What Are We Doing Here?

In the article, “Lost in America,” Douglas McGray informs politicians, education administrators, and school-board officials that language throughout the world is evolving and Americans need to step up their game in global communications. Along with informing politicians, education administrators, and school-board officials he also criticizes how the American education systems are ran. McGray goes into detail about how Americans are not educated properly on foreign culture and language throughout their academic career. This lack of familiarity proves that Americans are behind in the education system. Overall, McGray is trying to persuade his intended audience that as American citizens, we should be more open-minded and extend our education in order to keep up in global affairs. With the effective use of statistics, anecdotes, metaphors, and scholarly diction, McGray builds up his credibility when persuading politicians, education administrators, and school-board officials that the education systems in America needs to avoid isolationism in order to be successful globally.

Jaschik identifies education as a key aspect to the American identity and society. Jaschik draws in the audience to see his’ perspective. He describes with a logical sense that higher level education holds weight and value, and therefore should be reflected in test scores, critical thinking skills, and analytical reasoning. He cites a book by the University of Chicago Press called, “Academically Adrift” which lists results from an assessment taken by college students. This assessment tests students to see where they place according to the categories of, “critical thinking” and “analytical reasoning”. The results explain a consensus of student’s level of knowledge that has been retained over the intervals on two years and four years: “forty-five percent of

An American Education has drastically changed over time, and it is widely known that things have changed. Students in their generation and ones prior are acutely aware and morally affected about subjects regarding

The Education system currently in use by the United States of America is a modified version of a methodical tool used to implement obedient control at young age and centralized power solidification. A problem with the system is the obsessive culture of

It is on these premises that the current American education model fails. Americans aim to inform students, but fail to educate them. The system fills students with inert ideas, ideas that are neither utilized nor tested. These ideas clutter the mind and do not allow for optimal performance of the mind in processing input and creating new hypotheses based on past scenarios, the most common and useful purpose of the human mind. Quite blatantly, “A

       Public schools have discovered the importance of critical thinking, many people are trying to teach children how to do it. The problem is that very few teachers know how to do. Robert Sternberg, an early advocate of critical thinking in teaching,

In today’s current school systems, the question of whether or not schools are correctly teaching students the right curriculum is coming up for debate. In the Article,"Teaching Critical Thinking by Marcia Clemmitt, she goes into extensive research of the U.S. Department of Education’s crisis of standardized testing. Most learning activities include standardized testing which lacks many students to express creative and critical thinking. Critical thinking is defined as the examination and evaluation of ideas, events and arguments in their contexts which introduces students to interrogate assumptions and identifying biases (Clemmitt)Pure critical thinking involves investigating a text more than just memorizing, but to apply theirself in other ways of techniques, meaning schools should stimulate more analytical methods of teaching. This would not only free students from a sheltered test culture,but will allow students to think in a deeper,more passionate way than before.

His analysis of world history leads to the understanding of why schools function the way they do today. Gray explained that as the wave of industrialism overtook America around the early 1800s, “employers saw schooling as a way to create better workers” (Gray). To them, the most crucial lessons were punctuality, following directions, tolerance for long hours of tedious work, and a minimal ability to read and write. Gray then connects this truth to the foundations of America’s educational system. Past generations believed that providing children with the moral and intellectual grounding needed to develop into competent adults would in turn provide for a successful working class and global advancement. Therefore, they developed their agenda for what children should learn: “moral lessons and disciplines, such as Latin and mathematics, that would exercise their minds and turn them into scholars” (Gray). Peter Gray uses these patterns in history to explain the purpose behind modern educational system’s roots. He then acknowledges that although core subjects such as arithmetic, literature, history, and science are important areas in which students need to form a full understanding in order to prepare for adulthood, they are no longer the only skills needed for future success.

John Dewey, the father of education, created a vision of education being the key to prepare people for citizenship. Dewey’s vision was the idea that school, would teach future citizens how to think critically in democratic situations. Essays such as Todd Gitlin’s, The Liberal Arts in an Age of Info-Glut, Leon Botstein’s Let Teenager’s Try Adulthood, and Diane Ravitch’s, Stop the Madness, help to prove high schools today are not doing enough to prepare citizens to achieve Dewey’s vision of people being able to critically think democratically.

In his article The Other Hat: Teaching Discernment in the Twenty-First Century, Beverly J. Christian analyzes primarily Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats as a teaching model for “critical thinking or mental flexibility”; secondly, our author evaluates the effectiveness of this model “for teaching discernment in a Christian environment” (pg. 43). B. J. Christian asserts that our society’s mindset and attitude based on its erroneous beliefs of no-absolutes and no-best dominate our educational curriculums; coherently, today’s post-modernism educational practices influence and work under the camouflage of critical, flexible and rhetorical thinking theories. In contrast with these fallacious practices, B. J. Christian believes that possessing and

Freire’s words “True dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking” (Freire, 1970/1993, p.92). Here, the author emphasizes how imperative critical thinking is for dialoguers in order to have a real conversation. In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he elaborates the meaning of critical thinking. According to what he said, when there is an agreement between the world and people without separating them, it is critical thinking. Moreover, if an individual believes that everything around her is not an unchangeable fact, but a process that is constantly changing, that is also called critical thinking.

The education system focuses on English, Math, Science, and the Arts. Helping children focus on the important subjects while growing up around many diverse cultures worldwide. However, students don't realize the key issues they are missing. Supporting knowledge in anthropology helps aids students with awareness to what has happened and what is happening around them. Marc Brightman support the idea of allowing Anthropology into Primary school. In order to help students understand why learning about ethic diversity is

The ability to think critically has been taken out of our public school system but is slowly being reintegrated so that tomorrows’ thinkers are able to do so with the ability to firmly stand behind their beliefs. While some people are against the idea that our future should question what we tell them is true only strengthens the sense of doom that settles on the rest. We don’t need to abandon our future generations but we need to show them that their opinions are what create the world around them and without those we fall into a downward spiral. We need to change the ways we teach our children and create schools that are there to show them that there is more to life than making money and dying. We need to show our children that they hold

Critical Pedagogy Primer by Joe Kincheloe presents interesting insight on critical pedagogy as he explained how this is relevant within our educational system. Reading this article helped me gain more of an understanding of critical pedagogy and how it benefits the educational system. Kincheloe (2004) said, “proponents of critical pedagogy understand that every dimension of schooling and every form of educational practice is a politically contested space. Shaped by history and challenged by a wide range of interest groups, educational practice is a fuzzy concept as it takes place in numerous settings, is shaped by a plethora of often-invisible forces, and can operate even in the name of democracy and justice to be totalitarian and oppressive.” Historically, the process of education has been a part of the political sphere for better or for worse as our educational system is a reflection of our society’s current political state. Ideally, when education professionals are acting within their purposeful agency, the traditional ideolgies and political slants are threatened.

Today, in the present time, what is the trend of the education given? To what motive is appeal most often made? To self-seeking. Much of the education given today, is a perversion of the name itself. In true education the selfish ambition, the greed for power, the disregard for the rights and needs of humanity, that are the curse of our world, find a counter-influence. True education means more than taking a certain course of study. It is broad. It includes the harmonious development of all the physical powers and the mental faculties. It teaches the correct morals of life and is a preparation for the faithful discharge of life’s duties. The educational system in Mesoamerica aka Anahuac was and is exactly this, to receive instructional and