preview

Annotation

Decent Essays

Hoda Mokarian

Rebecca Yamano

English 101

November 16th, 2011

Critical Annotated Webliography

Research Questions: What kinds of school reform strategies have been suggested historically?

ANNOTATION #1

Source Information: Goodman, Paul. Compulsory Miseducation. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.

Paul Goodman suggests that in order to counter the strict, lockstep tendencies of American educational institutions, that universities as well as secondary schools devise strategies to encourage greater flexibility, creativity and independence for the student, without which full, adult learning cannot take place. Specifically, Goodman proposes that prestigious liberal arts universities institute a new requirement: students shall …show more content…

Only by protecting the citizen from being disqualified by anything in his career in school can a constitutional disestablishment of school become psychologically effective.”

Critical commentary on Passage #1:
Illich is making a bold proposal: he wants to follow the example of the U.S. in abolishing the governing of churches by government by separating school from state. One way to implement this proposal would be to forbid employers from evaluating candidates for jobs according to where they went to school.

Passage #2:

“Schools are even less efficient in the arrangement of the circumstances which encourage the open-ended, exploratory use of acquired skills, for which I will reserve the term "liberal education." The main reason for this is that school is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling's sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers, which pays off in the doubtful privilege of more such company. Just as skill instruction must be freed from curricular restraints, so must liberal education be dissociated from obligatory attendance. Both skill-learning and education for inventive and creative behavior can be aided by institutional arrangement, but they are of a different, frequently opposed nature.”

Critical commentary on Passage #2:

Get Access