Blog for the week of 11/9/12

            This week was the third week of the chapter of the myth of education and empowerment.  This was also the week when we saw the film, Waiting for Superman.  In the film, they examined schools around the world and the power and direct connection of education to success.  I believe that the educational system does need work but it starts with the teachers.  The teachers need the inspiration to teach and should only be rewarded with their hard work and success instead of the promise of being paid either way, whether or not they teach well.  The tenure harms the whole school.  It takes away the potential knowledge the children could receive by careless teachers and the principals cannot get rid of the bad teachers, or “Lemons”. The principal and the super attendant need to have the right to fire the bad teachers and find teachers that can fulfill and exceed the required expectations.  The ability to teach should be a privilege and never a right.  Teaching is a skill that everyone has; however everyone cannot have a career off of it.  Education needs to be increased in this country because of our decreasing results of standardized testing compared to other countries in the world.  Educational limits keeps the big businesses from not having to hire international men and women to complete a difficult task, like engineering.   It should not be required of American corporations to look at other countries for employees, when if we had the right teachers and the correct learning environment, we could have provided the necessary tools for the children in our country to succeed and fulfill the occupations.

Blog for the week of 10/29-11/2

            This weeks reading was about the myth of education and empowerment.  One of the readings was about the author’s childhood as a boy developing through the educational system and his separation from his family.  He even lost the accent of his native heritage and found solace only through books.  He believed in order to be smart you need to study hard and read a ton.  He did not think about the knowledge you can gain through personal development and your own self-opinion.  He believed that education could be defined as imitation.  He discovered that he really did not have an opinion of his own.  Every thing he knew was based upon the hundreds of books that he read over the years and his own personal life, like his family, was a distant memory and not of any significance to him and his ultimate quest for knowledge.  He came to regret that decision and he eventually spent some time with his parents to make up for the time he lost being in college.  He discovered that he shared more characteristics with his mom and dad than he thought.  I really believe you need experience outside of the classroom to truly be well educated.  There is so much you can learn from the outside world and mistakes you have made in your life. He mentioned that he did not learn anything from his parents.  I think you can learn a whole lot from your parents, regardless of their past educational experience.  They have lived their own lives and can teach you lessons based upon their past mistakes. You cannot limit yourself to just the written world. Everything in this world has a lesson attached.  You can learn new things everywhere.