Outside the Teaching Machine by Gayatri Spivak

The reading I chose to critically analyze was written by Diane Ravitch and is named, “Essentials of a Good Education.” In the article, education activist Diane Ravitch, expresses her opinion about how the public education and schools in the United States are failing society. She indicates that schools are wasting their money and time on preparing students to pass state test instead of teaching them valuable life skills needed to succeed. She provides interesting support for this argument and explains why schools need to stop teaching the importance of test scores and focus on a full liberal arts curriculum, where students have a better chance to obtain an education they can take into the real world. Ms. Ravitch’s argument that the

In most affluent schools, parents have the expectation that their kids are being offered a full liberal arts curriculum that will allow them to further their creativity and curiosity. However, many schools have been only focusing on the subjects that are being tested on standardized tests set by the state, because they receive more school funding if they achieve higher test scores. In her article titled “The Essentials of a Good Education”, Diane Ravitch, utilizing direct examples of schools, and policies that limit student’s knowledge of the arts in order to have more time preparing for tests, points out that this shift in focus is causing students to suffer academically and is killing their curiosity and creativity.

Thomas L. Friedman the author of “My Favorite Teacher” discusses in that essay his teacher Hattie M. Steinberg, her influence on him, and how relevant her teachings would have been in this internet day and age. Friedman uses the repetition of his favorite teacher’s name and classroom number to connect and unify these ideas. For example, Friedman believes that many people have forgotten the fundamentals due to the internet so he uses the repetition of his teacher’s name and classroom to connect both ideas. He states this in the ninth paragraph “Among the fundamentals Hattie introduced me to was The New York Times. Every morning it was delivered to room 313….” In the following paragraph Friedman does the same thing using the repetition of his

In the year 2001, the United States government passed and established a law called the No Child Left Behind Act. This law created a set of standards for public schools to follow to prepare their students for college. For that to occur, schools must have their students to meet the minimum testing score in Math and Reading. If students do not reach the minimum requirement, that school would not receive federal funding. Diane Ravitch was an original supporter of this law but later changed her mind after realizing that schools became more focused in basic skills like Math and Reading and started to ignore other subjects that were deemed irrelevant since these subjects would not help a school recieve federal funding. In her essay, The Essentials of a Good Education, Diane Ravitch uses effective reasoning and pathos to persuade her audience that there is more to education than just the quality of test scores and that incorporating other subjects can be crucial to a student’s participation in society.

“Essentials of a Good Education” is an article by Diane Ravitch regarding the No Child Left Behind legislation and its effect on public schools in America. According to her, since that legislation was put into place, schools have cut funding to subjects that don’t get tested. This has taken some of the most ambitious students in the schools in poorer communities and put them at the same level as the students that don’t care about school and don’t try. That keeps the ambitious and advanced students from reaching their full potential in school. Although Ravitch makes good points about her opinion, she doesn’t consider any opposing opinion and she cites little to no sources for her information.

Thoughts can be fleeting, however some of the feelings resulting from thought and can have a long lasting impact on the mental state of a person. In my metacognitive exploration I found an interesting comparison between the way in which I think and approach my past feelings and the methods which Tim O’Brien, from The Things They Carried, and Paul D from Beloved express their thinking about the past. I have discovered that the expression of thoughts, including memories and feelings, is the key to a healthy mental state of a person.

European’s have had a dismissive attitude towards African’s accomplishments and activities. They 1) generally refused to allow the study of any knowledge that they do not control (Asante). 2) A number of white scholars tend to be limited in their interest to subjects that are valuable to the European project of self-glorification and triumphalism (Asante). Finally, to view Africa as a subject in history or as the starting place for an examination of anything is anathema to those who have always ignored the role of Africa (Asante). The Afrocentric school of thought has fought to combat these boundaries by giving the permission to investigate all aspects of Africa’s presence and involvement in the world.

A good text should be crafted in such a way that it commands a certain extent of rhetorical force in a bid to acquire the expected influence on the intended audience. This force exudes from the sensitivity of the issues addressed in a text, the language used, the credibility of the facts used, and the ability of the author to present the ideas in a manner that passes the test of time. The four texts reviewed in this essay manifest great rhetorical force in the way they handle the concept of postcolonialism. The varying authors used different methods to reinforce their views by appealing to various groups of readers and contributors in postcolonial discussions.

This paper is a response to Chapter Three: Some New Gods that Fail of Neil Postman’s “The End of Education”. This excerpt focuses on what Postman considers the dangerous faith of many in the field of education to engage in idolatry of technology. He goes on to support his argument that concludes that the improvements promised to us by technophiles working in education are not forthcoming and will likely make things worse. Postman writes in this chapter a critique of the logical failings he observes in his contemporaries on how education should be improved. In disagreement with Postman’s opinion I wish to highlight how he has failed to understand how interactive media is fundamentally different than previous media formats and that his focus on overzealous promises from bureaucrats has blinded him to the actual opportunities for real growth in education.

The European’s mindset by the latter of the third of the 18th century saw that inside each Asian burned the effervescent ember of savagery. Without controlling governance over the people, Europeans believed anarchy would chaotically erupt in Asia. It was believed Asians truly did not have self-control without a supreme leader. Oriental despotism is the idea that the societies in Asia have a single totalitarian-formed government and without this leadership there would be no order to their society. According to Montesquieu, Asian power is absolutist and held in the hands of one. Everything that could possibly happen is in the merciless hands of the despotism. In Montesquieu’s epistolary novel The Persian Letters, he argues for oriental despotism through his two main characters in the story Usbec and Rico. He talks about the economic, political, social and cultural aspects of Persian society that he parallels with oriental despotism. Montesquieu also shows makes his story of the characters into a metaphor of the destruction of oriental despotism. Marx believed in the superiority of the west and the lack of growth in political and economic realms of Asiatic society contributing to the concept of Asian despotism. Finally, Hegel touches on the white man’s burden where he uses oriental despotism to explain the child like relationship Europeans had with the savage orients.

Stuart Hall’s work introduces readers to the discourse of “the West and the Rest”, and outlines how the “system of representation” it provides serves to validate the power of the Western world (186). He highlights how the dissemination of discourse about Western superiority and the comparative “otherness” of the non-Western world work to maintain power hierarchies. Hall pinpoints several historical events, from the Crusades to colonisation, as instrumental in forming a Western identity through opposition to “the

Right brain? Left brain? Both sides are very different and have their own characteristics that help determine what a persons potential strengths and weaknesses will be. “The human brain is split into two halves, each with its own unique abilities. This phenomenon, discovered three decades ago by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Roger Sperry and his associates at the California Institute of Technology, is known as brain lateralization” (Raudsepp, 1992, p. 85). Certain characteristics of a person can go so much deeper then just hobbies that a person enjoys. Brain function can play a major role in how a person perceives their surroundings, such as if someone like to draw or do math. On the other side of that if a person is very analytical and good at subjects in school such as math it could be linked to which side of their brain is dominant.

In her work, she joins her disapproval of the abuse against women, non-Europeans, and the poor by the wealthy west. Spivak faces in her essay “epistemic violence” done by sermons of knowledge that shape the whole world. This epistemic violence is like a curse over subjects of discourses. It is similar to Edward Said idea (1935-2003; public intellectual and founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies). His idea of otherness in “Orientalism” display the bigotry of western scholars who write in a biased way about the East in order to create “ otherness”.

In his Introduction to Orientalism, Edward Said asserts that the “Orient has helped to define Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience,” (71). Therefore, in Season of Migration to the

“...Orientalism is not so innocent a form of knowledge as this. Instead, he redefines Orientalism as the ubiquity of a sense of the division of the world into two spheres in aesthetic production, popular culture, and scholarly, sociological, and historical texts. In other words, he is suggesting that the concept of difference between east and west is a geopolitical difference which is written up throughout the texts of western culture whether through travel writing, political texts, paintings, or in academic discussions” (Sharp 2009, 31).