One thing that I found very interesting was on page 14 of Milton Chen's Education Nation. It says: "...a long century of censoring students interest." I think that unfortunately, this is a very true statement today. Thinking about my own educational experience, this was true of most of my teachers (but not all). I would like to focus on the two teachers who allowed me to ask questions and look into my interests. My 4th grade teacher, Mr. Johnson, actually rearranged his curriculum lesson plans to allow all of us to put on a skit in class. This was after he adapted his lesson plan to include someone coming in and reading the first two Harry Potter books.
That year really changed my life, because I loathed reading, I thought that there was not one good thing that could come out of reading. But, after hearing the first Harry Potter book, I thought "Wow! Maybe they have a point behind making us read." I went out and got the other two Harry Potter books that were out at that time. Then, I became very involved in the theater. One single year changed my life, isn't it worth putting in a little extra time to help change a student's life? I think it is.
Another point that I found interesting in Chapter 1 was on page 15, he quotes John Dewey saying that too often, curriculum has become isolated material. It is so true that teachers don't rip that idea of isolated material curriculum apart. Look at geography class, we learn about the continent of Australia, and then of Asia, then, finally, North America. We are teaching students subtly that what they are learning does not have anything to do with their life. To teach that is to fail the child, later on in the chapter, Chen says "...learning is fundamentally a joyful activity..." which I believe is absolutely the case. It is, unfortunately, only the case if you have a good teacher.
When the speaker came in about a month ago talking about alternative learning centers, she said something to the lines of "I give each student a blank slate when they enter my classroom." This relates to page 18 where Chen quotes George Leonard saying "...there is good in every child." I have been questioning myself as to whether I will ever even read a student's file. The reason that I would not read the file is that mostly negative things are put into the file, and I fear that I will not be able to enter the class and tell the student from the bottom of my heart "you are what you choose to do now, not what you have done in the past." I need to reflect upon that more, and I will...later.
The thing that I am going to end on is something that I have talked about in previous posts. The either/or vs. both-and thinking. Milton Chen really says that in education, we can not afford to use the either/or thinking, but we need to use the both-and mentality when thinking about education. I think that to not only look at education in the both-and idea is a great idea. What I mean by that is that if we apply the both-and mentality to every situation that life gives us, we will have a very unique life to say in the least. So, if we can teach students to see both-and situations in their own lives, we are doing them a great service.
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