George Mombiot pulls few punches when talking about the modern educational system and its pitfalls. In Monbiot’s eyes it is a “defying dehumanising system” (2017, para 7) that inevitably leads to the end of creativity and natural, child-like curiosities; both are things Monbiot believes should be focused on and encouraged, a point that many people agree with, but few have acted on. There are schools and individuals making significant strides in changing the way curriculum is administered, but a large-scale implementation seems like a long way off. Bigger issues remain regarding the fundamentals of our current system that need to be addressed before we try and move on from it. We can not simply abandon the basics in favour of specialized education; we need to find a balance.
Despite the outwardly positive light Canadian school systems are seen in, a study by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada showed that 48% of adults lack sufficient literacy skills “to function well at work or in daily living” (Sorensen 2013 para 18). In 2013 it was estimated that by 2016 there would be over 550,000 unskilled, and consequently, unemployed workers while over 1.5 million skilled job vacancies existed (Sorensen 2013, para 4); it is highly likely that a significant portion of that half a million also find themselves in the 48% of illiterate adults. It is very possible that the half million unskilled and unemployed are there through some external circumstances, maybe they never entered
Many students of color often fall victim to learning in under budgeted schools, or when they do seek to receive a great education, they are put in places where they feel like they do not belong. In the TED talk titled “How students of color confront imposter syndrome,” speaker Dena Simmons presents the issue of the “price” that many students pay for learning while not white. Simmons successfully presents her argument by using powerful, emotionally-engaging personal stories, adding subtle statistics to back up her claims, and brings it home by showcasing how her experiences lead to a career in teaching, which aids in establishes her credentials.
The wise man once stated, “Teaching for nearly 40 years has allowed me to see how much our world has changed.” I had no idea how how far our world has come in just 40 years, until I asked my teacher, Mr. Gibson. Since 1978, Mr. Gibson has taught high school math. He attended college at Bemidji State University, receiving his four-year degree and eventually earned his masters. He is a very intelligent man, to say the least. Mr. Gibson explained how change has occurred in the school, how academics have been reshaped by technology, and how life in general has been revamped.
The third tenet is that school should have education that helps develop critical consciousness in their students, so that they are able to question social inequalities in the future. This includes exposing minority students to current discriminations through education, so that they can grow up and critique social inequalities, or by protecting themselves if they are minority students. To do this, teacher can engage students in social justice work, such as going to soup kitchens or helping the poor, so that they can gain personal experiences in dealing with social injustices (Morrison 442). One successful way of doing this is through allowing social issues to drive math instruction, so that students get to not only learn math calculation, but be exposed to social issues as well (Morrison 442). This is also supported in another reading, “And that’s just how it starts”: Teaching Mathematics and Developing Student Agency,” where Gutstein proved the success in using Math questions in developing cultural consciousness by exposing them to real-world mathematical projects. One of the projects involved students in understanding gentrification, by questioning students whether the developer should receive the city permission for paving a tiny park (Gutstein 428). In addition, students literally went downtown, to measure the distance of the park to downtown. At the end of Gutstein’s curriculum in Rivera, several of his students talked about the success of the programs, and how they
In the classroom, teachers lack the training to effectively teach a foster child. To be able to promote educational stability for the child, it is paramount that the teacher is in communication with the foster parents. In an article by National Center Brief, the authors list the appropriate responsibilities of a teacher when caring for a foster child (7,8). The list includes having monthly meetings with the child’s foster parents, caseworkers, and principal to catch each other up on how the child is doing and how they can better plan the child’s educational future. One of the ways teachers can better aid children in the foster care system is by looking at their educational assessment prior to being in foster care.
Our education system is preparing our youth, as well as it has prepared our past selves to the oncoming future, and the society that awaits us, including what will happen and preparing ourselves. That we often numbing our youth, including our education systems by depriving or lacking the creative motive to push ourselves further than we can imagine, and using up the full potential of our inner humane selves. Through this system we are currently establishing in our society, and our education systems we aren’t improving the creativity aspect, or pushing for a more open system rather we are expecting and preparing our youth for a future we aren’t familiar with and removing that creative potential that may exist. During the ‘Ted Talk’ video, the host tells the audience that “we aren’t born into creativity, more that we should grow out of it”, rather that we shouldn’t be held or confined to some ideal or structure of “creativity”. We hold the capacity to dream, come up with ideas and pursue those goals and continue to flourish through them. Our society rather than creating these fundamental pillars that we continue to cycle through and use, we need to be able to continue our creativity not as a society but as individuals, using our full potential to improve and create a more open and less demonetized way of life. Through this we can better relate to ourselves and not feel punished as we may feel in real life, whether it be in business or and so forth.
The essence of being well educated is foremost the biggest issue in this world today in order to succeed as much as you can in society. “The difficulty understanding societal issues lowers the level of community involvement and civic participation” (Green, & Riddell, 2007). In a household worrying about the economic adversity is big when it comes to one being illiterate, particularly when that person is the main supplier. One cause is generational spread of literacy. What this is saying is, “Children have a higher chance of being illiterate if brought up in a household of parents who are as well illiterate.” These families usually don’t have a greater supply of materials in the home related to school, because it isn’t something important to the family. These are the parents who feel that their children can make it just the same way as they did without the proper education. Parents cannot educate the children, due to not knowing what to teach them because they didn’t get any schooling. Maybe these same people didn’t get any teaching from their own parents. Being in the education field myself, I know that we as parents should be our child’s first teacher. Growing up with parents who are educated, shows children how to succeed in this world. These are the same people who when they get older in age isn’t able to read properly their prescriptions. “As consumers, adults with low literacy struggle to obtain health services, buy groceries, take medications, and pay bills, among
Over the past several years, Oklahoma’s educational systems has struggled and faltered with the low budget given to them by the Oklahoman government. Teachers leave the state to find work elsewhere, students are pulled out of school and some classrooms are packed full with students to compensate for the lack of teachers. Many have suggested solutions to solve the budget crises educators are experiencing. Despite the differences in approach to fixing the issue, all can agree that education is important to future generations. School funding is a tough topic for teachers and Oklahomans. Some people the Oklahoman government needs to stop cutting taxes and needs to increase the funding for schools. Others believe Oklahoma needs to continue to cut taxes and allocate the proper number of funds to schools. Yet some believe teachers have enough funding. There is evidence to support several different solutions and evidence that address people that believe teachers make enough money.
56% which averages out about to 42,168,580 people of the world's population that are bilingual know the language English, however, out of that percentage, only 15% of them spoke English as their first language (Nemeth, 2017). Most of those people didn’t learn a language at the younger age when it’s a lot more simple as your brain was still developing. However, still today they don’t have bilingual in your average younger aged classroom when it can be used as a learning tool. One of the solutions that can help fix this is to start teaching the most common languages at the younger age. To do this though you would have to also add in the requirement of having teachers at the younger group level be bilingual. This can take time though, so in the meantime to put things in motion signs and materials can start to be used to help introduce different languages to children. Another is that lots of countries today are becoming more advanced in the language department at the younger age and eventually United States citizens are going to fall behind. There is the reasons that dispute this, as with the changing of the curriculum, you also need to have parents on board with it as well. The reason they might be is that of the price for certain things. Mostly today children that have a type of language lesson in their life have parents that are either paying for a more expensive school or videos and tools to use at home. Meaning adding it to everyday life does run into the possibility of
“ Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” ( Einstein). Grading students based on subjects that they struggle in is like judging a fish based on its ability to climb a tree: completely unfair. The American school system has turned a blind eye to the millions of different personalities and talents that a student body has to offer. Since the establishment of the American high school, students have been forced to be scheduled in courses that they are not only struggling in, but are also forced to take classes that they find entirely uninteresting. The American high school has failed many students who are not academically inclined, and in order to establish success for everyone, the education system must be reconstructed to include hands on experiences and functional skill instruction.
When a child does not receive adequate education from a young age, more times than not it traps him or her in a cycle of poverty that they are unable to escape. This is the paramount social issue of our generation. While other issues relating to hunger, homelessness, and healthcare are also important, they are short-term in nature. One can feed an individual; one can provide shelter to an individual; one can cure an individual. What one can not do as easily is educate an individual to a level where they can secure a stable future for oneself and for their progeny. There are too many variables to ensure success with short-term solutions and the time horizon is too long.
With an astounding 14% of students in the United States being eligible for special education under IDEA, there has been greater regulation of educational services and identification of legal rights than ever before. (National Center for Education Statistics) IDEA, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, was an amendment to the Education for All Handicapped Children Act that in essence changed the name of the law, but maintained the purpose of ensuring that all those with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education. One of the many requirements of IDEA is the development of an IEP, or Individualized Education Program, for each student in special education. (Hallahan et al.) In light of the prevalence of special education in the United States, it is essential that all educators, not just special educators, be aware of the purpose, elements, and process of creating an IEP.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt once put, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” There has been a noticeable change in the way empires ruled since the times when the “divine right” dominated society. When the French moved towards enlightenment thought, they had slowly dismantled the concept of “maintaining the status quo,” which cannot be sustained if an empowered mind is educated. Proper schooling has been instrumental for ensuring that useful, beneficial knowledge and skills are acquired by people who will, in turn, use these tools to form a progressive society. Without education, developing a strong sense of nationalism would be impossible as schooling allows patriotic beliefs to be transmitted from a state to its pupil. Similarly, education illuminates the past and promote nationalistic actions though developing an understanding of a great nation’s history. In the years before 1799, intellectual history has had its moments of eminence but it was lacking in many minds of the French. This push towards an educated mind had been undercut at every turn by the nobility, the church, and prominent political figures who utilised religion to “keep the common people occupied.” In the late 1790s’ France was still waging wars across the globe , the Directory abused its power to keep opposition at bay , and French pride was bleak. The stream of intellectual ideas, at the
Throughout my educational years, I have always had a competitive mindset due to soccer which I believe has played a role in my struggles with literacy. I always had to be the first person in my class to finish my assignments. Whether it was a test, a quiz, or just a daily assignment, I was always the first to finish. By doing this, it caused me to rush through my assignments and not give the time and effort needed to do it right or even figure out if I really liked a book or story. This was most prevalent in my english classes. English was never my strongest subject. I found that I had not been particularly passionate about reading or writing, so the papers I produced were never at their full potential. I would rush through those assignments even faster, making sure I would not have to endure the pain of reading and writing for any longer time than I had to. I would much rather have been outside playing soccer with my teammates.
Classrooms today are diverse and multicultural, and children bring different forms of Englishes into the classroom, such as Spanglish, Chinglish, or Singlish (Crystal, 2013). Therefore, many students are bilingual, whereby they speak their birth language at home and Standard English at school (Ewing, Callow & Rushton, 2016). Most often, aboriginal children from remote communities learn Aboriginal English at home and have a range of experiences based on cultural and family believes (Loanne & Muir, 2017). Furthermore, bi-directional relationships and past experiences such as culture, family, geographic or socio-economic status (SES) all influence students' learning and development (Ewing, 2013; Gardner, 2017d; O'Donnell et al., 2016). Therefore, teachers need to use a two-way learning approach in the classroom to link all students' cultural heritage and home language to literacy. Equally, curriculum needs to be culturally cohesive to help bridge the learning gap amongst the students (Ewing, 2013; Thomson, 2002). Furthermore, the classroom Discourse needs to make students feel they belong, which helps build students' self-confidence, self-efficiency, and self-identity (Green, 2006; Malaguzzi, 1993). Teachers must ensure language used, class tasks and textual resources are relevant and diverse to meet the diverse range of learners in the class. For example, teachers introducing a wide variety of texts, magazines, images with a variety of dialects and sociolects help make
Why do you want to go into special ed. / inclusive/ general ed./ teach in your content area?