley, Tom. Learning Beyond the Classroom: Education for a Changing World. London: Routledge, 1998. Bentley addresses the idea that we have to go beyond school reform if we want children to learn. He starts out by looking at the theories about change and goes in-depth into the study of tackling underachievement, what it has to do with citizenship and morality and how it affects employment. It is relevant to this discussion because it shows how we need to address schools reform today. Brewster, Cori and Fager, Jennifer. "Increasing Student Engagement and Motivation: From Time-on-Task to Homework". Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory October 2000. Retrieved 10 May 2008. Read More