Being a more of an English and History oriented student myself, I must admit I raised my eyebrows last night when I heard Obama stress the importance of math and science as opposed to other subjects in his State of the Union Address. Sure, it is extremely important we keep up with the rest of the world technologically, so that we can defend ourselves and export new and improved products, but English and History are as important if not more important than sciences.
Obama wants to use our students to work with numbers and technology to outsmart the rest of the world, but how are we going to work with and communicate with the rest of the world without the English skills that help us eloquently demonstrate our point without flaring up tensions or creating more problems for ourselves? How are we supposed to regulate trade and foreign relations without understanding what happened in the past so we can improve it for the future?
I think the problem lies in the standardization of education described in the movie "A Race to Nowhere". We are so concerned with teaching every child in the same way and giving them all the same answers that the most obvious option for education becomes the subjects that use numbers, because every question has a definite answer that every child in the world could answer either correctly or incorrectly. English and History are more subjective and they rely on interpretation, so it is harder to standardize those subjects. Do you think we are forcing the next generation into number-based careers because of the way we are teaching them?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Meta-Post 2.0
Doc 'Oc and Mr. Bolos, please look at my most recent post, "There Are no Children Here"
Thankfully, in this last quarter blogging has become significantly easier. Last quarter, a lot of the time I was struggling to find a blog topic, and when I did it was sometimes not something that had come up in class or something relevant in my life, it was something hastily taken from a website. This quarter, I made a resolution to blog only when something came up that interested me, not to search for blogs at the last minute when I needed them. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not a lot of work to find blog topics in my own life, as long as I was making an effort to be aware of my surroundings and look critically at my everyday life. I do admit, there where a couple of times when I was tempted to search out a blog topic to quickly get my blog over with for the week, but I fended off the urge for a quick fix and it was usually easier to write about the topic that I had stumbled across later.
One element that I tried to work on this quarter was posing questions in my blogs. There were a few times when my questions seemed forced, especially in the example of my post "Land of the Free". The post was three paragraphs long, and I posed two questions in each of the last two paragraphs. The questions ranged from "Is teaching children one religion against American values?" to "Is it right for teacher to teach the benefits of democracy in schools?" The two questions have certain things in common, like a child's access to impartial information, but beyond that the topics of the post seemed to jump around and this post might have been better had it been divided into two posts so each of these interesting issues could be explored more fully. On the other hand, I succeeded in posing a question in the post "Honorable or Not" without even directly asking a question to my audience. It is a goal of mine for next semester to not have to use so many questions in my blogs. My writing should be controversial or thoughtful enough to provoke questions and debate without necessarily having question the audience.
Something I did more effectively this quarter was use textual evidence or some sort of background information to back up my posts. All of my posts, with the exception of my "Black Friday" post, mention some sort of article, book, or movie that my readers could access in order to understand the post and the issue more thoroughly. In my posts "There Are no Children Here"and "Desperate Housewives in Saudi Arabia", I learned how to embed quotes to make it easier for the reader to follow along.
One last thing I'd like to work on in the next few weeks is commenting on other people's blogs from our class. This quarter I've definitely been commenting a lot more, but I am still self-conscious about my comments, and find them to be less controversial and most of the time agreeing with the author of the post. Personally, I would love if someone commented on one of my posts to disagree with it and start a debate, but I know that if I want more people to comment on my posts I should be extending myself more to comment on their work.
Thankfully, in this last quarter blogging has become significantly easier. Last quarter, a lot of the time I was struggling to find a blog topic, and when I did it was sometimes not something that had come up in class or something relevant in my life, it was something hastily taken from a website. This quarter, I made a resolution to blog only when something came up that interested me, not to search for blogs at the last minute when I needed them. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not a lot of work to find blog topics in my own life, as long as I was making an effort to be aware of my surroundings and look critically at my everyday life. I do admit, there where a couple of times when I was tempted to search out a blog topic to quickly get my blog over with for the week, but I fended off the urge for a quick fix and it was usually easier to write about the topic that I had stumbled across later.
One element that I tried to work on this quarter was posing questions in my blogs. There were a few times when my questions seemed forced, especially in the example of my post "Land of the Free". The post was three paragraphs long, and I posed two questions in each of the last two paragraphs. The questions ranged from "Is teaching children one religion against American values?" to "Is it right for teacher to teach the benefits of democracy in schools?" The two questions have certain things in common, like a child's access to impartial information, but beyond that the topics of the post seemed to jump around and this post might have been better had it been divided into two posts so each of these interesting issues could be explored more fully. On the other hand, I succeeded in posing a question in the post "Honorable or Not" without even directly asking a question to my audience. It is a goal of mine for next semester to not have to use so many questions in my blogs. My writing should be controversial or thoughtful enough to provoke questions and debate without necessarily having question the audience.
Something I did more effectively this quarter was use textual evidence or some sort of background information to back up my posts. All of my posts, with the exception of my "Black Friday" post, mention some sort of article, book, or movie that my readers could access in order to understand the post and the issue more thoroughly. In my posts "There Are no Children Here"and "Desperate Housewives in Saudi Arabia", I learned how to embed quotes to make it easier for the reader to follow along.
One last thing I'd like to work on in the next few weeks is commenting on other people's blogs from our class. This quarter I've definitely been commenting a lot more, but I am still self-conscious about my comments, and find them to be less controversial and most of the time agreeing with the author of the post. Personally, I would love if someone commented on one of my posts to disagree with it and start a debate, but I know that if I want more people to comment on my posts I should be extending myself more to comment on their work.
Monday, January 3, 2011
There Are no Children Here
In class today, we tried to determine what makes a person an "adult". This got me thinking about the reverse, what are the factors that determine whether or not a person is a child? The topic reminded me of a book most of the class read in 8th grade called There Are no Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz. The book takes place in the projects of Chicago, in a neighborhood where murder, robbery, and rape are all daily realities. It follows a young boy, Pharoah, who encounters adversity and corruption on a daily basis:
Do you agree with the quote, which suggests that childhood can be found wherever a person is lighthearted enough to create it, or do you agree with the class, who suggested that, while someone like Pharoah may be able to use their imagination and play, he was still robbed of his childhood because he lives in such a rough area he still carries the worries around him?
"Pharoah clutched his childhood with the vigor of a tiger gripping his meat. He wouldn't let go. Nobody, nothing would take it away from him. When he was two, Pharoah would around the apartment naked; sometimes he'd be wearing just small white shoes. At the age of five, he had an imaginary friend, Buddy, whom he'd talk to and play with in his bedroom. Those forays into distant lands and with other people seemed to help Pharoah fend off the ugliness around him" (15).Despite this quote, which seems to suggest that Pharoah did in fact have a childhood despite the hardships around him, the class came to a consensus that it was not possible to have a real childhood in the projects of Chicago. The class came up with multiple suggestions for things that make people children, for example: children must be sheltered from violence and crime, to be a true child, one must be allowed to go to a good school and have positive role models, and to be a child one must be worry-free.
Do you agree with the quote, which suggests that childhood can be found wherever a person is lighthearted enough to create it, or do you agree with the class, who suggested that, while someone like Pharoah may be able to use their imagination and play, he was still robbed of his childhood because he lives in such a rough area he still carries the worries around him?
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