Opinions On Education

The following is an attempt to put my opinions on education today into writing.  If at any point you feel as though I am ranting rather than being logical, please stop reading.  I will attempt to offer solutions when I have a well formulated answer. 

At times I will struggle to put into exact words what my opinion is, and will most likely bounce from place to place at points.  Bare with me 

Part One

First off I am a young teacher.  Many could say that I am too young, and inexperience for my opinions to be justifiable or heard.  I would respond that yes I am young, but I am not inexperience in the field of education, or in the politics of education.  If you consider me too young, opinionate, or just plan stupid, do not read this.   I know what I see and I know it well.  This is what I see

I teach a social science. Social Sciences have been relegated to a second or third class subject. This is not opinion, it is fact.  Look at the increasing importance placed on Science and Math.  My school system, and the Commonwealth in which I teach, have become apart of the growing number to place STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) education at the forefront of their curriculum.  We as a country are doing so at our own peril. 

            Peril is the word I choose for this because we suffer when education is compartmentalized.  STEM has become so popular because those fields are where jobs are TODAY.  China, Japan, and parts of Europe saw STEM on the horizon years ago, thus they are benefiting today.  Think of the Industrial revolution.  The United States fortunately caught the IR soon enough to ride the wave to shore.  The wave of STEM is already crashed over us.  The education system of this country would be better to take our lumps and look to the future.  The future is not in STEM it is in free thinking and ideas.  Original thought is the future. How are we going to implement this technologies is going to be the question more asked than, how are we going to invent a technology

            My solution is to simply stop.  Curriculum can and should be written to broaden student rather than send them into a specific field.  With in a borad education there is room for the sciences, yet there is room for the soft sciences, art, and physical education aswell.  Teach our students in the liberal arts. Teach them to ask questions, not so much of how, but why.  Had “Why?” been asked more than “Why Not?” many of the worlds problems would not have be problems at all.  The world needs to stop asking what new technology is next, and start asking what the cost of that new technology is.  What human skill is being lost at the expense of the new widget? What are the implications of these new technologies?  These questions my friends are better asked by philosophers and humanist than engineers and nanotechnologist.  Technology only dulls our creative thinking.  Look back to the feats obtained by the likes of Einstein, Newton, or the Greeks. These were not done with the latest, or greatest, but ink, paper and mind

Web Review: Changing Educational Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson

http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms

Major Points:
Our education system is flawed in the sense that we still use an outdated production model to educate our students
The rise of ADD/ADHD correlates with the rise of standardized testing
The social sciences suffer from the rise and importance of standardized testing

My Agreements:
Our education system is flawed in the sense that we still use an outdated production model to educate our students
The rise of ADD/ADHD correlates with the rise of standardized testing
The social sciences suffer from the rise and importance of standardized testing

My Disagreements:
Our education system is flawed in the sense that we still use an outdated production model to educate our students

Thoughts:
I would like to start with the one point that appears in both my AGREEMENTS and DISAGREEMENTS section which is: Our education system is flawed in the sense that we still use an outdated production model to educate our students. I agree wholeheartedly that it is an outdated system that is flawed, but it in a sense it is all we have.  Please do not get me wrong in defending our education system but it IS all we have and at least for the present time ALL we can muster.  We have to produce students in batches, we have to dumb down curricula, and we certainly have to bore our students in order to teach them what is going to be on a test.  Believe me..it is not a pleasurable thing to do day in and day out, but it's what we have to do.  We have to operate within the parameters in which we are governed, and will continue to so long as the current educational paradigms are in existence. 

That being said, Sir Robinson's notion is completely true.  We have got to tear down these ideas that education has to be a certain way.  Somewhere, someone must get it in their mind that tests are not the answer.  There is no magic bullet to show a student has learned.  We need to instill in our students the love of ascetic learning and learning for the sake of learning.  Before I go further, I must say that good teachers do this daily..they do..come to my school, and you will see it.  On this point I would go a step further than Sir Robinson and say that a problem with the current paradigm is that teachers, who tend to be intrinsic learners, end up teaching many student that see no value in education. Obviously teachers see the value in education otherwise they would not go get HUGE amounts of education to turn right back around and spend 20 or 30 years mixing it up with students who increasingly younger than they are.

The third and final point I want to comes from the point of view of a social science teacher.  We are, in every sense of the word, forgotten or a the very least ignored.  My school system has decided to buy into the idea of STEM education, primarily due to funding provided by the state in which we are located.  STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.  Nowhere does Social Sciences, English, Foreign Language, Physical Education, or any other branch of education fit into that paradigm.  I hold, that if we want to change paradigm as Sir Robinson suggests the first thing is to get rid of STEM education and focus on liberal education.

Book Review: Blue Dixie

http://us.macmillan.com/bluedixie

Major Points:
The South has traditionally been a Democratic area, but changes in the party have alienated Southerners
The South is not as conservative as many would think
Traditional Liberals in the South want to vote for the Democratic candidate but few candidates meet their needs
The Democratic Party needs to jettison the notions of being "Republican Lights"
Southern Neo-Liberals like Bill Clinton are actually not liberal enough for Southern tastes
Obama as a candidate (written before the election) is continuing this pattern

My Agreements
The South is not as conservative as many would think
The South has traditionally been a Democratic area, but changes in the party have alienated Southerners

My Disagreements:
Traditional Liberals in the South want to vote for the Democratic candidate but few candidates meet their needs...This I agree with on the National level, and somewhat on the state level

Thoughts:

There is very little in this book that I disagree with, and that is coming from someone who voted for George W. Bush and John McCain. In fact the fact that I voted for these candidates over "ideal" Democratic candidates proves Mr. Moser's point.  Barack Obama was and still is, at least to many Democrats, a dream candidate. 

Mr. Moser's point of Democrats needing to pay attention to Southern voters should be considered by any Democrat seeking election in the South.  A prime example, albeit what some would call anecdotal, of Mr. Moser's overarching purpose of the book would come in the form of resident of Greene County, Tennessee who was interviewed by a local paper.  This crux of the article was discussing the fact that many voters were turned off by Barack Obama's rhetoric during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  This gentleman who had run for representative of the 1st Tennessee Congressional District, stated that it was not the color of Obama's skin that bothered him, but the fact that he was not a traditional liberal.  In addition, it seemed seemed  to the interviewee that Obama simply ignored the South as a whole.  A closer examination of the electoral map from the 2008 election would confirm this assumption.  Obama won only North Carolina, Virginia, and (what many call the Southern most Northern state) Florida.

Finally I will say that even with the emergence and subsequent fall of the Tea Party, which I would contend to be made up of closet Democrats, the Democratic Party could stand to do well by paying attention to the South.  Many Tea Partiers have become disenfranchised with the Republican party, and are simply not heard in the Tea Party (due mostly to overwhelmingly loud spokespeople), so it would behoove Democrats to attempt cajoling them to the other side.  I again turn to the example from above to help prove this point. The gentleman had seriously contemplated voting for John McCain had he not put Sarah Palin on the ticket. Many Southerns have flocked to the Tea Party, but many more find them downright repulsive and loud.  Many people I have spoken with on the subject have stated that they have more in common with Democrats than the Tea Party. 

 As an aside, I have to admit that it got my liberal blood going and made me want see the Democratic party do well in the next elections...so long as they are traditional Southern Democrats and not New Liberal Yankees...yeah I said it

Book Review: New Deal Or Raw Deal

Book:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/New-Deal-or-Raw-Deal/Burton-W-Folsom-Jr/9781416592228

Major Points:
FDR prolonged the Great Depression by mismanaged the New Deal. 
The economic principles subscribed to by those who set up New Deal policies where incorrect.
Efforts made by the New Deal were ineffective and or harmful
FDR could have/ should have done more
Most attempts to correct the Depression were short-sighted- i.e. instead of bridge we should have been making other things.

My Agreements
FDR should have done more

My Disagreements
Hindsight is always 20/20
If FDR could have/ should have done more then people like Folsom who opposed FDR on these grounds should not have opposed him so vigorously
Most attempts to correct the Depression where short sighted. 

Thoughts
First, I have waited WAY to long to get this started.   I have been doing other things and forgot I had created this page.
My first and only agreement with Mr. Folsom is that FDR should have done more to help the economic side of the Great Depression.  He tried a variety of things to help socially, which did help him get elected, but not has much on economic policy.  FDR did however see that if he did not get re-elected he would not have to worry about the Depression so I can understand this point.  You have to have a job to do a job.  Too people would not have understood. 

One of my major disagreements, and the only that I will really flesh out, is the idea Folsom makes about the short-sightedness of the New Deal.  Mr. Folsom is an trained economist, where I only teach economics to 8th graders, and he can dissect the economic impact that the New Deal had, but I think he misses the key point of the New Deal.  It was after all a social AND economic program designed to bring the country out of the Great Depression.  Mr. Folsom often has a quote (or I think it is a quote..I'm listening to this book) about to the point that instead of bridges being built, and piano lessons to children on relief, the economy should have been producing.

My response to this comes in his dissection of The Tennessee Valley Authority.  Having grown up in a town the benefited significantly from the TVA, I feel the criticism offered by Mr. Folsom is in itself short-sighted.  While the point that 98% of Americans where paying to subsidize 2% of American's power, the point is nearly moot when considering the after effects of having power in the Tennessee Valley. 

The obvious example of power in the Tennessee Valley would be the expansion of the Oak Ridge Nuclear testing area in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  It did house the Manhattan Project that did help complete the Nuclear Bombs.  This is an overwhelming example, but I would like to go back to the fact that my hometown benefited greatly from TVA.  My hometown was able to attract George Eastman to buy what was at the time a struggling pulp mill and turn it into only of the largest chemical companies in the world.  It produced, as Mr. Folsom suggests, throughout the Great Depression.  Aside from the actual production, it produced a relatively erudite population that has, for a town it's size, produced a good deal.  On my reading it seemed a success under the premise that Mr. Folsom sets.

A second point of contention, and this will be brief, is the idea that 98% of Americans might pay for 2% of Americans.  This too me is completely moot.  Yes, some farmer in Iowa helped pay for the dam to be built so that my great-grand parents could have power in Tennessee through the TVA, but I would argue that it is very possible for my great-grand parents may very well have help put fertilizer on his crops through the AAA.  It was no different then as it is now.  Mr. Folsom should have an understanding of "public goods and services" (my 8th graders do) and know that they are goods and services not otherwise provided by the private sector.  I do not benefit directly from fuel being put in a Humvee on an Army base in Kabul, but I do benefit from the protection afforded me by the military. 

It is these programs that made those Americans that lived through the Depression appreciate the American government, and ultimatley want to fight for it during World War Two. Yes they helped someone they did not know, but they go help to.  My opinion is, and this is free, we need more programs like those set up by The New Deal